Fight Through

CHAPTER 8

Colonel Chandler could see sparkles of light ahead of his own force, they seemed to be anything but randomly targeted as there were concentrations at whichever level the aircraft of the Wild Weasel sweep under Dark Light flight were. Each short-lived flash of light represented an exploding shell dispensing expanding clouds of shrapnel.

It was shocking to behold and the colonel who had flown across Baghdad on the first raid of the Gulf War could honestly say that what he now beheld had to be four, maybe even five times heavier than what had been thrown at them on that night.

Searchlights probed the heavens and he could almost pinch himself in order to check he was really here and not watching a WW2 newsreel.

Twenty-eight miles to the east he could see a similar scene in the direction of the airbase and the space centre, but only at the airfield was the attack being pressed without casualties. It was ironic that at the one target where aircraft had passed so close to the gunners that they could make out markings with the naked eye, they were unsuccessful in downing a single one.

The airbase attack opened with B1-Bs dispensing runway cratering weapons and mines along the tarmac, this was carried out at an altitude of just sixty feet.

The Tower, tank farm, and hangars were attacked even as the runway was still being cratered by the B1-Bs submunitions. Laser-guided weapons struck every hanger and this destroyed all but two of the Flankers based on the airfield. Owing to the inclement weather all had been brought in from the dispersal shelters that were open on three sides to the elements and kept in the hangars free of snow and ice. No CAP had been in place due to the extreme remoteness of the location and its distance from the nearest known enemy forces, but instead a pair was kept on permanent runway readiness.

The airbase attack ended with the SAM radars being taken out as they hurriedly came up, and the pair of Flankers stranded at the runways end disappeared in the single explosion caused by a Maverick landing between them.

All the targets on the revised list for the space centre were in hardened shelters that required high altitude attacks with BLU-116s, and these attacks cost them two of the precious B2s to massed 90mm AAA that found the aircraft despite radar having never acquired a solid lock.

Chandler had heard rumours about the Chinese air defence zones, both the fixed and mobile ones. He always figured they were just story’s, kind of like the everlasting light bulb and the salt-water combustion engine.

According to the stories that Chandler had heard the Chinese never threw anything away, they had vast warehouses filled with weapons that were maintained religiously, despite their age. From horse drawn Japanese anti-aircraft guns to modern self-propelled, high altitude pieces and latest generation SAMs, they were stored together awaiting a time when they may be needed.

The thing that had convinced Chandler that the stories were nothing more than popular legend had been the claims that the secondary targeting systems were not laser or radar based, but audio. The altitude of the approaching enemy aircraft would be calculated by the sound of their engines, pre-cathode ray style. Pinpoint accuracy would be unnecessary or so the story went, a thousand guns throwing a wall of fire up into the general direction of an aeroplane would more than compensate for the lack of high technology.

Looking at the sky ahead he now knew the tales had not been bar room banter.

The stealth forces trillion dollars’ worth of state-of-the-art airframes no longer had the advantage; the playing field had been levelled by weight of numbers and all were being targeted upon the American aircraft using technology from the era of the crew’s grandparents.

Ahead of Chandler and the main force there was a flash of light that was larger than all the rest and a moment later a trail of fire was streaming back from a point in the night sky ahead. After a few seconds it angled downwards, gaining in length and girth as the angle increased and the fire spread.

Chandler switched to the Black Light frequency but he did not transmit, he just listened

“…Black Light Zero Four eject…Zero Four eject, eject, eject…come on Jeanette, punch out, get the hell out of there!”

There was no response on the radio and Zero Four’s plunge ended abruptly, a ball of flame rising up to mark the crash site.

“Black Lighters from Zero One, did any of you guys see a chute?”

“Zero Two, Negative.”

“Zero Three, Negative.”

“Black Light Zero One from Spear Gun One, that’s a negative from my Lancers too.”

There were other fires on the ground that Chandler could see; no doubt some belonged to the other pair of F-117As and the two B1-B Lancers from Spear Gun that had already fallen to AAA.

It was clear that without any further radar sites to take out, his Wild Weasel force was providing nothing more than target practice for the Chinese gunners.

“Ring Master, Ring Master, Black Light One…we’re getting murdered here!”

“Black Light this is Ring Master, get your people out of there and standby to hammer any radars that come back up.”

He waited for the acknowledging “Roger” before ordering the main force into a holding orbit while they were still clear of the silos air defence zone.

Chandler wanted to see what the gunners would do once they realised that there were no more aircraft overhead, he was hoping the fire would slacken.

As Chandler’s B2 circled he could see the flames leaping high from over in the east and guessed that the tank farm beside the airbase was the main source. The flames eclipsed any sign of damage that may otherwise have been visible from the space facility. He wished he knew why they had been ordered to attack pointless targets there, the intelligence reports clearly indicated the old vehicle assembly building had become an MT maintenance facility six months before once work on the new and larger assembly building had been completed. The ‘solid fuel booster store’ they had attacked had been a dummy; they knew that and had seen the photographs of its empty interior during the initial planning stage back on Mindanao. The real storage facility was sited three miles away from the nearest building, where any accident would not cause any damage to the rest of the facility. It said a great deal for his crews that they had pressed home their attacks even though all had known they wouldn’t halt the PRC putting satellites up, and wouldn’t even delay them beyond the time it would take to clean up.

The AAA protecting the silos did not appear to have slackened off in the slightest and the clock was running, he couldn’t afford to delay any further.

He would lay money that a pair of fighters had already scrambled out of Lanzhou with more to follow, but he was far more concerned with the time it would take to launch the ICBMs in the silos which were there primary targets.

The highly corrosive and unstable liquid fuel could only be pumped into the missiles tanks immediately before launch, and the best available intelligence put the time needed for this operation to be anywhere between twenty minutes and two hours.

If Colonel Chandler allowed a minimum of ten minutes for the Chinese Premier to be informed the region was under air attack and to make a decision to launch, then Chandler had only eleven minutes remaining before the ICBMs were launched at their targets, if the lower fuelling figure were to be proved correct.

“Spectre One, Two and Three I want you to gain angels forty, send your activation signals to the RERs and standby…… Spectre Four and Five form on me and follow me up to thirty thousand…….Javelin One, take your aircraft north and standby to make a dummy pass on my word……Fire Arrow Zero Two hook east at twenty thousand and standby also…. ” In a very short time he had a plan in place to divide up the massed guns protecting the silos, he had no doubt that it would work because the defenders could not afford not to react to approaching aircraft, but would it work enough? He could not afford to unduly risk his own aircraft or Spectre Four and Five because they were the back-up’s for the attack, they would break once they had succeeded in drawing fire but the remainder would continue on into the cauldron.

Chandler’s aircraft was levelling out when Spectre One reported the successful activation of all six RERs and green lights on all six weapons.

“Roger Spectre One, this will be a simultaneous drop on all six targets just as planned, but I want twice the spacing between aircraft plus a thousand feet of vertical clearance. The rest of us will turn in toward the target to draw some guns our way in thirty seconds time, so you wait twenty seconds longer and begin your runs.”

He received three acknowledgements and had time left for a deep breath before banking hard right, bringing the nose around to point toward the silos and opening the throttles all the way.

The sky ahead was receiving a fairly equal share of attention but pretty soon he noticed that change. The bursting shells seemed to home in on his flight level and he pushed the nose down in response, losing five thousand feet before levelling out.

Fire Arrow Zero Two was caught almost immediately by a searchlight, a second later two more locked on, trapping it in a cone of light for all to see and all to shoot at. The F-117As pilot twisted and turned the aircraft in a vain attempt to throw off the searchlights, before rolling and diving for the valley floor. Chandler watched the manoeuvres with trepidation, the Nighthawk isn’t built for high-speed aerobatics, and it is not terribly keen on the medium speed variety either. It relies upon stealth rather than the classic fighter aircraft qualities to achieve its mission goals. Pilots who have unwisely tried to throw the aircraft around the sky like some stunt machine have found the F-117A flying away without them, in several different directions at once. The colonel was unable to follow the Nighthawk with his eyes so he did not then know how its pilot fared, but to the west he saw fire in the sky as yet another of his B1-B Lancers fell.

A near miss shook the B2 he was flying and he decided that his flight of three had done all it safely could for now so he ordered them to break off and reform to the south once more.

A SAM radar came up, sweeping the skies with radar energy until a Dark Lighters HARM obliterated the transmitter vehicle. A searchlight passed across Chandler’s B2, the glare robbing him of his night vision but then the man-made turbulence ended and they were back in the clear.

Chandler couldn’t see Spectre aircraft carrying out the attack but he banked around and peered out into the night sky at where he thought they would be.

“Come on guys and gals” he muttered to himself. “One good run and we can all go ho…..”

A 90mm shell pierced the composite belly of Spectre Three and detonated as the rotating dispenser was in the process of cycling the second BLU-116 out of the weapons bay. The B2 disintegrated a bright flare of light in the night sky and then it was gone.

In the central command bunker a quarter of a mile from the line of silos they could neither hear nor feel anything that was going on around them, such was the depth below ground and thickness of the walls, and yet the screech of audible alarms shook the staff there more than the actual sight of five of the silos being destroyed would have done.

The five weapons successfully released had flown true, homing on the splashes of light of a wavelength no human could see unassisted, to penetrate the silo caps and explode inside where the volatile fuel was being pumped into the ICBMs added to the destruction.

The subterranean fuel tanks ruptured and the contents flash ignited causing an over-pressure that wrecked the integrity of the underground structures. The ground buckled, bulged and burst open with a roar, the valley was momentarily lit up like day as the fireballs expended themselves. Slabs of reinforced concrete flew hundreds of yards to smash into the frozen earth whilst the tremors caused by the explosions ventured even further from the sources, radiating outwards like the ripples on the surface of a pond to shake the very walls of the valley.

High above the valley floor on the ridge top the accumulation of snow about Site Six shifted. Its grip with the rock and ice loosened, the mass began to move slowly at first but it was unstoppable now, it gained momentum and swept down towards the edge. The laser designator in its niche was swamped before the weight of snow tore the securing ice screws free and the designator joined just one of many avalanches and rock falls triggered around the valley.

“Was that all six, was that all the silos?”

Colonel Chandler didn’t catch the callsign of the person asking the question, the one who asked what they all wanted to know.

“Ringmaster, Spectre One?”

“Go ahead, Spectre Four?”

“I don’t know if Three released on silo six, I was looking real hard but I only saw five clear strikes.”

“Roger…….Spectre Four this is Ringmaster?”

“Ringmaster, Spectre Four, we just dialled in designator six’s freeq, and it’s no tone, I say again, negative tone on target six at this time…..resending activation codes……Ringmaster, negative tone, negative tone, over.”

Chandler was still for a moment, allowing his brain to absorb what must follow. Switching to intercom he spoke, an edge of determination in his voice.

“Send it.”

Wild cheering erupted before the message had been completely read out and Henry Shaw shouted for silence. Those giving voice were almost exclusively civilians.

“I will have silence in this room.” He growled, glaring at the slower to respond.

“This is a War Room, not the bleachers…this thing is not over yet.”

The President took the message slip from the signaller and read in silence.

“How many were aboard Santa Fe and Columbia, Henry?”

A flicker of surprise passed over General Shaw’s features, he too was ignorant of the messages entire content.

“I am not entirely sure, perhaps as many as three hundred in total Mr President.”

He handed across the message.

“They were ambushed by the missing attack submarine; HMS Hood collected both her and the Xia.”

Henry read the message himself, trying to recall who, if anyone, he or his son and daughter may have known on the vessels, or perhaps parents whose pride and joy whom they had raised and had such hopes and dreams for were soon to be destroyed by a stranger at the door in uniform.

His thoughts were interrupted by another signaller. A folded message slip held outstretched.

He took it with a nod, opened out the single sheet and read the two words printed upon it.

“Mr President, we have a message from ‘Circus’ sir”

Circus was the codename for the airstrike on the ICBM silos and the President could tell from his tone, kept professionally neutral, that it was not necessarily one of cheer and victory.

Damn stupid name for a military mission he thought, and not for the first time. He raised an eyebrow and his heart thudded at the response.

“It reads, Crescent Moon.”

The crescent, the incomplete circle, a thing not finished.

“Thank you Henry, please send back Cauldron……” he paused, remembering something and embarrassed that he may just have sounded callous.

“General, our troops on the ground…..have they had time to withdraw?”

Henry could see that this was important to his commander-in-chief. Tens of thousands were fighting and dying, a global nuclear war could be just minutes away, but he needed this, this gesture, an assurance that his humanity was still intact.

It was unfortunately irrelevant whether or not they were out of danger, because they were just plain out of time. But he did not say that.

“Mr President, Dick Dewar and his men are free and clear, they are miles from the valley by now.”

The snow fell heavily, creating a visage that would not be out of place in a ‘White Christmas’ setting if not for the thunder of the massed guns defending the silos echoed throughout the mountains. It masked the sound of heavily laden men whose steps compressed the snow with what would be an easily audible crunching sound, at any other time.

The site of the avalanche was well behind the Royal Marines but they were only midway across the narrow, slanting valley. Only another twenty minutes at their current pace would bring them to the foot of the northern rock wall.

The white thermal facemask worn by Rory Alladay absorbed the moisture he exhaled, preventing the tell-tale fogging that would otherwise result in the cold, frigid conditions.

He was totally exposed on a patch of ground as flat as a billiard table; there was no cover for a hundred paces in any direction. Nothing quite catches the eye like movement and he had been able only to slowly lower himself into a crouch when he had first caught a whiff of tobacco smoke before he recognised the outline of the Chinese soldier in white camouflage gear set against the starkly blank background of the valley floor.

He was close, close enough to hit with a snowball had they been engaged in any less lethal activity and the only thing that had saved Alladay from detection was the Chinese soldier was looking up toward the sound of an aircraft passing unseen overhead.

Rory was scout, or ‘walking point’ as the Americans would have it, and the remainder of his callsign were moments behind.

“Enemy.”

The single word quietly spoken into the boom mike was all that was required to have the M&AWC troops freeze in place before slowly turning to cover their assigned arcs and take up prone firing positions.

The Chinese soldiers head turned as he attempted to discern the aircraft. He was relaxed, his gloved left hand gripped the stock of his compact QBZ-97 assault rifle but the right held a reversed cigarette, its red end masked by the palm of his hand.

He took a long pull, enjoying the nicotine before exhaling and as the sound faded his head turned back.

He started as he caught movement in his peripheral vision, which was followed almost instantly by a momentary difficulty in catching a breath, but the sensation, along with all senses, thought and feeling ended as if a switch had been flicked.

Rory lowered the dead soldier carefully into the snow to ensure silence. The cigarette which had fallen from lifeless fingers sizzled for a half second in the snow and its glow was quenched.

The dark handle of a fighting knife protruded from the juncture of the throat and underside of the mouth. Once the body was laid down Rory braced the dead man’s chin with the palm of one hand and withdrew the blade, feeling it scrape on vertebrae as it came free and cleaning it quickly yet thoroughly on the Chinese soldiers clothing. The blade, which he returned to its scabbard, would not be frozen in place by his victim’s blood or brain matter when he next needed it.

The question of what the soldier had been doing there, and where the rest of his patrol was, remained. It was obvious he had not come alone to this place, so was he just lost or were his mates nearby?

Richard Dewar’s interrupted his thoughts, whispering a question, a requirement for an update.

“Sitrep, over?”

Rory gave the situation report in low tones, without embellishment and included his thoughts. Once complete he collected his bergan from where he had dropped it and took up a prone position beside it, covering the way ahead as Major Dewar brought up the remainder of the M&AWC.

The unnatural light reflected off the clouds distorted the green hues of Rory’s night sight as it had his PNG’s. His range of vision was increased however and he could make out the end of the flat area as the shapes of a low cluster of snow covered rocks and boulders were now visible.

Looking over his shoulder he could now make out Major Dewar at the head of the well-spaced line of men; it was time for him to move again.

Rising to the kneeling position he heaved the bergan onto his back and put his weapon into his shoulder, swinging the weapon through a 180° arc, staring intently into the sight before standing and stepping off toward the rock in the centre of the cluster.

A bright light shone from beyond the ridges, not a strobe-like explosion but one of sustained duration. It lit the far rock wall and spread downwards to encompass the snow covered floor as the source climbed higher in the sky. After several seconds the sound reached them. Harsh light and noise from boosters providing three hundred thousand pounds of thrust now filled the valley, seemingly little diminished by their distance from the silo.

The rock Rory was walking toward shot him.

A single line of script originating from ‘Circus’ flashed up on the screen.

The blinking of a half dozen call lights on telephones began just a heartbeat later.

Henry lifted the telephone receiver before him, depressing the button above urgent light above the button marked ‘MDA’, Missile Defence Agency.

“This is General Shaw.”

Richard had been looking off to his left arc when he, and his callsign, had been caught like deer in the proverbial headlights.

The established drill for such a predicament, had they been in Europe, the African bush or even a rain forest would have been to freeze in place and literally ‘make like a tree’, but here in this narrow, bare valley there were no such items to be mistaken for. To move or to drop into cover was to draw unwanted eyes.

The top of the far valley wall had suddenly lit up and that light increased to encompass them all.

The line of Royal Marine Commandos closed one eye, their sighting eye to preserve night vision, and with the other they made best use of the illumination to study their surrounds without turning their heads, remaining motionless as the roar of rocket motors reached them, a roar that almost but not quite drowned out the single shot that cracked out.

Rory Alladay dropped as if his legs had been cut from beneath him, and none but Rory had seen the firing position. Richard stifled the urge to go immediately to aid a comrade of many years, as quite obviously the rest of the cadre was undiscovered.

The flaming light rose into the night sky and faded. Richard felt gutted that after all they had endured the mission had ultimately failed, an ICBM was in the air, and to make matters even worse a comrade was down.

Slowly the Marines began to edge into an arrowhead formation, one best suited to such situations, allowing the flanks to remain covered but permitting maximum firepower to the front without someone shooting his mate in the backside.

A bang announced the flight of a parachute flare rising from their front and its journey into the heavens was marked by a trail of smoke. With a sharp popping sound the flare came to life above and behind them, silhouetting the marines in its chemical light.

The enemy knew that the one man they had accounted for, Rory Alladay, would not be alone and the view of the canyon floor now differed markedly from less than a minute ago.

From the Chinese point of view the threat was too close in for them to call in mortar, artillery or air support, so the Chinese commander elected a reconnaissance by fire instead.

A wiser commander would have ordered just one of his men to fire at suspicious shapes though, not the whole section.

Muzzle flashes emitted from each of the ‘rocks’ ahead of them.

Richard was in the process of dropping prone, his ears ringing painfully from the loud cracks of high velocity rounds passing close by, when he was struck a fierce blow on the right side of the chest. He landed hard, the breath driven from him and his right arm numb from shoulder to fingertips.

The weight of his bergan pressed him face first into the snow, smothering him in his suddenly disabled state its sheer weight preventing his lungs from fully inflating. Spots danced before his eyes and he realised the vulnerability of his position. Adrenaline assisted him to roll onto his right side where his left hand could reach the quick release buckle of his bergan. Free of its burden he rolled prone once more with incoming small arms kicking up the snow about him and striking the bulky pack.

Richard’s job was to control the fight, not squirm about attracting the incoming but he had to first get himself into a position where he could do that job. The bergan was being used as an aiming point so groping for the pistol grip of his M4 he rolled clear of the bergan and awkwardly brought the weapon up one handed with the intention of putting some rounds down, inaccurate or not, in the general direction of their attackers but he sensed, rather than saw, that something was amiss with the weapon. The weight and balance were all wrong.

Behind him the M&AWC had reacted automatically, beginning the business of winning the fire fight.

The single aimed shots from the professionals, the marines, proving far more effective than what appeared to be ‘point and blat’ by the opposition.

Richard Dewar used the light from the flare to quickly examine himself, his weapon, and to also see what he could of his enemy.

There was no blood but there were several tears in his arctic whites. The M4 had been wrecked by a round that had struck the body of the weapon but had been deflected off the working parts and exited via the butt. Just a length of decapitated buffer spring was left protruding from where the telescopic butt assembly should have been.

He removed the full magazine and laid the weapon aside, it was useless now, so Richard studied the opposition instead.

Five muzzle flashes were apparent from ahead of them, which he assumed made the Chinese troops of section strength.

An entrenching tool stood upright, visible in the muzzle flash of their squad’s automatic weapon which explained what the lone soldier had been doing, supposedly on sentry whilst the rest of his section dug in.

When Richard Dewar had gone down, Sergeant McCormack had immediately taken over, directing the marine’s fire. They ganged up on the enemy’s squad automatic weapon first before pairing up on the riflemen.

The parachute flare flickered, approaching burnout and a second took its place, but the fading light was good enough to reveal the smoky launch position for Sergeant McCormack to loft a 40mm grenade from his M4s underslung launcher, mortally wounding the Chinese section commander.

Someone threw smoke and someone else unwisely broke for the rear before the smoke had established itself as a temporary cover from view. A flurry of rounds from the marines cut the man down.

Light filled the valley again, a hundred times brighter than the tail flame of the ICBM, and when it faded in intensity it was to take on the reds and gold’s normally associated with the beauty of sunsets, reflecting off the side of the valley from its source on the other side of the mountain.

The ground bucked violently, triggering rock falls and avalanches.

Richard knew without looking what the cause was.

With night vision totally shot he shouted a warning, telling his men to brace themselves, and then he gasped in shock and not a little fear.

As if the door of a giant blast furnace had been suddenly opened behind him the snow began to melt and the ice beneath it started to thaw. Richard could hear the sounds of the opposing force bugging out, slipping on the incredibly slick melting surface, crawling backwards, one or two firing random shots into the smoke cover until they judged they were far enough away to try to get up and try to run. Those who made it upright were struck by flying rocky debris, and knocked flat by a blast wave that triggered further rock falls.

Sound accompanied the shock wave, the most terrible blast of noise Richard had ever heard. It fractured the soul in its awful intensity, reducing brave men to trembling shades.

After the blast wave had swept over them and beyond Richard lay for a long, long moments, his thermal clothing soaked in melt water, listening to the clap of doom echoing off the mountain peaks.

“The peaks!” he though in alarm, rolling on his side in a puddle of melt water to look.

“Get up!” he shouted to his men, all prone upon the melting ice, some on their sides, curled into balls hugging their knees with eyes wide with fear.

“Leave the bergens, leave everything but personal weapons, ropes and climbing gear…move!”

Men stirred at his words but two did not, remaining in foetal positions.

Sergeant McCormack rose up onto his knees and looked to his left, up the rising valley towards the centre of the mountain range, at mountains that no longer wore a cap of white.

“Get up and follow the boss if you want to live…get up and RUN!” he shouted, reinforcing Major Dewar’s words.

Richard crawled forward to where Rory lay.

The reddish glow was diminishing as the fireball dissipated but its light still reflected off Corporal Alladay’s left eye, the bullet which killed him having entered the right. Richard removed the ID disks from around the fallen man’s neck.

“Sorry Rory.”

Atop Rory’s Bergen was a coiled 60m rope, held in place with webbing straps and secured with a quick release buckle. Richard took it and also snatched up the M4 that lay beside the body. He stood carefully, and then slipped and slithered as fast as possible towards the rock wall.

The only enemy he could see were laying still or moving feebly.

The closer to the wall he got the more traction he found beneath his feet, the rock dust and debris from above acting like grit on an icy road.

Turning about he saw all of his men up and moving but strung out, although Sergeant McCormack had taken up the tail-end-Charlie position, assisting a limping marine and chivvying along the remainder in that gruff and aggressive Glasgow accent of his.

At the wall of the narrow valley Richard slung the weapon across his shoulders and began to climb rapidly, using the remaining glow by which to see hand and footholds until he came to a rock shelf after thirty metres or so. He just hoped it was high enough.

Lifting his smock to reach his hammer and pitons he furiously drove two into the rock face, grunting with the effort of each blow and quickly attaching himself to them by his harness, clipping a carabiner through the eye of each before hammering a further piton into the rock. He attached one end of Rory’s rope through the eye, tied it off and threaded the other end of the rope through a chemical light sticks eye and knotted it. Snapping the light stick, Richard activated it and dropping the rope into the returning darkness. He had no schermoulies to hand; it was Sod’s Law of course, just when he could have used the light to provide illumination for his men to climb by, there were two in the left side pocket of his bullet perforated bergen, somewhere out there on the canyon floor and lost to him now.

He braced himself and set the rope about his shoulders, belayed on.

“Make for the light, use the rope as a guide…for fucks sake CLIMB!”

The fireball was fading rapidly now, and the fullness of night returned.

With a ‘whoosh’ a schermoulie climbed into the night, trailing amber sparks behind it and lit with an audible pop. It had been launched from above, from the top of this rock face.

Below him three of his men were climbing, two more had reached its foot whilst Sergeant McCormack and the limping marine were thirty metres away.

He could hear a rumbling from higher up the valley.

Two Chinese soldiers appeared in the light of the para-illum, standing upright with weapons held loosely in their hands. They were looking away from the marines; heads turned towards the noise behind them. They suddenly discarded their weapons, tearing off webbing equipment and scrambling across the ice towards the dangling rope.

The first of Richards men reached him, breathing heavily and perspiring, he did not pause but instead he too pounded a piton into the rock face and belayed himself on, dropping his own rope to assist his mates.

Vibration joined the sound now, and Richard was shouting louder in order to be heard, shouting encouragement, directing his men’s hands and feet to holds that he could see but they could not.

Another schermoulie arose into the darkness, illuminating the valley for several hundred yards until it bent around out of sight and up sharply in the direction of the centre of the mountain range.

“Holy mother of God!” the marine next to Richard uttered in horror.

To those men climbing, the sight spurred on tired limbs to greater effort.

It was a truly terrifying view to behold, the melt water of a glacier bursting around the bend, a great wave breaking upon the rock wall with a thunderous boom, water dashing higher than their belay point.

A Chinese soldier slipped and fell on the melting ice floor, looked behind at the approaching wave and froze. He may have screamed but if he did so that cry was lost forever. In an instant he was gone, and a moment later his companion too was engulfed.

“Climb, CLIMB!”

The wave reached them, spray showering over Richard as the once parched and arid mountain valley of only a few weeks before, became the host to a maelstrom.

It was two hours later that the surviving Royal Marines of the Mountain & Arctic Warfare Cadre reached the top of the valley, climbing in deathly silence, and not a little shock.

Four Green Berets left behind as guides by Garfield Brooks solemnly shook hands with Major Dewar and three men, the remaining marines having been swept away by the flash flood.

“This is General Shaw”. Henry had no noisy interruptions now; a shocked silence had taken a hold.

“Thank you, stay on the line.” Still holding the receiver to one ear he spoke calmly.

“Mr President we have a confirmed missile launch from the remaining silo and we are tracking it on a roughly south easterly heading…” he was relating in a steady voice the information arriving from satellites and ground tracking stations that still functioned.

“…sir the weapon has ‘mirved’, we now have nine re-entry vehicles in three groups on diverging courses…central Pacific…western seaboard.”

The President felt a cold hand close over his heart.

“…Pearl…San Diego…the third group has a slightly higher orbit…too high for the US.” Henry continued.

“Thank God for small mercies, but where are they aiming for if not the United States?” asked the President.

The third target was in actual fact geographically the closest target to the silo from which the ICBM had been launched, but much further south and therefore its trajectory would require an orbit of the lower half of the southern hemisphere in order to reach it.

At the other end of the line the intended target had just been deduced, along with the times before which the warheads re-entered the atmosphere.

“Roughly two more minutes to Pearl, three to San Diego… and seven minutes ten seconds to Sydney, Australia, Mr President…” Henry had to force his voice to remain steady.

“Air defences are being alerted.” He continued. “….of the three re-entry vehicles being tracked in each group, two are likely to be decoys…there are two Patriot sites and three ballistic missile defence capable Aegis warships on picket at both Pearl and San Diego…”

“And Sydney, Henry?” the President asked urgently. “What does Sydney have?”

Henry did not look at the President, he couldn’t.

“Just Natalie’s ship.” said Henry Shaw quietly. “Just the Orange County.”

“Mr President!” called a navy captain. “On speaker’s sir…the O.O.Ds of the USS Chosin, Mobile Bay and the Nimitz.”

“Mr President, Lieutenant Commander Fortnum, Chosin is launching Standard 3 missiles as we speak…AN/SPY2 is tracking three targets entering the atmosphere above the Hawaiian Islands.”

“Lieutenant Commander Hastings here… USS Mobile Bay’s SPY2 has three targets approaching San Die…we have launched Mr President, Bunker Hill is also launching…we are continuing to launch…”

“This is Commander Willis, USS Nimitz…the USS Orange County is tracking a trio of low orbit inbounds crossing above Christmas Island, Mr President…”

“All missiles expended by Chosin, Lake Erie and Port Royal, but the Patriot batteries at Hickam are still launching…we have two…we have…we… we have three confirmed kills…we have three …all three targets destroyed, Mr President…”

“Shore batteries firing Patriots…Princeton has launched her last Standard 3…Mobile Bay has expended all Standard 3 missiles…Bunker Hill has expended all missiles…”

“Mr President…Orange County has the three low orbit inbounds over central Australia…”

“Three…I can confirm three targets destroyed!”

“What..?” the President was frowning. “Three targets where, Dago or Sydney?”

“San Diego, Mr President…this is Lieutenant Commander Hastings, O.O.D of the USS Mobile Bay, I can confirm three targets destroyed, SPY2 is clear, there are no further targets!”

“How many?” the President asked urgently. “How many missiles did you launch in order to destroy all three targets?”

“Over a hundred at Pearl, Mr President…perhaps more.”

“Two hundred and four SM3s and thirty Patriots were launched here at San Diego…I don’t know at what point we killed all three…”

Commander Willis interrupted at that point.

“I am stepping out on the bridge wing Mr President…there is no longer light pollution here since the blackouts were imposed…beautiful night…okay, the air raid sirens have just begun to sound in the city…police car sirens too…ships in the harbor are sounding ‘collision’…”

Over the speaker they could hear the wailing of the sirens on shore, it sounded reminiscent of old news reels of London’s Blitz, but the combined ships sirens input seemed celebratory rather than a warning of approaching danger.

“Orange County is launching!”

Only several hundred yards distant the air defence picket for the aircraft carrier began launching her entire inventory of sixty eight Standard 3 missiles, ripple firing continuously. The noise was horrendous, drowning out the words even though Commander Willis was shouting in order to be heard.

It was midnight in Sydney, the ships sirens and the missiles launching vertically created the impression for some residents that perhaps the war was over?

“That’s it…” shouted Commander Willis’s voice over the speakers. The sirens on shore and in the harbor were again audible. “’Rounds complete’ as my father would have sai…”

The shriek that emitted from the speaker at that point was electronic, not human; it tore at the senses while it lasted, only as long as it took for an electro-magnetic pulse to burn out the microphone and transmitter at the other end.

All eyes were on the now silent speaker, willing the voice of Commander Willis to resume.

A small tiny voice broke the silence, issuing from a telephone receiver hanging by its cord.

Terry lifted the receiver and listened before speaking.

“I’m sorry, he is not available right now but please repeat what it was that you were just saying?”

General Shaw was walking with a straight back to the conference room’s door. Only the marine sentry could see his expression and the look on the young man’s face spoke volumes.

“Mister President, the Missile Defence Agency confirms a nuclear detonation in the ten megaton range, one minute ago above Sydney, Australia.”

In a hardened shelter in Colorado code named ‘Church’, a plasma screen displayed icons for two helicopters lifting off the carrier Mao, both machines were designated for an anti-submarine sortie, and both headed unerringly toward a small submarine icon bearing an Australian flag…