Stand-To

CHAPTER 4

High above eastern Germany a USAF E-3 Sentry AWACS inscribed its racetrack upon the heavens. A few miles away a Northrop Grumman E-8 (JSTARS), joint surveillance target attack radar system, was flying a similar pattern. Inside the aircraft the two crews had differing tasks, the AWACS was the airborne control for several inter-linked missions, the NATO air superiority fighters battle, ‘Wild Weasel’ SAM suppression and anti-armour missions that were about to commence. In the E-8, the operators were split between two operations. The aircraft incorporated a Norden multi-mode radar in its forward fuselage that was operating in synthetic-aperture- radar mode, (SAR), in order to identify vehicles and buildings. The radar flicked over to doppler mode every so often, in order to track moving targets. The E-8 operators were busy identifying black hats and white hats; the Belorussians being the white. The E-8 had come on station ten hours’ before when distinguishing the two forces had been a simpler task.

The Belorussian army had received the classic Red Army treatment in the early afternoon, a mass barrage by artillery, interjected with airstrike's. This had gone on unabated for three hours’ before the enemy armour had bulldozered forward to the riverbanks.

The Belorussians 1^st Motor Rifle Regiment on the western bank had taken a heavy beating; infantrymen who had scrimped on the digging of trenches now wished they had not bluffed the way when the officers had come to inspect their work. Bending their knees as they stood in the firebay’s, to make the trench seem deeper than it was.

Those that weren’t immobile with fear, huddled at the bottoms of their trenches, took every opportunity to hack away at the earth whilst staying below the parapet of the trench. High explosive screamed into and moaned over their positions, isolating them from help. Airburst shells flung splinters of red-hot steel down onto unprotected heads, crouched in their holes.

02 delay fuses dug deep into the earth before exploding, throwing men bodily out of nearby trenches with their earthquake effect, or collapsing the trench walls on the occupants. Shells fused ‘Super Quick’, detonated on striking the treetops, wiping away natural cover and adding spears of timber to the airburst’s harvest.

New trees on the riverbanks that had grown in place of those destroyed in battles in 1941 and 43 went the way of their ancestors. Old trunks, which carried the scars of the earlier conflicts soon, bore fresh ones, or were splintered and scattered.

The barrage eventually came to include WP and white phosphorus rounds among the falling HE shells. The Geneva Convention forbids the use of WP as a weapon, limiting it to the provision of smoke screens, but there never seem to any observers around to enforce the rule.

WP burns on contact with the air, only immersion in water will quench it but it burns again once if brought into the air once more. WP will burn clean through a man, igniting his clothing and equipment as it does so. The particles have to be removed with non-metallic objects, preferably whilst immersed. If inhaled it will burn from the inside out.

Those defenders not under overhead cover, in the shelter of undamaged shelter bays, suffered miserable ends. Panicked out of their trenches they were soon cut down by shrapnel, if they remained in the trench their comrades often did the merciful act, ending their suffering with a bullet or entrenching tool. Whichever way they died, their fate added to the fear and mounting panic felt by those who remained.

The addition of WP hailed the coming of the enemy assault, using the smoke for cover, they advanced upon the banks. What direct fire weapons remained, undamaged in the forward Belorussian defences, had little effect on thinning the enemy ranks and none at all in slowing their charge.

Artillery fire on the western banks shifted to the rear, preventing Belorussian reinforcement, and AFVs and infantry took over direct fire suppression of the opposite bank.

This was the moment for the Belorussian artillery and ground attack aircraft to strike, whilst the enemy was amassed on the eastern bank and its approaches.

Belorussian Su-17 Fitters swept in from the west, intending to drop their CBU and napalm loads upon the enemy forces.

On the Belorussian airfields to the south, the air assets had dispersed where possible in the day following the attempted coup. Earlier this day, those aircraft that could refuel from NATO aerial tankers had loaded with ordnance and flown west. The NATO air forces attempted to make up for their armies inability to assist on the ground by refuelling the stacked combat aircraft that awaited the enemies attack upon their homeland.

Johar Kegin was one of the Belorussian pilots, the flight commander of four Su-17Ds, recently modified to perform a function that the original designers had not intended, aerial refuelling.

The hard points along the wings carried weapons, on the fuselage below the cockpit were two AA-8 Aphid air-air missiles for self-defence.

With the coming of the afternoon the air bases at Baranovichi, Lida and Roscha came under attack from air launched stand-off missiles, quickly followed up with direct attacks by fighter-bombers targeting runways, stores and maintenance areas. The air bases SA-10 Grumble derivative, the S-300 PMU1 Favorit systems, had been stood-to in readiness, the S-300s anti-cruise and anti-ballistic 46N6E missiles could engage the incoming from a range of 93 miles. Unfortunately, at Lida and Baranovichi the saboteurs had been at work before defecting to the communist side. The 83M6E2 command systems Tombstone 3D surveillance radars there were down; technicians were still working furiously to repair them when the attacks began.

At Roscha the story was different, the 83M6E2-command system was capable of attacking targets approaching at up to 2700m per second simultaneously, and the airfields three self-propelled 5P85S 8x8 TELs, transporter-erector-launcher vehicles quad launchers moved into the vertical plane as the threat was picked up 150 miles out.

Once launched, the single-stage missiles accelerated to their maximum 2km per second speeds and guided from the ground they singled out their individual targets, ranged at altitudes of 200 to 1000ft. Behind the first wave of attackers came a second and third, loosing off their missiles before going to afterburner and fleeing east. Each wave of attackers launched thirty missiles at the airbases, as the defenders scrambled to attach fresh launch canisters on the TELs.

All twelve ready missiles were launched at the first wave of incoming, killing all ten attacking air launched weapons but no fresh missiles were ready for the second wave and only four for the third. All ten missiles of the second wave were aimed at Roscha’s air defence command and control centre, they struck as the defenders launched on the third wave, the second wave of attacking missiles being within minimum range by that time. When the command centre went off the air the four Favorits in the air switched to their CLAM SHELL internal radar for guidance, normally used for the terminal stage of the intercept and with far less range. Only one acquired an incoming cruise missile, its frame absorbed 19g of lateral force as it banked hard to intercept. Five miles out from Roscha the Favorits 145kg warhead obliterated the attacker.

With the Belarus long-range defences silenced, fighter-bombers sped in to drop their ordnance on specified targets. To meet them on the ground the Belorussian airfield defence forces had shoulder launched SA-7 SAMs and ZSU-23-4 Self-Propelled 23mm AA and ZSU-55-2 Self-Propelled 55mm AA vehicles. The ZSUs were the primary targets but seventeen attackers fell to their guns before they were all silenced.

On the ground at Lida the scene was that of chaos, on the flight line those unserviceable aircraft that had remained now burned, their smoke and flames joined those of the fires at the tank farm, control tower and hangers. Airfield defence troops with small arms aimed twelve to sixteen aircraft lengths ahead of the attackers as they screamed overhead. SAMs left smoky trails in the air as they chased or sped to intercept approaching fighter-bombers. In and around Lida thirteen attackers lay burning, a further five limped home trailing smoke before the attacks finished.

As news of the enemies reaching the eastern riverbanks was broadcast from the front, the surviving Belarus FACs started to call in their own airstrike’s with the fighter-bombers and their CAP escorts. Hind-D helicopter gunships worked their way low toward the battlefield, using cover and watching out anxiously for enemy fixed and rotary wing threats.

Heavy and medium, 152mm, 203mm, 220mm, tube and rocket artillery, preserved for this moment now swung to the bearing and elevations dictated by FAOs, forward artillery observers, and commanders on the ground.

Despite its relatively small 3700kg internal tanks, the Belarus Sukhoi’s carried no external drop tanks; all 3500kg of external stores were munitions.

FAB-500 conventional low drag bombs, CBUs and underwing rocket pods lined the hard points. There was no space even for ECM jammer pods, of which the Flogger had none internally.

Major Kegin’s flight of had tanked over Germany before joining the ‘taxi rank’ of combat aircraft within the cover of NATO jamming stations, whilst they awaited NATOs assistance with thinning out the enemy CAPs, over and near the battlefield.

The Belarus Mig 29s, the five Fulcrum’s that had not been taken by defecting aircrew, each carried two AA-10 Alamo missiles, one an AA-10C, long bodied SARH, radar guided and one long bodied IR heat-seeking AA-10D, along with medium and short range armament.

A Russian A-50, the modernised IL-76 AWACS was the target of the Fulcrum’s AA-10 Alamos. A phalanx of fighters and interceptors escorted them forward to within 120km where the AA-10s were launched. The A-50 and its escorting Mig-31s dived east with track breakers, flares and chaff in operation when their threat receivers detected the AA-10s. One Mig-31 Foxhound was damaged when an AA-10Ds proximity fuse detected it, as it twisted and turned to evade.

The AA-10s electronic brains analysed and discarded the decoys, reacquiring the targets time and again after the track-breakers broke the missiles locks. However, in between time they did not always reacquire the same targets that they had been designated.

The A-50 escaped scot-free whilst half of its escort fell victim, as a second Mig-31 was blotted out of the sky in a fireball. A Su-27J and a Mig-29, in the wrong place at the wrong time, were acquired by AA-10s, their crews survived by ejecting but their aircraft went to join the growing litter of hi-tech wreckage across the battlefield. The remaining six AA-10s ran out of fuel and self-destructed.

Dutch, French, German and US interceptors used long range air-air weapons but avoided close engagement; this was just round one for them. Red Air Force fighter CAPs twisted and turned as they dived earthwards, twenty-nine of the seventy missiles fired scored hits, having been reliant on their own internal systems and having no mid-course corrections from their aircraft to ensure a higher score. The aim of the afternoon’s mission had been one of making a hole in the Red aerial defences, and that was briefly achieved.

With the enemy fighter threat busy for the moment the Belarus fighter-bombers headed for the front

On the other side of the line the enemy controllers had watched and waited. As the airstrike’s left the electronic fog of NATO jamming cover, heading east, the controllers gave the heads up to their own air defences and a full five regiments of interceptors waiting in the wings. Their ambush was about to be sprung.

120mm mortars, tube artillery and multiple rocket launchers began to pound upon the eastern bank and approaches, FAOs adjusted the fire and for a short time the new Red Army was on the receiving end.

Sat in their APC command vehicles, Red Army counter battery plotters pinpointed the Belorussian batteries and passed the information on.

On the opposite side of the line the Belorussians finished firing their first missions and were scrambling to pack up and relocate before firing new missions, well aware of what the opposition would be doing in reply.

The differences between well practised gun crews and the novices was startling, for the most part the good crews were already departing the old gun lines when the counter battery fire arrived, there were few novice crews at the new ones.

Major Kegin’s flight came in low from the northwest, below on the ground the lush farmland gave way to burning crops and dead cattle scattered about shell craters in fields. Selecting FAB-500 iron bombs for the first pass the flight popped up to toss bomb the ordnance at the eastern bank. Immediately their threat receivers had come alive with SAM and ZSU radars locking on. Kegin’s flight pickled off their dumb bombs and dived for the ground, with only their internal stores of chaff and flares as safeguards. All four reached the relative safety of the deck and turned hard to the left, breaking the lock of two SAMs, that unable match the manoeuvre overshot and self-destructed as their seekers snapped over to follow the heat signatures of the flight. Kegin led them south before turning back into the fray.

On his command frequency Kegin learnt that not all of his regiment’s flights had been so fortunate.

All along the front the fighter-bombers of the loyal Belarus air force struck at their turncoat former comrades and their new Red Army and air force allies.

For the next run the flight was to use their rocket pods and cannon on the armour on the bank, the CBUs were for targets of opportunity, such as bridging equipment near the river, triple-A and artillery lines further back.

Kegin and his wingman slipped back into trail several hundred metres behind the other pair, the first pair would call out plum targets for Kegin and his partner, who were the more experienced pilots. If all went as planned the pairs would swap over and repeat the exercise until all munitions were expended, and once that was achieved they would recover to Germany, to refuel and rearm although few NATO stores were compatible with their airframes.

As the first pair reached the river the right hand fighter-bomber staggered in the air, Kegin applied left rudder to avoid pieces of the aircraft that were being chewed off as if by an unseen buzz saw. The aircraft ahead rolled drunkenly to the right, streaming coolant and smoke, too late the young pilot ejected, leaving the stricken aircraft sideways at less than 200ft altitude the pilot, still attached to his ejector seat, had struck the ground in a cloud of torn turf and soil.

Kegin’s wingman reacted to a message from the survivor of the lead pair; a slight touch of stick, a nudge of rudder and CBUs dropped from their hardpoint’s, decimating a pair of bridging sections mounted on T-72 chassis and an engineer vehicle on the bank. Ahead of them the lead aircraft dropped its nose to ripple fire from it’s under wing pods, it was still doing so when it vanished in a fireball. Kegin broke left to avoid and found himself looking at some of his traitorous countrymen’s T-72s that emerged line abreast from a treeline. Selecting rockets Kegin applied hard right rudder and walked his rockets across the end three tanks in the line, then he was past and calling for his wingman.

The aircraft re-joined east of the battlefield, spying support units as they tree hopped but hoping for better prey to expend the last of their stores on. At this moment they and the entire Belorussian air force, such as was left after the defections, was over the battlefield and immediate surrounds.

Back by the river loyal Belorussian Hind-D gunships cautiously edged along behind cover, hovering a few feet off the ground as they stalked the armour on the eastern bank, peeping over and between trees, ducking up and down behind hillocks, they looked for targets free of obvious triple-A protection.

On the eastern bank, tanks and APCs exploded here and there as the Hinds across the river sniped at them.

A Ukrainian ZSU-23-4 had picked its spot between two still smoking hulks. Its internal blowers fought to expel the stench similar to that of roast pork that had seeped in from the upwind hulk, an APC. Its commander had watched as a Hind-D had appeared briefly from behind a small hillock on the western bank, each time it had appeared an AFV had died on the east bank. The ZSU commander thought he had detected a pattern and ranged the vehicles quadruple 23mm armament at the left edge. A minute later the Hind popped out to fire again and he shredded its armoured cockpit, the depleted uranium tips of the shells could penetrate twice the depth of armour the tank killer carried. No sooner had the Hind died then so too did the ZSU, as a CBUs bomblets landed on and around it.

Over to the east Major Kegin spotted the muzzle smoke of heavy self-propelled artillery as they fired and steered toward them. The SPs were sat in a woodland clearing in the midst of firing another mission when Kegin’s aircraft passed over, the bomblets from his CBUs exploded them and a logistics support vehicle delivering reloads.

It was time to go home and Kegin led his wingman west, as he calculated the possibility of recrossing the battlefield on burners to minimise risk. As he was about to tell his wingman to go to burner a new threat tone screeched in his ears, the warning that he had been locked-up.

Fighters!

Not all the traitors had fled when the coup in Belorussia had failed, not all the traitors had declared their true affiliations either, which was why the Russian Migs, which sprang the trap, were all squawking the correct loyal Belarus IFF codes. The Belarus fighter CAP had been the first to fall and then the Migs had started in on the fighter-bombers and helicopter gunships.

Both aircraft broke hard right and Kegin looked over and back to see what was on his tail, he saw nothing.

High above the Belorussians a pair of Russian Mig-31 Foxhounds had them locked-up on their look down-knock down fixed pulse-doppler radars, the sophisticated systems picked out the fast moving targets from the ground clutter and the lead aircraft pickled off a pair of AA-11 Archer missiles.

The Mig-31 is capable of the simultaneous tracking of ten separate targets and can engage any four at once. Despite the criticism levelled at the Russian aerospace industry, they can produce some outstanding airframes and the Foxhound is a case in point, it can act as an airborne control platform in a limited capacity. The Foxhound can control a small-scale air battle in the way an A-50 handles a large one, controlling other aircraft’s guided weapons, steering them by data-link, undetected toward their targets.

Maintenance problems have, for some years dogged the eastern blocs air fleets, especially since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia lost no fewer than ninety-four dedicated maintenance sites throughout the old Warsaw Pact alliance. Specialist technicians, suppliers and tooling were no longer available to the air fleets; it takes time to rebuild a maintenance infrastructure, especially with a dodgy economy. Loose bolts notwithstanding, the Mig-31 Foxhound was superior in its unique ability to any comparable airframe worldwide, certainly as late as 1998.

The AA-11s now homing on Kegin and his wingman were superior even to the US Sidewinder, far smarter and more manoeuvrable.

The Belorussian Floggers went to afterburner, seeking the fragile security of the western bank, whoever was tracking them was not deterred by their low altitude and the AA-11s ignored the last of the Floggers flares and chaff as their dispenser ran dry.

Kegin jettisoned his empty rocket pods to reduce drag and gain a few more knots, he was considering another hard turn to try to break the approaching missiles lock when the first missile exploded his wingman. It both saved him and doomed his aircraft all in one stroke. The second missile detonated in the flying debris of his wingman, Kegin’s Flogger bucked with the force of the explosion and flamed out. At the altitude he was at, Kegin knew the aircraft was unrecoverable and punched out of the fighter-bomber rather faster than the book recommended for ejections.

When CSM Colin Probert left the battalion CP, he had already got a viable plan worked out. He looked in briefly with the RSM to give him a heads up on another matter before heading back to the QR Fs area.

Oz, Sergeant Steve Osgood, was his chosen 2 i/c and he handed him the warning order for the evenings fighting patrol, which consisted on the personnel involved, dress and equipment, special kit (if any), timings and location of the O Group, plus the ‘no move before’ timings.

Colin shook off his fighting order and sat with his back to a tree, writing in his notebook.

Taking out a map and protractor he worked out the route out, keeping to legs of no more than 700m to prevent navigation errors. He chose the site of the FRV, final rendezvous point, where the fighting patrol would separate into three groups, snatch squad, fire support and the rear protection group which would guard their rear and protect the bergens that would be left there. The route he picked hardly touched any roads, tracks or footpaths once past the river. If Colin had ever needed any lesson’s in avoiding the easy routes it had been given in Ulster, he had watched a man disintegrate mid-way across a cattle grid, having chosen not to climb a barbed wire fence instead. A terrorist had watched and waited before detonating the command detonated device hidden there.

With the route out complete, he then planned the return legs bringing them home. He did not just reverse the route, because had they been seen going out it would be a simple matter to lay an ambush for them on their return.

The return journey’s legs were well clear of the outgoing ones.

His next task was to convert the map bearings to magnetic ones due the variance between the three ‘North’s’, grid, magnetic and true. First he checked the date of the map he was working from, the magnetic poles are gradually shifting and the variance had to be added for the correct compass bearings. These days the forces relied more and more on GPS to do the navigation, but he knew it was just a matter of time before the NAVSATs would start to be knocked down by either side, and he wanted his boys to get into practice with map and compass before then.

With that task finished he took out his ground sheet, spreading it on the ground and moving to the side the patrol would be sitting, he created a model. Undergrowth was tucked underneath to raise it in correspondence with the high ground they would see on the patrol and blades of grass were clumped on top in the shape of woods and copses. Colin used solid fuel tablet’s to represent buildings and from an old tobacco tin in his webbing he produced coloured ribbon, laying out the course of rivers, streams, roads, tracks and paths. Twigs mirrored the fences and hedgerows before finally he added nametags from the tin, marking each leg, RV, FRV and position of the three groups. They had seen much service, those items from the tin, and the nametags were covered in clear Fabulon or ‘sticky back plastic’ to the Blue Peter generation.

He checked his watch, picked up his webbing, rifle and walked 100m to await the patrol members arrival.

When he had taken over the QRF he’d let them all know the way it was going to be. He was a thinking man’s soldier, brought up in the army that had faced the old Red Army across the Iron Curtain and not impressed by the modern way of thinking being spouted by the MOD.

He couldn’t do anything about the US style reorganisation of the infantry platoons organisation, but he could about the way they fought and lived.

“Forget all the bollocks you were fed about the Q Bloke always being there with replen's of ammo, rations and water, whenever you need it.” He’d told them, referring to the quartermasters department.

“There are a lot of blokes over here shooting at a lot more blokes over there. The depots, convoys and trains are going to come under attack and you bunch of Charlie’s are not going to use the rifles on automatic without my say so. Don’t hold yer breath on that one either because I want single aimed shots from the riflemen.”

‘Options for change,’ the innocuous name for a massive reduction in Britain’s armed forces, had gone almost hand in hand with the new weapons and tactics. Someone, probably a politician had thought that the countries enemies wouldn’t notice how small the army now was if the troops fired their weapons more frequently. Anyway, that was Colin’s cynical opinion.

“The same goes for water and rations, never count on a replen, and husband what you have, as you may not get anymore.”

This afternoon the patrol was inspected for loose equipment, anything on them that rattled or reflected the light, and weapons of course. He’d done a full weapon inspection in the morning; part of the daily routine that started with the stand-to before dawn and ended once the sun had risen. Dusk and dawn are favourite times to attack your enemy because the half-light confuses human eyes, makes it harder to distinguish objects or judge distance.

In the British army the dawn stand-to is followed by personal administration, washing and shaving, removing the previous days camm cream and applying new. The soldiers then feed themselves before taking it in turns to strip and clean weapons. The usual rule is two to a trench, one man’s weapons is good to go whilst his oppo cleans his own, that way half are ready to fight whilst the others weapons are reassembled hurriedly if it comes to a ruck.

The morning inspection also took in the comms cord that ran from trench to trench, allowing the silent passing of signals without betraying positions to the enemy. 24 hours’ a day, sleeping or awake, one man per trench would have the cord attached to his wrist. The signalling system was simple, because there was only one signal sent, and that was the rapid tugging on the cord that meant ‘stand-to’. On receipt the message would be passed to the next trench along. All other messages were passed verbally, by NCOs crawling from trench to trench.

The patrol where informed of their individual tasks and the whole bunch numbered from one to twenty, with Colin being ‘1’ as the commander of the fighting patrol. He designated two navigators, those who would memorise the features of the map and steer the patrol along the compass bearings they marched on. The two pacers he next chose would gauge the distance, human tripometers if you will. He sent them both to walk the 100m he had already measured out, in tactical night fashion, the slow and careful paces known as Ghost walking. They needed to know how many paces they walked per hundred metres. Colin issued them palm sized, thumb operated mechanical counters which they would depress with every pace they took on the patrol and inform the navigators when they had covered the distance for each leg.

The fire support group under Oz had the most kit to carry, two NLAW single shot, 94mm anti-tank weapons would provide their only protection from armour. Two M203 grenade launchers, two LSWs and two gimpys, on permanent loan from the Yeomanry QMs surplus stocks without their knowledge, half-inched by Oz the previous day. Colin would have liked some means of air defence whilst they were out from under the friendly AA umbrella, but their loads heavy enough as it was.

His own snatch squad was armed with SA80s, all they carried as additional kit were nylon ‘plasticuffs’ similar to that electricians used for strapping cables together, and fabric backed black masking tape, to gag and blindfold the prisoner or prisoners.

With the preliminaries sorted out he led them to the model, which he used as a tool whilst giving his orders, the model was the picture that was worth a thousand words and more informative than a map. After each phase had been explained he would pause to ask questions, in confirmation that the information was getting home. Once done, there then came the daylight rehearsal, a walk-thru-talk-thru of how they would move, go into RVs, rendezvous points, divide and reform at the FRV.

‘Action’s On’ is a very important feature of both the O Group, and the rehearsal’s; it covered the expected, the unexpected and the worst-case scenarios.

Colin and Oz were quite vocal at times during the daylight rehearsal, slapping down on bad practice and sloppy fieldcraft before the men were released to eat before returning for a night rehearsal after which they would move out.

Oz joined Colin who had an old ½ pint metal mug resting on two blunt, fire blackened 6” nails over the tiny solid fuel cooker before him. Without asking, Oz dumped the contents of a small tin of stew in on top of whatever Colin had already put in. The rations they were issued were the boil in the bag variety but both had their own small private stock of shop bought food. Oz was just lightening the load of what he would have to carry that night. They shared their food, ate with the same utensils and took turns cooking when they were tactical, it was the buddy-buddy system, not the height of hygiene but it saved on the housework.

As with anything that was done by good soldiers in the field, nothing was left out of their kit that wasn’t in immediate use, everything was stowed away in pouches and the straps done up tight. If you have to move, fight or bug-out in an instant, your kit is already packed and ready to go.

After stirring in some obligatory curry powder, both men produced their ‘racing spoons’, sharpened on one side to replace the need of a knife and they both tucked in, eating from the one mug. Neither man spoke as they ate.

The washing up of the mug was combined with a beverage to wash down the meal, water was splashed into the dirty mug and brought to the boil before powdered coffee, sugar and powdered ‘non-dairy whitener’, the poor man’s ‘Marvel’ were added. The coffee had a delicate bouquet and after taste of curried chicken and beef stew, but it all went down the same way.

Colin knocked out the still burning remnants of solid fuel tablet from the flimsy, folding stove. A splash of coffee quenched the flames and using a twig he hung the stove from a branch to cool rapidly before the fragments of now cooled fuel tablets were scooped into a small bag for reuse at a later date.

With the coffee finished the mug was packed away in Colin’s webbing and the empty tins stamped flat, a turf was lifted and the tins buried beneath it.

The last item on the agenda was personal camm for the patrol, face, neck, ears, throat, hands and wrists as far as mid forearm. The skin got the Brecon treatment, a complete covering of dark, grey brown camm cream to eliminate reflective surfaces. Dark green camm cream was added in patches and streaks to break up the shape. Black elastic about the arms and legs, prevented billowing material brushing against undergrowth and then they were ready to go. Carrying their bergens, webbing fighting order and weapons, they headed for their Warrior APCs and the night rehearsal before the trip to the FLOT, forward line of troops.

Despite the artillery and air forces best efforts, tanks took the west bank and APCs using their amphibious capabilities to ford it and fight through the remaining resistance. Forming a bridgehead they prevented direct interference with the engineer and bridging units as they constructed prefabricated ribbon bridges along the front.

The Belarus army had preserved its T-64, T-72 and the few T-80 MBTs in order to contain and counter attack in precisely these circumstances; however they were reliant on friendly air keeping the enemy fighter-bombers and tank killer helicopters of their backs. Their enemy now had total air superiority over the battlefield after their trap had reduced the Belarus air to twenty-seven fixed and thirteen rotary wing combat aircraft, all battle damaged to various extents.

The Belorussians pleaded with NATO for immediate air support to cover their counter attack but NATO had other ideas. NATO prevailed on the Belorussians to delay the counter strike; help was coming but not quite yet.

The enemy forces arrayed against them had the upper hand in MBTs but a fair proportion were the modern T-90s, these were stop-gap tanks, of the same basic design as a T-80 but inferior in quality to that tank, essentially a cheap export model from Russia.

The Belarus generals had no option but to trust NATO and so they watched the enemy and waited.

All natural barriers such as rivers cause traffic jams, the advance slows as the obstacle is negotiated. These can leave assets vulnerable to enemy air and artillery attack, so field police are kept busy organising ‘harbour areas’, where the vehicles and units can be dispersed in relative safety.

The E-8 JSTARS had been watching and plotting the positions of these sites, suspected headquarters, repair shops and artillery gun-lines.

The enemy was not totally unaware of NATOs intelligence gathering abilities; they created AA traps of areas seeded with radar reflectors that had smouldering barrels of petrol soaked earth beside the reflectors, providing an IR signature to go with the radar return. These areas had AAA plotted up nearby to close the traps. In turn the JSTARS intelligence gatherers knew that there was a possibility of such traps being set, it was a mind game of second guessing the other guy and trying to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Major Johar Kegin regained consciousness in considerable discomfort, as he hung from his parachute in the darkness. His left shoulder was causing him a lot of pain and when he ran his right hand over it, it had not felt right, his best guess was that had been dislocated. He had other aches and pains too, certainly some cracked ribs and his neck hurt, probably whiplash.

There was precious little he could achieve from where he now was, suspended in some trees and he could not even see the ground in the dark.

He managed to snap of a twig from a nearby branch of the tree he was hung up in. He dropped it into the dark but could not hear it land, the helmet he wore did not help matters but he was loathe to take it off one handed unless he dropped it, he might need it to prevent further injury getting to the ground.

The only sounds were from the west, high explosives in the distance. He knew which way to go even without looking at his tiny survival compass.

In the escape and evasion lessons he had attended over the years, it had been stressed that it was preferable to get on the ground and evade rather than hang from a tree expecting to be rescued. You were more likely to be used for bayonet or target practice as you swung helpless in the breeze. Johar tried to swing himself closer to the bole of the nearest tree, he managed it but could not hold on to it with one arm. There was nothing else for it, he would have to hope the ground below was soft and just drop down.

As he prepared to undo his harness he remember a story about an American pilot in Vietnam, the man had been in a similar predicament and had dropped ten feet onto bamboo which impaled him through the groin. He winced at the thought, squeezing his thighs and buttocks together, he closed his eyes tight and undid the harness.

The silence of the wood was broken by a short, high-pitched scream of shock, then silence returned.

With the virtual destruction of the Belarus air force and NATOs non-return to the battlefields skies, Russia’s A-50 AWAC returned. It was twelve miles further to the rear than before and had six Mig-31 Foxhounds as escort.

The long range jamming over Germany prevented its using its radar to the full but the operators were fairly relaxed. The optimum time for NATO to strike and help the Belorussians had passed, if they hadn’t come back then, they probably wouldn’t come back at all, for now anyway.

Several hours’ before, the USAF 49^th Fighter Wing had launched ¾ of its strength from RAF Luchars in Scotland. Major Dewar RM, was walking away from a RAF Hercules, chatting with Flight Lieutenant Michelle Braithwaite and Squadron Leader Stewart Dunn. They had stopped to watch the USAF aircraft lift off into the dusk. “Weird looking things aren’t they?” he’d remarked. As the engine sounds faded, he’d turned to look at the body bags being carried past from the ‘Herc’ and followed them to the transport.

Johar Kegin had managed to strap his left arm across his chest using shrouds cut from his parachute. That had been an easy task following the discovery that he had been suspended from the trees all of four inches above the earth. After bracing himself for a probable bone-breaking fall, the virtually immediate landing had almost made him pee himself with the shock.

He had kept his flight helmet on for the first mile of his walk westwards, he had decided when setting off that it may add protection when he reached the battlefield proper. Johar did not like being on the ground in a tactical situation, being in the infantry was a thought that made him shudder. He’d been in a hole in the ground and gone tired, cold, wet and hungry before, it had been the worst seven days of his life, that portion of his basic training.

After a mile he realised that he couldn’t hear clearly and had taken it off. All the crews who had launched that day wore life preservers, despite being miles from the sea. They wore them because they had not known what the future held or where they would end up operating. Johar kept his on, it was green rather yellow and may help him cross the river with his disabled arm. The tiny inflatable dinghy had been abandoned in the woods, he did not have much of an opinion about the ground troops of any army, but he thought even a dumb infantryman would think a bright orange object floating on the water would look strange. For protection he had his service automatic, not being a great shot, barely re-qualifying each year he nonetheless gripped it tightly and just hoped he didn’t shoot himself in the foot. After a short distance he decided he wasn’t sure it was such a good idea having it on display, in case the enemy saw him first, so he applied the safety and put it in his pocket.

The occasional impact of artillery had gotten louder as he had drawn closer to the river. He stayed off the roads and tracks; they all had enemy traffic on them anyway, as he grew more and more cautious, the closer he came to the river.

Eventually he could tell he was close, despite the dark and the blackout in force by the enemy. He could make out the edge of the woods, the land beyond was slightly lighter than here under the canopy of the trees. Despite his caution he managed to trip over something and landed hard, drawing blood from his lower lip as he bit down, fighting not to cry out in pain.

He groped around and touched something that not only was soft to the touch but also clothed. It wasn’t that which had tripped him, it had been another body. He found himself crawling over more bodies and would have been none the wiser as to their identities if a destroyed tank nearby had not provided additional illumination, the flickering flames that had all but consumed it had found a fresh source of fuel and flared up.

He recognised the squadron patch on the flight suit of a corpse near his hand and that of another draped across it; the dead men were from different squadrons. Amongst the dead were soldiers too, loyal Belarus troops captured in the shattered defensive positions across the river and recce troops captured on this side.

Before the fire died down Johar had counted over fifty corpses but there were many more, the enemy had resorted to the old Red Army doctrine, not wasting resources on human rights or prisoners.

The battlefield crop of captured personnel had been gathered together here and executed, probably by machine gunning if the wounds were anything to go by.

Johar used the light of the burning tank to have a look out beyond the wood.

To the right was a self-propelled anti-aircraft vehicle, a large sensor dish and missile tubes pointing west. To his front were two BTR armoured personnel carriers with Russian Field police around them. Because of the location of the field police, their proximity to his dead comrades, he knew that they must have been involved in the murder of the prisoners.

Beyond the APCs there were about 300m of open ground to the river and a ribbon bridge, which was in constant use. Leg infantry in single file, tanks, APCs and soft skinned vehicles were marshalled across by engineers who had one eye on their bridge, minimising the speed of the traffic to avoid damage that would take it out of service until they could repair it.

He heard the scream of incoming artillery and saw it land further along the river by another ribbon bridge. Everyone took cover but after just a handful of rounds the shelling ceased and the field police bullied and kicked the troops to their feet, forcing them on.

Johar was puzzled at the lack of a sustained barrage by his own people until the moan of outgoing artillery passed high above. It had been fast, the return of fire so perhaps that was the reason.

Among the dead in the wood, as the flames from the tank receded, Johar was now at a loss as to how he could get across the river. He had only the corpses for company and as much as he would have wanted to gather up all the identity papers from the dead, he could not burden himself down whilst in enemy territory. Besides which, he had friends who may be amongst the dead, here in the wood, he preferred not knowing who, or how many he would never see again.

There are no ‘radar invisible aircraft’, at least not yet. The F-117A Nighthawk however was as close as present technology could manage, its shape and material it is made from, lessen the radar return, hiding it amongst the clutter. The danger time for the Nighthawk is when its low profile is spoilt, such as when it released non-stealthed weapons from within its belly.

Far to the west, an E-3 Sentry ventured closer to the front, hidden behind a jamming screen of NATO aircraft that now headed east again. The task of that particular E-3 was to assist the 49^th Fighter Wing in its present mission.

The Russian A-50 and its escorts were aware of the jamming approaching them. They kept station for the moment, as they were still well outside missile range.

The operators aboard the A-50 updated their friendly air and ground units as to the latest occurrence and altered their own radars operation to pan back and forth across the approaching interference, with only a full 360’ scan once per minute.

After about ten minutes, an operator noticed a very faint return from behind them during the minute’s full sweep. He reported it to the senior controller who set the radar to pan across their rear, there was nothing there now so the once a minute full sweep was resumed and they concentrated on the western threat.

Although he had seen nothing on radar the senior controller tasked a Su-29 away from its flight of three, sending it to use its IR sensors and look-down shoot-down radar, just in case.

The 49^th Fighter Wing had completed a long, arcing, low-level flight in order to penetrate the air defences over Central and Eastern Europe. Four Nighthawks were going after the nearest A-50 base in northwest Ukraine whilst Colonel Tobias Corbin in Hawk 01 led his wing against the A-50 that was aloft, before tackling their secondary missions against other enemy CAP and the AAA missile systems.

What the A-50 had detected was a Nighthawk launching an AIM-120 from 18 miles away, well inside the weapons maximum range and it was now fast approaching them and the escort, along with thirteen of its brothers, launched from other Nighthawks.

The approaching E-3 Sentry was controlling the AIM-120B AMRAAMs via data link, the missiles own WGU-41B onboard systems were set to standby mode whilst the 335lb weapons were steered in at Mach4. There was no active radiation being emitted to warn the target aircraft of their approach until they got to one mile out, when the E-3 ordered the missiles sensors to active and it cut them loose.

Aboard the six Mig-31s and the A-50, automated systems discharged chaff and flares whilst screaming an alarm into the pilot’s headsets. The fighters broke, but for the lumbering A-50, its evasive manoeuvres were a token effort.

The AIM-120B is an advanced weapon of the fire-and-forget family, its onboard mono-pulse radar guidance systems analysed the radar returns from the chaff bundles, and they were travelling too slowly to be aircraft so they were ignored.

The A-50 died first, 40lb charges in two AMRAAMs exploded next to the tail section and cockpit, spreading wreckage over five miles. There were two weapons targeted on each aircraft and all were destroyed although two crewmen ejected safely.

In the Ukraine, an A-50 on pad alert was immediately ordered aloft to replace the splashed AWAC but aborted its take-off run when an engine lost power. Ground crews rushed to ready another aircraft and its crew awoken and scrambled out to the flight line.

Five miles from the airbase a Nighthawk lazed the A-50 being readied whilst its partner launched an AGM-65 Maverick, its arrival coincided with that of the crew and fuel bowser, the explosion illuminated the airbase and surrounding countryside. Six more A-50s were scattered about in high walled dispersals and the lazing Nighthawk sighted three of them. Twenty minutes later all three were wrecked and on fire, as was the A-50 taxiing back to the flight line.

Back over the battlefield an air raid warning was going out to both ground and air units. Systems went active as they sought the oncoming attackers but the A-50s destruction had robbed them of their long-range eyes whereas the NATO attack had the full benefit of AWAC and JSTARS support. It wasn’t going to a one sided fight, but for the moment the west had the advantage.

Johar witnessed the NATO attacks by more conventional aircraft. He lay huddled down amid the bodies, still looking for a way across the river. Although it was dark he doubted he could get away with joining the westward columns of troops, periodically the field police used red filtered torches to check the men filing past.

He became aware of shouting and caught the words ‘air raid’. On the bridge, vehicles commanders shouted at the vehicles ahead to speed up and troops started to push their way toward shore, either the west or east banks, whichever was closer. An officer emerged from among the field police APCs and despatched men to the bridge at the run, Johar winced as they gunned down without warning, two of the leg infantry who were heading back to the eastern bank.

The air seemed to tear open at the very sound of an incoming projectile, everyone froze in tableau as the AAA vehicle to Johar’s right exploded.

At the bridge further along the river, the ribbon bridge came apart as columns of water that contained men, vehicles and bridging sections, leapt high.

Johar was agape until low flying jet aircraft tore low overhead, heading east. He huddled down between bodies, ignoring the searing pain from his shoulder, neck and ribs as he sought cover.

250lb retard bombs bracketed the far bridge, banks, the column of AFVs and men, whilst closer to home CBU bomblets peppered the area.

Royal Air Force Tornado GRs and Jaguars gave the area part of their loads as they went toward suspected harbour area, gun lines, workshops and headquarters. USAF and Belgian F-16s had the wild weasel tasking’s and French Mirage shared the air superiority mission with USAF F-15s, clearing the air threat for B-52s to attack the bridgehead to the west with fuel-air weapons.

When the last bomblet had detonated he dared to raise his head again, he viewed a scene of carnage, there were dead and injured scattered about, burning vehicles lined the route to the bridge.

He made a decision and got to his feet, the bridge was damaged but still spanned the river and was at the moment unguarded and unattended.

He hurried as quickly as he could, looking right and left but needing to turn his shoulders, his neck muscles felt as if they had locked solid. As he drew level with the Russian field police vehicles the officer appeared from the rear of the nearer vehicle, he had apparently buttoned up the door as the bombs fell. Both vehicles were on fire and the man had obviously undogged the hatch to escape the flames within, he was on fire and screaming piteously, Johar reached for his pistol but stopped himself and deliberately walked on. In the years to come he would tell himself he had not put him out of his misery for fear of drawing attention, rather than because of the murdered men in the wood, in the years to come he would tell himself that lie often.

To the north, Hawk 01 had turned northwest immediately upon launching its AIM-120B at the A-50 and its escorts. After five minutes Hawk 01 turned west, hunting the deadly SA-10 Favorit sites nearer the front. Corbin kept the hybrid Nighthawk at tree level, or rather the systems slaved to the TFR, terrain following radar did. Hawk 01 was one of a pair of test bed airframes released for operational service. This two seat version did not have the ‘legs’ of its compatriots, but needs must in times such as these. At least it allowed him the luxury of a navigator/weapons officer and permitted to just fly.

Lt Billy Firewalker, his native American navigator was busy trying to pick a route that avoided their encountering SAM sites. Ground threats appeared on his threat screen as figure S icons; air threats were depicted by batwings.

Where a radar was detected, but had not illuminated them, the icon was a faint flickering red. If it had illuminated, or painted, them the icon thickened in size but still flickered. A lock-on was solid, unflickering red.

“Search radar at 1 o-clock… looks like a Tombstone, probably at Polatsk… big town, but they don’t got us yet,” he warned. There was nothing in his voice to indicate his great granddaddy had ridden with Geronimo, it was pure Texan.

“Rog,” Tobias replied.

“Coming left to 262.”

The Nighthawk banked to the left, raising its profile slightly and the Tombstone radar painted it again but not enough to enable detection.

The new heading took them directly across the Western Dvina River where it met the Ula. Tobias told Billy to set the TFR to sixty feet and he took them south above the River Ula’s surface.

“We got a major road bridge coming up, Vitsyebsk to Lyepyel highway, they got to have SAM’s or a Zeus or two protecting it… twelve miles. We got high ground both sides for another eight… small valley to the left then, old river course I guess. HT lines across this here river just after that.”

“Rog.”

No sooner had Tobias acknowledged than flickering batwings, denoting an air threat at their six o-clock, appeared on the threat scope.

“Shit, looks like we got us a Zhuk radar back there… Fulcrum or Foxhound, he ain’t got us yet, but if we turn he might!”

Billy called the Mig-29s radar by its Russian codename, the Zhuk was a very capable piece of equipment that had locked up a Nighthawk during the Gulf War, on that occasion the cavalry, in the form of a F-16, had splashed it before it could launch on the F-117A.

“Where is he, how far?”

“Ten klicks… but closing!”

“If we don’t turn, we run the gauntlet at the bridge… we have to turn Billy.” Billy had started to get excited but the colonel’s matter of fact way of speaking, almost bored manner settled him down.

“Okay… three miles to the turn, Colonel.”

The Fulcrum had been directed by the A-50, before it was destroyed, to investigate the brief trace. The pilot knew that they were in the vicinity, nothing else could have got close enough to the giant AWAC and its powerful radar without being detected.

Its pilot used his IRST, Geophysica 36-Sh electro-optical sensor suite combined infrared search and tracking sensors in conjunction with his lookdown radar. At 7,000 feet the Mig-29 had picked up a heat trace and descended towards it. Against the cold surface of the river, the Nighthawk was leaving an IR track, despite its sophisticated heat masking and dispersal design. As the Fulcrum grew closer to the stealth aircraft, the heat trace grew stronger.

“Turn coming up, TFR set.” Billy informed Tobias.

Tobias let his hand hover near the side stick control; his kids used side sticks when they played Super Maria or Super Marlow or whatever the stupid plumber was called. The aircraft was flying itself; the computers and sensors in the aircraft could fly the machine, as he never could. Without the computers adjusting the control surfaces constantly he could not keep it flying by himself. The whole machine was reliant on its systems to stay in the air, not the humans sat at the front, and it took a leap of faith to put your trust in it. Despite the makers assurances about the EMP shielding he was always sceptical, how could they know without letting off a nuclear airburst somewhere to test it. EMP, the electromagnetic pulse generated by a nuclear weapon detonating in the atmosphere, screwed up all manner of electronic systems, from computers to car batteries.

The Nighthawk banked hard left as it entered the valley. In mid-turn the flickering batwings solidified, accompanied by the deedle deedle audible warning that they had been illuminated by the Mig-29 and its fire control system had them locked up.

For the Fulcrum pilot, a solid radar lock, as the Nighthawks radar profile increased in its banking turn, instantly replaced the disappearance of the IR trace, with the F-117A leaving the river to fly overland once more.

The pilot called it in, but the NATO air superiority operation was in full swing and everyone had their hands full staying alive.

The radar track faded as the Nighthawk levelled out but the Fulcrums radar now knew where to look and focused its search, locking it up once more. The pilot selected his AA-8 Aphids but the American activated his track-breakers and the missile lock-on tone died. Frustrated, he decided to shake the other pilot up a bit and dropped lower.

“He’s still back there, Tobe!”

“Yes, but his missiles can’t see us to lock-on, we’re okay!”

Tracer slashed past, blindly groping for them and Tobias kicked the rudder, slewing them away. The high terrain warning screeched, reminding him how close they were to the valley walls.

An S icon appeared on the threat screen at their twelve o-clock, directly ahead where the valley widened. Unbeknownst to the crew, they had been flying towards a divisional headquarters, unplotted by JSTARS.

“Shit… ground search radar ahead, we got Zeus and Grumbles, we got to turn man!”

“Like hell we do, lock ‘em up with the HARMs!”

Billy selected the AGM-88 high speed anti-radiation missiles and launched two away.

As the Nighthawks rotary launcher in the F-117As belly cycled to release the weapons against the ground threats, the Fulcrum pilot got a lock-on tone again from his AA-8 Aphids and pickled two off at the unseen target ahead.

With the missiles gone, the low radar profile was restored and the track-breakers did their job.

The super-cooled IR sensor in the Nighthawks tail detected the heat signatures of the missiles and activated an alarm.

“Missile launch!” The automated counter-measures system ejected chaff bundles sideways out the left and right dispensers.

One Aphid locked onto the chaff, it had not been in flight long enough for the proximity fuse to engage and curved right, flying through the chaff without exploding, and turning in an attempt to reacquire, it impacted against the valleys side.

The second missile failed to lock on to anything and streaked past the F-117A, still seeking a target. Both American’s let out the breath they had been holding.

Up ahead the AA-10s Tombstone radar locked up the fast approaching Mig-29 and launched two missiles at it. They were not expecting visitors and not prepared to ask questions first.

“Podonock!” Cursed the Fulcrums pilot, the literal translation of the Belarus oath being “Wankers!” as the missiles acquisition of his aircraft was conveyed via the screeching in his ears. He punched out chaff and flares before initiating a vertical jink in an effort to break the missiles lock.

There was a blinding flash and he was thrown hard forward against his shoulder straps, master-warning lights lit the console and alarms screeched.

The Migs twin stabilisers had been sheared off the airframe and shrapnel from an AA-10 peppered the starboard Turmanski turbofan, which disintegrated, trashing the port engine as it did so. With a very poor opinion of the army, its pilot ejected clear of his aircraft as it came apart.

The ZSU detected an incoming HARM and its operator switched its radar to standby whilst the SA-10s operator failed to react in time and was vaporised as the first HARM struck home.

Switching off a search radar does not ensure safety when HARMs are in the air, the memory within its processor remembers where the signal originated if it gets a long enough look, if not it will circle the area until its fuel runs out or the radar comes on again.

The ZSU-23-4 operator had only detected the one missile, when the Tombstone radar and control vehicle was destroyed the ZSU radar went active again.

Coming within 500m of the ZSU the F-117A had no background clutter to hide in, the turret spun to lead the aircraft and its quadruple 23mm cannon poured four streams of armour piercing shells into its path.

The ZSU was still expending rounds at a rate of thirty-two hundred a minute when the second HARM re-attacked, lighting up the area with a brilliant flash as it struck.

A series of loud impacts and a mushy feel to the controls told Tobias that they were in trouble; he did not need the master alarms to tell him that. A gale was blowing in the cockpit and a strong vibration was shaking the airframe. He was trying to gain some altitude when the engine fire warning lights came on and the aircraft suffered a 100 % failure of its avionics.

“Time to go Billy!” he shouted, glancing at his navigator as he reached for the ejection handle, only Billy had no head and didn’t reply. The sight caused Tobias to freeze for a moment as his hands closed over the ejection handle and it was the split second difference between life and death. Tobias was still staring at his crewmate when Hawk 01 exploded in a ball of flame.

With the local residents of that area of Germany having, for the most part, fled their homes, the night was absent the usual activity associated with the hour. No lights lit the horizon with the sulphurous glow of street lighting, no car headlights, no car engines in the distance, no sounds of human activity except their own breathing.

The Warriors had carried them from the rear of the Battalion area to the rear of 1 Company where they had continued on foot through the lines and down the wooded slope to the river.

The only thing distinguishing Colin from the other patrol members was the ½” x ¼” rectangle of white material on the back of his helmet, denoting him as the patrol commander. It was fixed to his helmet by the only piece of velcro present on any of his equipment. velcro, nylon hook and eye fasteners held closed cuffs, pockets and fulfilled any number of other tasks on the issued equipment. It may be cheap and handy but Colin hated the stuff, hated the audible ripping sound it made at night. He had removed all of it from his own, replacing it with old-fashioned brass press-studs, hand sown and painted black. The minute and muffled noise they made when used was far, far quieter. He rarely wore the wind-proof and wet proof clothing either, nylon is noisy when it brushes against objects, and if he wore it at all it was beneath a layer of cotton or wool.

A footbridge crossed above a weir beside a timber mill, although the mill was still a functional part of the local industry, the great mill wheel was stilled. The mill and the few cottages nearby were devoid any sign of current human occupation.

A breeze gently shook the branches of the trees, and in the sky was the narrow crescent of a quarter moon. Patches of cloud, moving slowly with the wind masked it from time to time, reducing visibility further. The unlit windows of the habitat’s they passed starred back at the passing troops like empty eye sockets, the cry of a Nightjar added an eeriness to the night.

As briefed, Colin would pick a recognisable feature along their route and pointing at the ground made wide circular motions, the action was mimicked by each man as they reached the spot, if they were bumped between there and the next point he chose, that is where they would RV.

Colin was the second man in the column, before him was the point, feeling for trip wires and looking for trouble ahead. Oz was at the rear, preserving the command structure if Colin were taken out at the front, Oz was also there to ensure no one got lost and to command the gun group that watched their ‘6’. Colin really wished he had an SLR in his hands right now. He missed its reliability and heavy, high velocity 7.62 round. If you hit the target it went down and stayed down with the first hit. The thing in his hands lacked the SLRs dependability and that stopping power. There were a couple of the new L85-A2 models in the Battalion, its new barrel with different rifling allowed it to fire the SS-108 round, the current round was pushed to penetrate soft skinned vehicles. H & K had got the contract to sort out the rifles many failings and the SS-108 round had a steel penetrator, which should improve stopping power. The Marines had the upgraded weapon prior to going to Afghanistan but came back seriously dissatisfied. It didn’t like cold weather, the metal contracted and it suffered stoppages. It didn’t like hot weather, the metal expanded and it suffered stoppages. It didn’t like dirt, but then no weapon does, the SA80 just had a far, far lower freshold of tolerance for sand and grit, than most.

Every man had an assigned arc to cover, looking and listening for anything out of place. Shape, shine, shadow, silhouette, movement and noise are the big give away's in camouflage and concealment. Merge in, don’t stand out, move slowly when you must and don’t make a sound, if you can achieve all that then you’ve got it cracked.

The ears are the most important sense in the dark but you have to know how to use your eyes to the best advantage. Stare at an object and it may disappear or fade to indistinction because of the light receptors in human eyes. The human eye has rods and cones, so called because that is their shape. The rods are at the front, receiving reflected light frequencies from objects that the brain translates as shapes, they have a narrow aperture to assist focus. The cones are at the side and their wide aperture collects more reflected light so you can see better at night by looking through the corners of your eyes. It takes a little while for eyes to adjust to the dark and any light exposure ruins it until the eye can adjust again. The drill for safeguarding night vision is to close your shooting eye until the flare, or whatever the source, is gone. Illumination at night is a double-edged weapon; you use the one open eye to take advantage of the additional light, carefully and slowly looking about.

At the end of each leg the patrol took up all round defence, facing outwards, legs splayed and over-lapping their neighbours. Viewed from above, the fighting patrol might resemble a synchronised swimming team at dry practice, but it was a means of communication and not intended to draw a six-six score from the Luxembourg judge.

Each man had his right leg over the lower left leg of the man on his right, when Colin signalled them to move out, it was done by raising his left leg twice, nudging the man beside him who would then pass the message on anti-clockwise. Colin would know when everyone had received the message, when his right leg was nudged in turn. At the end of each leg the navigators set the bearing for the next leg and looking through the compass prism would pick a landmark to march on. Colin remembered a Welsh Guardsman from his own Junior Brecon, on one exercise they had marched through the night across a featureless landscape, yet the Welshman had stopped periodically to take a bearing. Colin hadn’t been able to make out what the hell he could see that Colin couldn’t so he asked him, the man had pointed above the horizon to the full moon that crept across the sky… he had been leading them around in a wide circle.

At each stop they would listen whilst in all round defence, for upto fifteen minutes, for any sound that was out of place; in that time it is not unheard of for tired soldiers to fall asleep.

At the end of the last leg before the FRV, Colin did not receive his confirmatory nudge despite repeating it again, so he went looking for the broken link in the chain. Number eleven had fallen asleep, he awoke to find the blade of Colin’s fighting knife against his jugular. The CSM put his lips next to the man’s ear and whispered.

“If I ever catch you asleep on duty again sunshine, you’ll need a hundred fucking years of beauty sleep to sort the mess I’ll make of your face… understand?”

Although they were not the only patrol out that night, both sides had ambush, fighting and recce patrols out, they neither saw nor heard anyone.

They stopped again just short of the chosen FRV location whilst Colin went forward to recce it. They would be here for much longer than the previous, end of leg RVs, he had to confirm its suitability and check there were no enemy camped on the doorstep.

He used both binoculars and his MIRA night sight to scan for trouble, binoculars magnify the available light, ergo it is easier to see with them at night, they pick out detail lost in the mixture of green shades you see when using a night sight. Day or night, the correct way to scan is to break up the panorama into three areas, near, middle and distant. Its common sense that you start looking close to home, near distance before checking middle distance then the far distance, with any other combination you may find yourself staring at the horizon when someone taps you on the shoulder, uttering the words “For you zee vor ist over!”

He returned to the patrol and was challenged by the lead man, at night or in poor visibility it is foolish to assume the figure approaching you is the one you are expecting. If all cats look grey in the dark, then the same holds true for soldiers of opposing armies.

The simplest, yet secure method of challenging is to employ the number variation method. He had picked the number 42 for this patrol, the patrol members had been given it at the briefing. The lead man challenged Colin by saying.

“Thirty?”

Colin replied

“Twelve”.

He could have picked any number up to 41 to challenge with; Colin merely added the figure that added it up to forty-two.

In the FRV they still lay listening for ten minutes before dividing into their three groups, dropping off their bergens, less side pouches of course. The three men in the rear protection party stayed put whilst the fire support group went north and Colin’s snatch squad went east.

According to the Recce Platoon, there was a field that had a sharp rise that elevated it above the surrounding land, it wasn’t much but it was enough to qualify as a good OP site. When Colin had studied the map he reckoned it was a barrow, a grave mound. He wondered what the occupant would think, if he knew the land was still being fought over, still being invaded by men from the east.

Colin had an eye on the wind, he led the four men with him in a wide arc, staying downwind of the mound and keeping hedgerows between themselves and it. He was relieved to see that gorse bushes studded the mound, offering cover from view for his close target recce when he would decide how they would do the snatch. The wind carries noise and he wanted that advantage for himself.

Once he was satisfied with their own position he quietly slipped out of his webbing fighting order, Kevlar helmet and radio headset. He left his weapon behind, carrying only a cheese wire garrotte and fighting knife. If the British army followed the Yanks example of issuing handguns as back-up weapons in addition to their principle personal weapon, he would have been happier, but it all came down to money. Politicians who had been no closer to a fire fight than a war correspondents footage, decided they knew what was best, what the armed services needed.

Colin could see nothing through either binoculars or night sight to indicate life on the mound before he began his stalk. He picked his route before putting the optic devices away and crawling forward on his belly, using clumps of nettles and depressions for cover with a twig as a feeler, seeking trip wires. The field obviously had held sheep until recently, the grass was close cropped. Tufts of wool hung from protrusions here and there. He found the first booby trap midway to the mound and two more on its sloping side, the first had been a tripflare, and the next two were fragmentation grenades. Pins removed and spring-arms retained by the sides of the tin cans they had been put into, trip wires were attached to the grenades, ready to be pulled from the can by someone less cautious than he. After making all three safe he continued on.

He heard the enemy recce troops before he saw them, heard the sound of nylon against gorse, they had donned the garments as extra protection from the night air. He moved at a few inches at a time, listening between movements until he saw their forms, in a depression normally occupied by sheep as a windbreak. Their weapons were poked through the gorse ahead of them, which was okay if you knew that you were going to be attacked from that direction, otherwise it would just delay there being brought around to face the threat.

The figure on the right used an optical device whilst Colin watched, he could be the officer, or maybe not. They would sort that out when they had control of them.

Colin moved back the way he had come, just as carefully as before.

He briefed the four Guardsmen after replacing his kit and got on the radio.

“Hello Zero Alpha and Nine Nine Bravo, this is Nine Nine Alpha, radio check over?”

“Zero Alpha, okay over.”

“Nine Nine Bravo, okay over.”

Both the battalion CP and Oz acknowledged they were receiving his signals.

“Nine Nine Alpha, Snapdragon, over.”

“Zero Alpha, Snapdragon, out.”

“Nine Nine Bravo, Snapdragon, out.”

The target had been found and the snatch would follow, the CP would call up the mortar platoon to standby in case required. Oz would now be preparing to put a lot of fire down on another OP, to distract the targets and prevent the other OP from assisting the targets if word got out they were under attack.

Colin was more than relieved that they had not been detected on radar, if they had then their OP would have been more on their toes than they were.

In single file the five British soldiers made their way to the mound, out of sight of the OP, as they did not need to see it, they would follow Colin.

“Oz?” he whispered into his mouthpiece. Two clicks answered him.

“Standby.” Another two clicks and he knew Oz would be watching the moon as he was.

A nice fat cloud approached the crescent and masked it. Colin breathed into the mouthpiece.

“Go, go, go.”

The response was immediate, 800m away tracers lashed out, converging on the corner of a copse, accompanied by the ploop of M203 grenade launchers and their subsequent detonations. In the quiet of the night the booms of the grenades and roar of the automatic weapons carried, drawing the attention of the enemy soldiers and masking the pounding thud of boots that approached them. The method of subduing them was crude but effective, if something heavy lands on the back of a prone person; it drives the air from their lungs.

A grown man provided the heavy weight in this case, feet first. Whilst they gasped for air the masking tape covered their mouths, arms were pinned and the plasticuffs applied to wrists and elbows. Last of all, masking tape blindfolded them whilst their equipment was cut off and searched for anything of intelligence value.

Colin sent them off back the way they’d come and found a fresh use for the two booby-traps he’d found before joining them.

As they headed back to the FRV with their prisoners, incoming artillery from the east, moaned overhead and impacted a hundred meters short and right of where the fire support had come from, at least someone was still alive in the other OP. The next salvo was in line but only fifty metres short, good shooting by the gunners and good spotting by whoever was calling it in, Colin thought, the next salvo would be ‘on’.

Oz and the fire support group were back at the FRV, safe and sound when the snatch squad arrived. The brief had been for ninety seconds sustained fire; the group had been long gone by the time the enemy artillery worked their old fire position over.

The patrol regained their bergens and moved out on the first homeward leg and Colin kept the speed down. People would know they were around and now was the time to be extra careful, possible pursuit or not. The homeward leg is always the most dangerous, with the danger of the missions objective behind them, soldiers can feel it’s safe to relax, feel it’s safe to relish the prospect of climbing into a sleep-bag, the venerable ‘green maggot’ and going to kip.

Behind them Colin heard the sound of a AFVs engines, five minutes later he heard the double crump of grenades going off.

Back at the mound, a very pissed off Czech sergeant took the identity tags from the neck of one of his dead soldiers, killed when he retrieved the AKMs and equipment that were the only things occupying their officers OP.

The sergeant had switched off the radar when the lieutenant had left the wood. The arrogant little fool, fresh from the academy had refused to listen to a mere NCO as he talked across the sergeant, quoting parrot fashion, what the manual said. Well maybe at the academy their vehicles had fresh, good quality batteries that could run the electrical equipment all night, without having to be recharged by starting the vehicle and running it for half an hour.

These vehicles old batteries could not run the radar and radios for more than three hours’ without a recharge. Once the officer had gone the sergeant switched off everything but the radios, intending to power the radar up just before the man’s return.

Well the radar was on now as he picked up the dismounted troops from their OPs and went hunting their attackers. At the copse the two troopers had been experienced men, they had dug in when they chose the spot and so had kept their heads down when the attack started.

Colin was aware of the engine sound growing stronger and stepped aside, letting the tail catch up to him.

“Looks like it is ‘actions on AFV’, Oz.”

Oz nodded.

“Watch yer sen hinney,” and increased his pace, heading up the column to take command.

Colin separated the two Guardsmen carrying NLAWs and the gun group who had been delegated at the O Group for a tank ambush. They broke track, Colin picking their spot in a ditch. His main concern now was the enemy vehicle commander, would he acquire the patrol on radar and call in artillery fire or close in and use the section of troops and the 30mm turret mounted quick firing cannon and 7.62 machine gun.

The vehicle commander had debated the same point but his blood was up. He knew the troops they faced were the English, he knew that these troops were not much good, they had watched them in their Landrovers, patrolling this side of the river. One of the English had been wearing a beret instead of a helmet, and the picture of the cap badge in their books was for a regiment of part-time soldiers, local militia, third-rate. The fact that the soldier had worn a beret instead of a helmet in a combat zone merely confirmed his opinion of the enemies’ worth.

Colin listened for the vehicle to draw nearer; it had to have picked up the patrol but was coming on anyway. That was a relief for him because it meant he would not have to go out and stalk it, killing it to stop the artillery ranged against the patrol.

Being at Brecon he had fired the weapon far more frequently than anyone in the Battalion had. The government defence budget had capped the number of rounds that could be fired in training to one round, per man, per year.

Colin had both weapons beside him, prepared for firing and waiting for a target.

The Czech APC had the patrol on radar and the sergeant gave his orders, charge through with the section in the rear using the side gun ports and if the stupid arrogant lieutenant got hit, then so be it. The Infra-red bulbs in the headlamps lit the way for the driver who wore goggles that enabled him to see the way ahead. They wanted maximum shock effect so there was not going to be anything scientific in the attack.

Colin watched the thing come on in the weapons Trilux sight, allowing it to close to 100m.

The IR picked out Colin, whose head was just visible above the ground and the driver shouted to the sergeant up in the turret.

Colin was aware of the turrets beginning to turn in his direction but held his sight picture, gently squeezing the trigger and knew the spotter was on even as he did so.

The Czech sergeant saw him and lowered the barrel of the 7.62 machine gun, just as Colin fired the 94mm HESH round.

Impacting above and to the right of the driver’s head, the shaped charge caused the AFVs armour to blister and a jet of white hot metal shot across the interior. It raised the temperature in the vehicle by 300’ and cut through a rifleman’s helmeted head as it crossed the interior to the storage bins of 30mm ammunition.

Colin was reached for the second NLAW but the APCs hatches blew out and the vehicle rolled to a halt, pouring smoke from every seam. At the first sign of movement the gun group opened up with three-second bursts from the gimpy, cutting down the driver as he emerged along with a sergeant. They kept up the rate of fire as Colin crawled forward and lobbed a hand grenade into the vehicles troop compartment.

Oz was conducting a proper search of the prisoners at their Warriors behind 1 Company when Colin turned up with his ambush group.

“You okay, Sir?” they were not alone and the Guards frowned upon ‘familiarity’.

“Yes thank you sergeant, can you get these prisoners over to the RSM please and join us for the debriefing back at our area?”

Oz nodded and pushed the prisoners through the Warriors rear hatch and climbed in after them. The rest of the patrol, less Colin’s four, had already unloaded their weapons under Oz’s supervision and were aboard their vehicles, ready to go. Colin got on with business, they weren’t finished yet and he had a patrol report to write before he saw his green maggot. He looked at his watch; the luminous hands told him it was 0358hrs. Great, he should get all of an hours kip before stand-to if he hurried.

The vast majority of the Chinese people on Mainland China were unaware of any war breaking out until the state-controlled media broke the news. TV, radio and the newspapers shouted defiance and vowed vengeance on America and it's running dog allies, claiming an unprovoked attack on three peaceful PLAN warships. According to their government, the ships had been well inside Chinese territorial waters and the ships had been sunk with all hands. For that reason, their country had declared war, for reason of self-defence, naturally.

Away from the population centres it would be many months before some heard the news, indeed some had only recently heard stories about Tiananmen Square.

Shopping in the market, the elderly Mr Tung hobbled along, assisted by a gnarled stick and hailed the fishmonger.

“Li xiansheng, ni hao, how do you do Mr Li, are you going to overcharge me for my supper again, you bandit!”

Mr Li turned his one good eye toward the speaker.

“Aren’t you dead yet… too miserly to die and pay the grave tax?”

His customer raised his walking stick, pointing it like a sword at the fishmonger.

“I would ask after the health of your family, only they threw you in the bucket and kept the afterbirth, at the kennel where you were born!”

“Pah!” replied the old merchant.

“At least my Mother walked on legs rather than slithered on her belly!”

The two ancients glared at one another, then laughed like schoolboys and clapped one another on the back, completing their weekly ritual.

Mr Tung followed his friend around the side of the stall where Mr Li made a space for him on a bench, brushing away at unseen dust.

Both men sat quietly, lighting up old long stemmed pipes and watching the world go by. A pretty girl walked past and both men leant forward to watch until she passed from sight. Between them they had one hundred and sixty four years on the planet

Mr Li broke the silence,

“I hear the Americans sank our ships.”

“Humph!” was Mr Tung’s only response, not bothering to look at his friend.

Mr Li went on.

“Three of our ships they say, and they named them.”

Mr Tung nodded.

“My landlady told me last night, her nephew works at the Harbour Masters office, and he knows the ships, coal burning gunboats, very old.” He peered distrustfully at the substance burning in the bowl of his pipe.

“Do you have a relative working in the tobacco trade Mr Li, this has been cut with old carpet I think!”

Mr Li grinned and slapped the man on the knee; they both chuckled away for a minute before settling down again.

“What else did your landlady’s nephew say… I didn’t know you still paid your rent on her sleeping mat?”

“Once a week for the past thirty years,” Mr Tung stated smugly.

“Thirty years ago it was three times a week!” pointed out Mr Li, stressing the point with the pipe stem, pointing it at Mr Tung.

“Thirty years ago she didn’t look like her grandmother.”

Silence resumed as they once again watched the comings and goings around them.

“The old gunboats were rusting away for years and they no longer worked. Last week they towed them away and if the Americans sank them it was because they thought they were seeing ghosts from the Japanese war.”

Mr Li nodded. “Who towed them away?”

“The government men I suppose,” replied Mr Tung with a shrug.

“Ah!” Mr Li responded sagely, as if that explained everything. “The government men.” Anyone who looked official, but was not local was automatically assumed to be ‘a government man’. He took another puff on his pipe before asking.

“Do you think the Americans will invade us?”

Mr Tung did not reply for a moment, he still stared ahead at the bustle of the market place, and then he tapped his friend reassuringly on the knee.

“Don’t worry my friend, the Americans won’t come here,” adding. “Why should they want to buy fish at your prices?”

Across the city in the Politburo offices, Premier Chiu ended a call to Moscow in the same civil tongue with which he had conducted the whole conversation with the Russian Premier. He had a pleasant smile on his face as he replaced the receiver, but once done he hammered his fist down onto the desktop, causing a carafe of water to dance and a glass of water to overturn.

“Wangba dan!” Chiu didn’t know if the Russian engaged in sexual congress with his mother, but the insult burst forth anyway, indicating the Chinese politician’s origins in the provincial gutters.

All the assurances and guarantees had been worthless even though they were allied in the war. Only one bomb had gone off, and it did not chop the head off America if the US media spoke true.

The Russians did not have a back-up satellite to transmit the signal to the bombs and although he knew little of technology, he was not impressed with the Russian excuse that keeping the operation small had been vital to operational security.

He left his office for the committee room, pausing to compose himself before nodding to an aide to open the door to the room where the Politburo was gathered.

He waved everyone back to their seats as he made his way up the room to the head of the table, looking at faces, gauging their resolve, and weighing the news.

Marshal Lo Chong and Minister Pong looked confident, charged even, as they met his gaze. Good, good, thought the premier as he seated himself. I will deal with them first and success would still the tongues of the faint hearted.

“Comrade Marshal, please update us with news of the progress of our armed forces?”

“Starting with Taiwan, yesterday morning our special forces began cutting communications, roads and bridges all across the island; this took place just prior to mass attacks of medium range missiles on all air force bases, airports, landing strips and barracks.”

“And were they successful Marshal?”

The Marshal answered immediately.

“Our airborne assault followed the missile attacks, the amphibious landings began at dusk, comrade Premier and a beachhead has been established, the port of T’ai Hsi is in our hands, heavy armour can begin to be offloaded within the hour.” His eyes gave nothing away, not revealing that over half of the missiles launched had been intercepted by Patriot missiles and air launched AIM-120 AMRAAMs. Fighting was still going on at T’ai Chung AFB and they had lost half of the second wave of paratroops to missiles. The third wave was delayed owing to the lack of aircraft; they had lost fifteen Il-76 transports in the second wave. Fortunately their other airborne operation, at Singapore, was going to plan. The transport aircraft, which had taken part in that operation, would soon be available.

T’ai Chung should have been secured by midnight and transports landing by 0200hrs but they held the runways and little more. The first wave had achieved surprise but the US and Taiwanese armed forces were on alert, albeit for terrorists, and they had reacted swiftly. The second wave, like the first, had a strong CAP protecting it and the first wave paratroops had secured the Patriot site, it was the damned Stinger missiles the defenders had. They had not used them against the air strikes the paratroops had called in earlier, they had reasoned that further waves would be on the way. Their discipline was greater than he would have believed, accepting losses from the fighter-bombers because they knew aircraft could not take the base from them, and only troops on the ground could do that. Six hundred troops, eight light tanks and supplies had been lost. They had landed a further four hundred men by parachute, two light tanks and some supplies. Four transports aborted their runs and returned to the mainland. The pilots and senior paratrooper officer aboard each aircraft had been bayoneted to death on the tarmac after landing, the pilots for cowardice as well as the soldiers, who should have forced the pilots to continue.

“In Singapore, we have secured Tengah Air Force Base and Changi Airport by airborne assault. The land route to Malaysia has been cut and a thousand Marines, landed from merchant ships have seized the harbour. All as planned comrades.”

The Premier maintained the appearance of calm confidence. He knew the full details, knew what the Marshal withheld, so be it. He would be the sacrificial lamb should it come to that.

“And the American aircraft carriers, what of them?”

“As you know, the Americans and the British destroyed the Russian satellite and the ground station. The carriers in port had left before then anyway.” He referred to his notes.

“Xianfeng-7 and Jianbing-3, two of our surveillance satellites, are currently tasked solely with tracking the American carriers but at present they are being repositioned… ”

“Why?” interrupted the Premier.

“We were not aware that the Americans still possessed anti-satellite missiles, their project was cancelled years ago as unnecessary in the face of their star wars projects, when they too were cancelled the ASAT project was never reactivated. Our satellites were at risk in their present orbits and so they were changed,” explained the Marshal.

The Premier nodded and a wave of his fingers signalled Lo Chang to continue.

“We already know the position of the USS John F Kennedy to within two hundred miles and an operation is already underway to sink her using air launched C.802 cruise missiles, the Tu-160 will carry two each, with a 2 kiloton warhead in place of their conventional warheads. You may recall that we bought two Exocet missiles from the French and copied them; we now export our version at considerably less that the French ask for their missile. The C.802 is proven technology.”

“Where is this American ship, how will it be attacked, details please Marshal because you begin to sound like a door to door salesman.” The questions came from the GRI minister; the General Research Institute is the name of the PRCs intelligence service. Unlike Britain, Russia and the CIA, China believes that a secret service should be precisely that. It is a very shadowy yet active organisation. The minister was looking at the Marshal in a way that telegraphed the fact, that he too knew of the glossed over facts in the briefing so far.

Marshal Lo Chang smiled as if the statement at the end of the request was a light-hearted joke, the glitter in his eyes said otherwise though.

“The John F Kennedy is heading north to join up with the puny carrier Britain’s Royal Navy seeks to threaten our carrier combat group with. The Mao pilots will receive their blooding in sending the British to the bottom whilst two regiments of the Tu-22ME bombers we purchased from the Ukrainian’s and six of our Tu-160 bombers will sink the Americans in a combined operation with the submarine forces.”

“How is this operation guaranteed to succeed, Marshal?”

“The Tu-160 is a supersonic bomber, as are our Tu-22ME bombers; however the Tu-160 is a stealthed aircraft, similar to the American B1-B. The Russians have two submarines, one of which is trailing the John F Kennedy. The Tu-22ME bombers will attack in force from the northwest and the Russian Oscar submarine will launch from the north. When the Americans are engaged the Tu-160 bombers will approach undetected from the southeast, from the open ocean.” replied the soldier.

“The Tu-160 is not similar to the B1-B Lancer, it is a direct copy, as are most Russian weapon systems, they are a knee-jerk reaction to innovation that they must counter… and rarely work as well.” GRI was dismissive.

The Marshal thought that GRI must have been talking with his tongue deep in his own cheek, as China’s technological level would be fifteen years behind the rest of the world, but for stolen ideas and inventions. GRI was responsible for most of the military application thefts.

The Premier had been listening and watching the exchange with interest, wondering why GRI was baiting the military, could it be jealousy at the military’s large role in comparison to the intelligence service? The Premier used rivalries amongst politburo members and organisations to keep his position strong, playing off one against the other.

Foreign Affairs took the floor after the military brief. They had approached the Pacific Rim nations and offered a return of the Tiger Economies once the USA was removed from the world picture. It was not expected to gain allegiances, especially not from Vietnam or the Philippines, they would already suspect that China would claim the Pacific oil resources for herself, backed up with military muscle. It was meant to muddy the water and keep them wrong footed, suspicious of their neighbours as they wondered who would form secret allegiance with the PRC.

The deck alert, ready five F-14D Tomcat in which Lt Nikki ‘Mermaid’ Pelham and Lt ‘Chubby’ Checkernovski and her RIO, radar intercept officer, were playing chess as the John F Kennedy forged ahead. The carrier had done a hard right turn just after last light, as the combat groups ASW warfare assets prosecuted a possible diesel submarine that had dogged them for the previous twelve hours’. Both officers rested small travelling chess sets on their legs as they combated the boredom.

Nikki needed the distraction more than her RIO; the situation in Washington DC was too confused for any solid news. Her parents, younger brother and sister had been in the city, taking in the sights and visiting ‘The Wall’ in Constitution Gardens, where more than a few of her Fathers friends and comrades names were carved. The crisis in the lead up to the war had not deterred her parents, they did not run scared like lesser mortals had after 09/11 and weren’t going to allow anything effect their day to day lives. The seven-day trip had been planned last Christmas and they had arrived in the capitol three days before. The hotel they were staying at was on Pennsylvania Avenue.

High above the fleet an E-2C Hawkeye kept an eye beyond the horizon whilst an E-3 Sentry out of Japan was providing early warning of air attack for the country and also had the John F Kennedy group in sight. Neither early warning system could see the air groups of the Kuznetsov and Mao awaiting word to launch or the Il-76 tankers arriving on station from the Russian mainland and PRC.

What they could see though were the A-50s with heavy escorts probing for the USN and RN combat groups, lost by the satellites and submarines.

Aboard HMS Hood the captain was trying to set up an attack on the enemy carriers, but he had a problem. His sonar department had on three occasions detected a fleeting submerged contact. It could be the submarine that sank the USS Cheyenne but then again it was as likely to be any of the anomalous contacts that are caused by sea life and echoes from afar. He didn’t like the impulse he felt to look over his shoulder constantly and had decided to go looking for it.

HMS Prince of Wales had turned southeast, the plan now being to join with the John F Kennedy group. The Russian submarines had missed her but stumbled upon the John F Kennedy instead. The St Petersburg class diesel boat Irkutsk was watching and reporting when discovered by the American ASW assets. In the distance the Oscar class missile boat Admiral Dumlev was listening to the hunt but unable to intervene in throwing off the hunters.

Oblivious to all the military activity in the area was an elderly English couple, they had not abandoned plans to reach Alaska but they would not be stopping off at Russian ports along the way.

With the removal of the vast majority of ICBM sites in accord with SALT, the missile silos had been imploded with explosives and the pumping station deprived of power, allowing water to flood the underground facilities. However, large hardened subterranean facilities still remained, although with different functions to their original design.

Ellsworth AFB, control centre # D-1 off Interstate 90, has a deep shaft leading to a wide circular passage, running west below a low hill to a large facility that was now, temporarily, an alternative seat of government for the United States of America. The vice president had relinquished the role of Commander in Chief once the doctors had signed off on the president who was now in videoconference with other, similar facilities that housed the various arteries of a government in time of war.

When the army engineers got through to the kitchens, the president had refused to budge until those trapped with him had been evacuated first.

The sight that had greeted him, on emerging into the grounds had stopped him in his tracks. Sealed into an environment suit as he was, had added a surreal touch to the experience. Hiroshima had come to visit Washington DC, and the view from the helicopter that took him to a field hospital had reduced him to silence.

The doctors who had examined him were concerned by his uncommunicative state, answering yes, no, don’t know, in a dull voice; the shrink was going to have to do an assessment anyway but they let him know their concerns.

After the prodding and probing of the medical doctors came the probing and prodding of the ‘trick cyclists’, he endured it for an hour before erupting.

“Doctor, I sure did wet the bed, hell I wet it every other night until I was four years old… in fact that second god damned ink blot you showed me looks a lot like a peed-on mattress!” The psychiatrist was scribbling away furiously when the president reached over and snatched the pad. He looked briefly at was written.

“How in the hell do you suppose that my current state of mind has anything to do with pre-pubescent trauma and possible child abuse!” The pad hit the far wall of the large tent where the session took place. “My Father tanned my hide when I needed it… I do not happen to ascribe to the current thinking that children are subject to the same rules as adults… an adult is a person who has reached maturity and is fully developed… does that sound like a four year old who set alight to his father’s den after being told the dangers of matches?” The presidents senior secret service agent had entered on hearing the outburst and seen the president angrier than he ever had done before. Without looking up the president had held up a hand, halting him as he leant across the collapsible table, separating shrink from patient. “Call me quaint and old fashioned, why don’t you, but perhaps, just perhaps… my present state of mind may be due to my nation’s capital city getting wasted, while I was present… and not because I got spanked at age four… you halfwit!” The target of his ire was trying to find words and failing.

“Sign me off as fit and get back to psychoanalysing poodles, young man… and do it now!”

The flight from the MASH by Marine TAV-8B Harrier, with the mid-air tanking’s had gone a long way to restoring his equilibrium. It was his first ever flight in a combat jet and after a few minutes into the flight he had enthused over the machine, chatting with the colonel who chauffeured him.

The formal transition back to C in C had been accomplished once he’d arrived in the hardened bunker.

“Henry, what’s the situation?”

General Shaw was a thousand miles away but his expression spoke for him, before he even opened his mouth.

“Mr President, I’m glad you made it out, sir… the PRC, Russian’s and their allies attacked immediately after the Washington bomb was detonated, on the dot of 9am, Washington time.” General Shaw cleared his throat and continued.

“At Pearl we lost two destroyers, USS Tempest Creek and the USS Andy Croy to mines placed by divers. Both sank at their moorings but they are salvageable. In the East, the naval airbases on Japan and Okinawa came under missile attack, we got just over half but we lost a fleet tanker, the Killington, at Yokosuka and Bonhomme Richard took damage when she blew. We lost shore installations and the ‘Bonnie’ is out of action and in need of major repairs. On Taiwan the PRC staged commando raids by Special Forces before the bomb at the capital blew, and missile attacks on the hour were followed in by airborne drops at T’ai-chung AFB. After last light they began amphibious landings at T’ai-Hsi and the other side of the Cho-Shui river. They have established a beachhead and secured the port, sir.” The general knew the time to defeat a landing once it was on the beach, was there, on the beach, when the troops had only the ammunition in their pouches. Once an enemy got his logistics ashore it got far harder.

“At T’ai-chung air force base, the ROC have the buildings while they have the field. The airborne landing caught them on the hop… caught us all on the hop, I guess I owe that guy from Langley an apology, anyway… the first wave lost momentum and the second wave got chewed up by ROC SAMs. So far there has been no third wave and a mechanised battalion of ROC troops has reinforced the AFB. The Taiwanese are about to start beating on the bridgehead, ships and port with air strikes combined with a naval effort.

Singapore is calling for help but I think they have gone sir… if I say so myself Mr President, it was a pretty damned gutsy move and the PRC pulled it off. A lot depends on whether the countries between cooperate with the PRC. They are reliant on air and sea supply, if we cut that then we starve them out. Malaysia has so far made no international noises but they have troops on the move. They may not be kissing cousin’s with Singapore but they have been good neighbours.”

“What about the rest of Asia and the Far East, Henry?”

“Sir, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam… . It’s the same story, we know they have been approached diplomatically and all of them are mobilising, we don’t know if they are going to fight, join or stay neutral. The Philippines we are sure of, they told China to take a hike and expelled the PRC embassy along with the Russian Federation and allies. They are mobilising too.” He referred to something on a wall off screen before continuing.

“First blood at sea goes to Australia, they captured a mini sub and some commandos doing the preliminary marking for a landing. While they prosecuted the mother ship they came under attack from a third sub… sank it and forced the mother ship to the surface where they made a fight of it. Scratch two PRC naval assets. Australia is worried though; they have a lot of coastline but small army, navy and air force. Granted that not even the PRC have the ability to land at the back end of nowhere and cross the interior, but they are a logical target if the PRC are driving for a Pacific empire.”

The president was deep in thought for a while and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs paused.

“Where did this happen?”

“A bay south of MacKay, Queensland… a hell of a way from anything major, though” Henry added, puzzled at the location.

The president however was less interested with the reasoning behind that particular location and more interested in anything else the PRC had been up to.

“I take they are starting a search for other landing sites that may have been prepared, General?”

Henry Shaw nodded in affirmation.

“Okay, let’s move on. Have we sunk their damn carriers yet?”

“Sir, that is in hand. At present they are sticking close to land, and we have only John F Kennedy in that part of the Pacific at the moment, that’s why we wanted the Brit Prince of Wales to stay on. We are handicapped by lack of real time Intel. NSA promise to have completed the debugging of the system anytime now and we are gambling on it being back in time to assist fleet ops. While they are up north they cannot assist at Taiwan, of course.” The president did not look happy, but Shaw continued.

“We have a tenuous lead on their carriers, just one submarine in contact with them. Their carriers are the Damocles Sword that hangs over us. The threat has to be neutralised before we deal with the rest of it.”

“And what if the satellites aren’t back up?” queried the president. “When did we last have their carriers position?”

“Twenty-six hours’ ago, HMS Hood is weapons free now, they will be in too close to transmit, and possibly already setting up an attack.” The general turned a page before carrying on.

“ USS Constellation was in Hawaii until last week, it will be three days before she is in range to begin offensive operations. John C. Stennis was midway back to San Diego and she is turned about now. The Nimitz is still in refit, but she is now being rushed back. In short, it will be three days until another carrier group can intervene. A month before all of them are on station. HMS Prince of Wales is an ASW carrier, intended for convoy work in the Atlantic. Her Sea Harriers are for fleet defence but they have an anti-ship role too. We put some Phoenix’s, AIM-54Bs aboard and they have retrofit the airframes to carry them, it is not a Harrier weapon so the PRC will have a shock if… or rather when they come looking.

“What about Europe, what is the story there?”

“The Red Army… we started calling them that again, sir… ”

“May as well, I suppose… sorry, carry on Henry.”

“The Red Army has three main thrusts, one into Belarus from Russia, another building in The Ukraine, ready to go through Poland and a third has curved through Rumania, Slovakia and into the Czech Republic from The Ukraine. That one, on the face of it looks as if it could hook north into Poland, but it is a feint, they are going to go west sometime today, into Germany, even though they had recon units cross into Poland.”

The president leant forward.

“How do we know?”

“The Brits are facing the Czech border, they were busy last night, lots of patrols out and the SAS raided a regimental command post inside the Czech Republic. What they found there was corroborated by an officer snatched in Germany, turned out to be a generals son.”

“I heard there was a battle yesterday, Russia invaded Belarus a couple of days ago and they locked horns yesterday, so my pilot told me?”

“In the early afternoon, the Belarus forces that went over to Russia spearheaded the invasion. The loyal Belarus had a defence line along the Dnieper/Byerazino rivers; the Red Army beat on it with massed prolonged artillery before starting their assault. The Belarus air force attacked as the enemy were trying to force the river but the Russians got in amongst them using the Belarus IFF codes of the day; the Belarus have only a few airworthy airframes left now. They held their armour back until we could assist in the air… that happened last night. We took losses in the air but the Belarus counter attacked with armour before withdrawing to their next defence line.”

“And what were those losses we took?”

“NATO lost three Tornadoes, three Jaguars, all RAF. Two Super Mirage from the French, five F-16s, two were Belgian, three were ours, as were three F-15s, two B-52s and two F-117A Nighthawks.” General Shaw finished reading from a list in front of him and looked at the screen.

“How did we do, Henry?”

“That thrust has been blunted sir, they are going to have to reconstitute before they can resume the advance, say… three days.” He turned a page.

“We destroyed, in the air and on the ground. Five of their A-50 AWACS, thirty-four combat aircraft and a lot of armoured fighting vehicles, logistical vehicles and personnel… no numbers as yet.”

The president pursed his lips.

“Convoys, tell me how it is going and is there anything we can divert to the West Coast?"

The general frowned.

“1^st Armoured, 9^th and 22^nd Mechanised are either in the terminal stages of loading or afloat. ^5th Armoured got snarled up in the exodus from Texas City, they are over a day late and haven’t uploaded yet. The first convoy is on the way, with a heavy escort. The Canadian 1^st Corps is also afloat and their first convoy leaves at last light today… what are you thinking sir?”

“I am thinking that the PRC were not a factor when we put this together and we are going to need Australia as a base to assist Taiwan, Japan, Okinawa and the Philippines. Either way, the PRC needs Australia and it needs to be denied to them.” The president looked apologetic.

Henry Shaw blew out his cheeks and was looking not into the screen but thousands of miles away. Eventually he looked back at the screen.

“You know of course that you will not be getting any Christmas cards from the planning and logistics staff this year, Mr President?” he then went on.

“I agree that Australia needs help, but we are now at war with the two other super powers, we are very over stretched. I have already started the reactivation of the reserve fleet and AMARC, the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Centre in the Sonora Desert is reactivating what they can. The VP authorised it and the next two levels of call-up… you realise sir, we are going to have people screaming to bring the troops home, to protect the homeland?”

The president turned to an aide, requesting he contact the Australian prime minister and the British prime minister.

“Okay, Henry… I wanted you to go and make your planning staffs wish they had voted for the other guy, get the 5th turned around and headed west, get shipping into ports ready to move them to Australia. I am going to ask Her Majesty’s government for permission to do just that, okay?”

“Yes Mr President.”

“And Henry, I need a full brief on dispositions in Europe in two hours’ please?”

General Shaw nodded and his screen went blank.

“DDI… you’re up, what’s hot and what’s not?”

Lt Fu Shen took a deep breath and advanced the throttles to the stops. Two miles away the Kuznetsov air group was launching, using that carriers ski slope deck’s assistance to get airborne with their heavy loads.

Fu Chen was pressed back into his seat as the catapult launched him down the deck and the Su-27 got itself airborne without his help. “What a rush!”

Climbing to join the rest of his squadron and top off his tanks, there were sixty-two Russian and Chinese combat aircraft in the air, and all were bound for the Prince of Wales group with its nine Sea Harriers.

Charlie Whiskey 01, the USS Curtis Wilbur’s UH-60B, Sea Hawk ASW helicopter, was dipping its sonar for the umpteenth time that day. There was a sub here, they had it hemmed in with sonar buoys and they had been chasing the damn thing all day. It had to snorkel sooner rather than later, at best bet they had been down fourteen hours’. There were three helicopters at any one time prosecuting the contact. The thermal layer below the ocean’s surface was fluctuating, making it harder to detect the diesel submarine, which ducked in, above and below the layer.

“I got a faint contact on buoy twelve… ” The sonar operator informed the pilot. The buoy was at the centre of their north-south line and Charlie Whiskey raised its dipping sonar once more, headed east and dipped again.

“Ok, I got a faint contact at 023’… I’m going below the layer… firming up, we got us a submarine on the sprint, heading 287’, 260 feet.”

“Raise the dipper… standby… drop, drop, drop… one away!”

A Westinghouse, Mk-50 lightweight torpedo dropped clear of the Sea Hawk, its 750lb bulk splashing below the surface.

For the Irkutsk their dash had been the last option open to them, they were down to 40 % battery power. The Mk-50 dived below the layer where its passive sensors detected the vessel’s propeller noise and going active it accelerated to 46 knots, easily overhauling the Russian diesel boat.

High above HMS Prince of Wales, her dedicated AEW Sea King detected the Chinese A-50s radar pulse and knew that they had been found. The Searchwater radar did not have the power of the giants radome but that did not matter in this case.

Calling up HMS Cuchullainn and the frigate USS Dry Springs far below, she informed them of the contact.

Both had two helicopters apiece, one each on ‘loan’ from Prince of Wales, that hot refuelled from the ships when need be without touching down, the helicopters now took station at the bows and stern of the ships, increasing their radar profiles. Behind each ship were a series of radar reflectors, towed along behind.

Aboard the A-50 the operators saw large ships with two smaller targets behind, they took the bait, assuming that this was the Royal Navy carrier, the American AEGIS Ticonderoga class cruiser and two escorts. They called up the Mao and Kuznetsov, giving course and speed. The real group was 25 miles further distant and the command staff had to estimate how long it would take the enemy air raids to arrive at the decoys.

Timing was critical.

John F Kennedy’s air wing would provide a squadron of precious F-14s to the smaller combat groups defence; if they approached too soon they would lose the element of surprise and run low on gas.

No plan ever survives first contact and this was no exception, as an A-50 also detected John F Kennedy’s AEW Hawkeye’s radar energy. The Blackjacks, Backfires and Su-27 escorts were already in the air and awaiting a target location.

Aboard USS John F Kennedy, CV-63, the last aircraft of air wing five was being launched.

Lt Nikki Pelham and her squadron were about to head north to assist the Sea Harriers of Prince of Wales when the E-2 Hawkeye picked up the first flight of the Backfires Su-27 escorts, forging in at 380 miles out, Pelham’s Squadron was nearest to the intruders.

“Oh shit, there goes a perfectly good plan.” The TAO, tactical action officer, had his hands on his hips as the Hawkeye’s downlink conveyed the information to the John F Kennedy‘s CIC, where the combat systems suite’s SPS-48E three-dimensional fire control, TAS missile targeting and SPS-49 long-range air search radar systems gave him a real-time picture.

“Inform Prince of Wales we are under air attack… tell them they are on their own.” I hate being totally defensive, was the thought running through his mind.

“Start feeding tactical data to Bobby Quinn’s F-14s, they are weapons free to engage.” He tried to put himself in the attackers shoes, visualise what the game play would be, but it was too early, too many variables.

“They won’t be alone, whoever they are… tell the Vipers’ they are to head north as back-stop to deal with any leakers.” Placing one of their F/A-18D squadrons in a second line, between the threat and the carrier group. It left him two squadrons; one of F-14s overhead, as a reserve and the second squadron of F/A-18Ds ranging across their flanks.

The carrier group was arrayed with her frigates as outlying picket ships and the destroyers as a second line of defence. The core of the formation held the John F Kennedy, the cruisers USS Vincennes and USS Chancellorville in addition to the fleet support ships. At present, all radars were on standby as they received the E-2s information via high frequency data-link, seeing what it saw. The ships had been at action stations since before dawn when the diesel boat shadowing them had been detected. It was believed that the Prince of Wales, which was between themselves and the threat, would be discovered and attacked first, before both groups could unite, but that wasn’t how it happened.

Eager to avenge the Irkutsk, the captain of the missile submarine, Admiral Dumlev, was already at launch depth and aware of the John F Kennedys location from her own sonar department. She had not transmitted it due to the risk of detection and now she was preparing to fire. The plan called for her to launch on receipt of a code word from an A-50 that was providing airborne control for the mission, when the Backfires had launched. The Dumlev’s captain was not prepared to wait the extra minutes and gave the order to launch. He wanted first blood, in memory of the Irkutsk.

Charlie Whiskey 01 was in the process of hot footing back to the carrier group when the first Chelomey SS-N-19, Granit broke the surface a half mile ahead. Of the twenty-four anti-ship missiles aboard the Admiral Dumlev, the first twenty were armed with 750 kg, high explosive warheads; the last four had 500 kT nuclear warheads. The Sea Hawk helicopter had only one Mk 50 torpedo left. Calling on the other pair of Sea Hawks, Charlie Whiskey 01 dropped on the submerged SSGN.

Seven SS-N-19s had broken the surface and begun their 1.5 mach journeys when the Mk 50 torpedo slammed into the Oscar II.

John F Kennedy received the heads up and all the groups’ air defences went active. A minute later CIC had them.

“Vampires, vampires… range 279 miles, bearing 006’, speed Mach plus .5… scope shows seven inbounds on that bearing!”

The missiles had an initial range and bearing to fly before their own inertial guidance took over. Dumlev had planned on swamping the US air defences with the conventional weapons to give the nuclear tipped warheads a better chance of success. The groups second line of aircraft locked up the inbounds with AIM-120 AMRAAMs and launched. The missiles could intercept cruise missiles flying at Mach 4 and all seven relatively slow Granit missiles fell to the F/A-18Ds AMRAAMs.

Charlie Whiskey 01s Mk 50 torpedoes 100lb warhead lacked the punch of its grown-up relatives. The torpedo strike terminated the launch of the remaining seventeen weapons, despite the captain and his crew’s best efforts; the fire control system was down. They still had propulsion and whilst two compartments were flooded and the port ballast tank ruptured, the vessel could still manoeuvre although it could not go deep. Under the circumstances, the Oscar II could well have escaped and made port for repairs but for the return of the other two UH-60B Sea Hawks that had conducted the search for Irkutsk. A second Mk-50 found its engine compartment, flooded it and deprived the submarine of the power to run or surface. With the enemy air raid closing in the UH-60Bs beat feet, leaving the Admiral Dumlev to slowly sink toward the bottom. At 853 feet the weakened hull imploded, leaving only an oil slick and flotsam to mark her grave.

The F-14s of Nikki’s squadron bore in toward the Su-27s who were flying interference for the bombers. Under E-2 control they launched an AIM-54 Phoenix apiece at the fighters and their second at the Backfires that had appeared beyond them. With their own AWG-9 radars freed up, the Tomcats closed to knife fight range with the Sukhois, on the way they took advantage of their Phoenix missiles arrival which had broken up the PLAAF formation, each aircraft weaved to evade the AIM-54s. At 20 miles range the F-14s pickled off their AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles. Seven AIM-54s had found a target as had fourteen of the twenty AMRAAMs launched.

The Backfires launched at 220 miles out, two regiments of bombers carrying two C.802 missiles apiece, releasing as the Tomcats ten Phoenix missiles arrived, and going active whilst the Backfires were at their most vulnerable. The twenty-one survivors turned for home, their wings swept back and afterburners alight.

The F/A-18Ds of the second line detected the Backfires a minute before release; they launched their AIM-54 Phoenix missiles and went to afterburner. At Mach 3.7 the long range Phoenix’s sprinted ahead while the F/A-18s tried to get to within twenty miles to launch their AMRAAMs at the Backfires but were confronted with sixty inbound anti-ship C.802 missiles, flying only at Mach.8 but at a mere eight feet above the waves. The F/A-18D Hornets had no option but to disregard the fleeing Backfires and hunt the sea skimmers. The Phoenix missiles were left to chase the PLAAF bombers, their inertial guidance taking over from the Hornets.

In the CIC the TAO was confused, a Hornet had a visual on a missile and confirmed its extreme low altitude, he did not know of any sea skimming missile with 200+ mile range but he had to move his reserve Tomcat squadron north to deal with leaker’s from this attack. The ships air defence missiles had a maximum range of 90 kilometres; it was common sense to engage any incoming with aircraft at beyond that range.

Despite the GRI’s pessimism, the Tu-160s approach was so far undetected by the E-2 Hawkeye. They passed below a pair of F/A 18D Hornets, completely undetected. All their C.802 missiles were nuclear tipped, they were 110 miles out and would release at the missiles maximum range, 65 miles.

To the north the Americans were wasting effort and materiel on the Backfires C.802s that were never intended to reach the ships, they would fall into the sea a little over a quarter of the way from their release points.

All 9 Sea Harriers were aloft when the AEW Sea King detected the incoming waves of Russian and PRC aircraft. They released their AIM-58s under the AEW Sea Kings control. Thirty-eight Phoenix missiles would have made a hole in the enemy’s numbers, but they no longer had the Tomcats to support them and their eighteen AIM-54s would represent a chip in comparison. HMS Cuchullainn and USS Dry Springs began launching on the incoming aircraft, the Royal Navy PAAMS, principle anti-air missile system’s Aster 30 missile and United States Navy’s SM-2 MR missiles had comparable ranges, reaching out to 90 km. When the threat closed the RN Destroyer would employ Sea Dart and then finally Sea Wolf missiles. The USN Destroyer had ship-launched Sea Sparrow for intermediate range air defence and SM-1 MR missiles for closer to home.

At sixty feet altitude all six Tu-160 bombers released their nuclear tipped C.802 missiles and banked hard as the twelve missiles dropped to 8 ft above the waves and accelerated north.

The Hawkeye detected the twelve inbounds from the south and the AEGIS cruisers and destroyers began launching SM-2 missiles. The two southern most frigates launched SM1 missiles and their Phalanx close-in weapon systems began to look for targets using FLIR, forward looking infrared sensors to pick out the heat given off by the inbounds along with radar.

Nine of the twelve C.802s fell to the SM-2 and 1 air defence missiles.

USS Norwich Falls Phalanx system shredded one of the pair of missiles heading its way, at half a mile out. Its neighbour, USS Timmings was expending 20mm depleted uranium tipped cannon shells at 3000 rounds per minute, the shells tore into the waves, just shy of its target. In the frigates CIC, the personnel watched with growing feelings of horror as the sea skimmer got ever closer. A crewman began to utter a prayer under his breath and reached for his rosary. The Phalanx magazine aboard the newer Norwich Falls held 1550 rounds when full, the Timmings held 989. At 800 yards from the Timmings her Phalanx finally destroyed the missile, her magazine had just 2 rounds remaining. A cheer broke the tension in the Timmings CIC and the TAO had turned to make some relieved comment to a crewman at his elbow. The monitor screens for the exterior cameras went blank. The photonic flash of a nuclear detonation burnt out the Timmings exterior cameras and the eyes of four crewmen looking astern at that moment.

USS Norwich Falls had emptied her 20mm magazine when her target was 500 yards away. Her aluminium hull was breached by the missile that penetrated to just short of the vessels centreline before its 2-kiloton warhead detonated.

Lt Fu Shen was muttering beneath his breath as he waited impatiently for Major Lee to fire or clear. They were engaged in a dogfight with nine Royal Navy Sea Harriers, they outnumbered the enemy by three to one and that was causing the PLAN pilots difficulties. There were too many of the big Sukhois chasing too few targets. The Sea Harriers low speed and greater manoeuvrability had already caused one mid-air collision between PRC aircraft. The young pilot knew that the only way to end this quickly was for them to put distance between the British fighters and then use missiles and the Su-27s superior speed to chop the Sea Harriers from the air, but who was he, just a lowly lieutenant. The British had intercepted them on the way to their air strike on the mixture of USN and RN ships.

Their top CAP of Mig-32s had dropped the ball, being out of position and now were taking their sweet time getting down.

Major Lee was cursing as he struggled to stay above a stall, his HUDs gun-sight flicked to red and he loosed a stream of 23mm cannon at his target, only it was no longer there, the Sea Harrier had broken high right and Major Lee swore aloud, banking to follow. He forgot his air speed until the stall warning sounded in his ears. He was so close! Just a little more… he switched from guns to AA-8 Aphids and listened for the tone, ignoring the stall warning, finger poised… another second and he would have tone. His stomach rose to meet his throat as the aircraft dropped beneath him as he departed controlled flight. Lt Fu Chen looked in frustration at his leaders’ antics and dismissed the temptation to take the shot himself, his duty as a wingman was to cover his leader and he dutifully followed him down.

Lt Nikki Pelham also had her hands full at that moment. The Su-27s that had preceded the way for the Backfires had not disengaged when the bombers had, choosing instead to mix it with the USN aviators. The fight here was more evenly matched, parachutes drifted down to the ocean thirteen thousand feet below. The dogfight had started at thirty-six thousand but had gradually lost altitude as dogfights often do. She had lost her wingman, there had been nothing on the radio, he was just gone and not answering her calls for assistance.

She was up against two of the enemy and although she had scored on one with her guns, nothing vital had apparently been hit but she was two up in total, one to an AMRAAM and one to a sidewinder at the start of the fight. She had no idea whether her two AIM-54s had scored and at the moment she had far more important things on her mind. With all the sophisticated equipment at her fingertips, the most important items right now were her RIOs eyes, he was twisting around, calling out the enemy’s whereabouts over the intercom as she tried to shake them off and get into a firing position behind them. She became aware that there were no other aircraft in view and it seemed that only moments ago the air had been filled with machines.

HMS Cuchullainn and the frigate USS Dry Springs were a quarter of a mile apart and racing to rejoin the group at twenty-nine knots apiece. Cuchullainn could manage thirty-six knots but stayed abreast of her partner.

The tows had been cut adrift once the PRC and Russians had committed themselves to the attack. Su-32FN fighter bombers had launched their first salvo of AS-18 anti-ship missiles at 100km out, but both ships had kept the reflectors between themselves and the attackers, relying on their medium and short range missile armament to pick off those missiles not obviously targeted on the decoys. The towed radar reflectors were gone now, torn asunder by anti-ship missiles in the first wave leaving the ships naked but for the helicopters that acted as detached decoys. Aster 30 and SM-2 missiles from the two ships were assisted by those from the Prince of Wales intercepting the second wave but the two ships magazines had fired their last long and medium range missiles. Cuchullainn’s Sea Wolf, short-range missiles were now the only missile cover available to the two ships as the Su-32s closed in. They had released only half of the anti-ship ordnance that they carried.

Alarms sounded aboard John F Kennedy as sensors detected the nuclear detonation eight miles away. On all ships of the group, men prayed as they went about their tasks and braced themselves for the shockwave and against the tilt of the deck as ships heeled hard over, seeking to put their bows toward the storm and presenting the smallest surface area. The danger of collision was high; John F Kennedy could not turn like a frigate.

In CIC the TAO was thrown off his feet as a giant hand slapped the ships huge exposed surface area. The carrier was virtually broadside on to the blast wave and the TAO hit the deck and continued sliding toward a bulkhead as the deck tilted further and further over.

HMS Hood was barely making headway as she closed on the fleeting contact ahead of her. The Russian submarine was deep, well below the Hood’s own crush depth, which meant it could only be an Alpha class attack boat. The Hood’s captain could only speculate as to how the Russian could launch from its present depth. Had his own vessel been able to go so deep, it would take virtually all their reserve air just to get the weapon clear of the tube.

When they had first detected the Alpha, the Hood had slowly risen, using the thermal layer to mask the sound of their outer doors opening before descending again. The Russian was moving with great caution, which meant they knew Hood was in the vicinity. The fleeting contact made for haphazard ranging so Hood again rose above the thermal layer. The Hoods plan was to launch four torpedoes, run them out at slow speed before turning them in toward the target. The Alpha would undoubtedly launch back along the approaching torpedoes heading. If it launched more than one in reply, from that depth, then they obviously had solved the problem of expending too much air reserve whilst firing at extreme depth, a problem not yet cracked by the west. Each torpedo was set to steer toward a different point along the bearing that the Alpha was believed to be on. If it worked, then at least one would detect the target on its passive sensors, indicating as such down the long filament that connected it to the Hood.

“Fire two,” the captain almost whispered.

“Two fired sir.”

“Fire four.”

“Four fired sir.”

“Fire one.”

“One fired sir.”

“Fire three.”

“Three fired sir… all weapons running normally skipper.”

They could not reload the tubes without cutting the wires with which they steered the torpedoes that were running east and slowly diving to 1000 ft.

The forward torpedo room stood by to reload the tubes as the Hood sank below the layer once more, where she could again hear the Russian as he searched for them.

Cuchullainn fired her last Sea Wolf, targeting on the closest of the eighteen missiles rapidly closing on the two ships, they now only had the distant ships missiles for protection along with their own Phalanx ‘last ditch’ systems and chaff dischargers.

Mig-29s had joined in the melee’ with the Sea Harriers. A few Su-27s had ditched their bomb loads at the start of the fight, the remainder kept them, using the drag of the ordnance to their advantage as they tried to come to grips with the slower Sea Harriers.

Major Lee led eight of the Flankers from the fight; their A-50 controller now had the Prince of Wales on its screens, beyond the decoying warships. A trail of smoke hung in the air above the main group of ships, marking the plummet of the AEW helicopter that had fallen to a pair of the long-range AA-11 Archer missiles.

Lt Fu Chen looked to the horizon and swallowed hard, a distinctive mushroom shaped cloud climbed toward the stratosphere. Closer to home a violent explosion caught his eye, he was not to know it but it was the Royal Navy Destroyer, HMS Cuchullainn, two

AS-18 missiles had escaped the Phalanx gun above her helicopter hangar and disregarded the clouds of chaff to pop up and dive down near vertically. 640kg of explosives arriving at 285 feet per second tore through the vessel that broke in two, sinking within the hour.

Ahead of Lt Fu Chen’s formation there appeared a frigate, tracers rose at them from machine guns mounted along the side, dirty grey puffs of smoke spotted the path ahead of them from its single turret mounted gun, then he was past. The aircraft split into pairs to single out ships for attention. He ducked as both aircraft to his right exploded, hit by anti-aircraft missiles. He heard Major Lee cry out on the radio and Fu Chen banked to the right as the majors aircraft slowly rolled onto its back and dived into the ocean, its cockpit shredded with the shrapnel of an air-bursting shell. Ahead of the young pilot was the British carrier, far smaller than his own ship. Selecting the FAB-100 bombs he aimed along the ships centreline and as the laser, bomb-aiming system sounded a rapid pulse in his ears, he pickled the four bombs away. He banked right; looking over his shoulder as he did so, determined to watch the fall of his bomb load. Three tall pillars of water straddled the warship and one of smoke and debris rose from its flight deck. Fu Chen was cheering aloud when something sent his aircraft pitching nose upwards and rattling his teeth as his helmeted head was hammered backwards into the seat. His left engine’s fire warning light was lit but there was no light indicating the automatic extinguisher had activated. He shut down the engine and the fire warning light flickered, and then went out.

Finding his aircraft far less responsive than was desirable, Lt Fu Chen took stock and found he had passed beyond the ships. There were no other aircraft in sight and his radio was dead, as was his systems management suite, without it he was in the dark as to what functioned and what did not. The touch-screen instrument that enabled him to see at a glance, the state of his airframe was blank. His HUD showed the current level of his fuel but it was sinking fast and he no longer had the ability see what was broken.

He completed a gentle turn for home, wondering how he was going to land the wounded machine when he got there.

To Lt Nikki Pelham, the dogfight seemed to have lasted hours’, she could not shake the pair of Sukhoi-27 fighters unaided and no one answered her calls for assistance. She had tried to extend but the furthest PLAAF fighter had locked her up and Chubby Checkernovski had thrown up in his mask once they had avoided the AA-8 Aphid that had been loosed at them. The ocean was only a thousand feet below, once less dimension available to her limited list of options. The Su-27s broke, discharging chaff and flares as they pulled high gee’s. Nikki pushed the throttles to zone 5 afterburner, determined to regain some height and banked right to engage the Flanker that had broken to the west.

“Bad guy to the east’s got a missile chasing him!” shouted Chubby. Nikki was fixed on the Flanker ahead of her and didn’t look at what the RIO was watching. She killed the afterburner and the wings swept forward to 50’ as the speed bled off. The Tomcats manoeuvre had brought them in on the Flankers port quarter and Nikki got tone from her AIM-9 Sidewinders. The PRC pilot had been attempting to catch whoever had his wingman locked up in a scissors, trying to get into a firing position behind it. The PLAAF fighters wings were swept fully forward as it banked hard, and it was the worst position he could have been in when Nikki called ‘Fox Two’, announcing she had fired a Sidewinder missile. The PLAAF pilot’s only option was to punch out flares in an attempt to decoy the heat seeking missile and continue his present manoeuvre, rolling away into a dive, but he was out of time and airspeed. The Sidewinder flew straight and true into the Su-27s port engine nacelle and Nikki rolled hard left to avoid the airborne debris.

“There’s a Harrier over there,” Chubby informed her. The sky was devoid of other aircraft as the RN Sea Harrier tucked itself in on her port wing. Glancing across she saw its hard points were bare of ordnance and a cannon shell had left a jagged hole in its starboard wing. Chubby dialled up the Prince of Wales air groups frequency, “Harrier on my wing, this is Cobra One-Six, I owe you a beer fella!”

“Roger Cobra, this is Papa Zero-Two… right now I’d settle for a place to put down, Bravo Charlie has a hole in it and is closed for business at this time.” Bravo Charlie was the Prince of Wales; apparently it had taken damage from the air raid.

“I copy that Papa, are you alone, have the rest of your guys recovered to Alpha Charlie?” Meaning her own ship, the John F Kennedy.

“Cobra, I am not sure that there are any other Papa’s remaining.” The British pilot was calm and matter of fact. Nikki suddenly realised with a start that perhaps they too may be all that remained of their squadron.

“Roger Papa, hold still while we look you over for damage, then follow us home.”

The four Spearfish torpedoes had completed their turn eleven minutes before, approaching the invisible line, somewhere along which the enemy Alpha was still heading. Hoods captain was unconsciously drumming his fingers as he leant against a bulkhead, willing at least one of the weapons to acquire the Alpha on its passive sensors. A crewman handed him a mug of tea and held up the open end of a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits. Nodding his thanks the captain took one and dunked it in the tea, welcoming the distraction as he judged the right moment to remove the biscuit. Too long and the biscuit became soggy and broke off, leaving a soggy mess at the bottom of the mug.

“Still negative on all weapons, skipper,” a voice informed him. Distracted by the speaker, he removed the biscuit which bent limply where it had been immersed, he quickly tried to bite the endangered section but his teeth closed on air, the soggy section dropped back into the tea, splashing his white shirt as it did so.

“Bollocks!” he muttered.

“Run time remaining, please?” he enquired.

“Four and a half minutes on number four, skipper.” That had been the first torpedo launched, after that time the weapon would reach the end of its filament thin wire and be beyond their ability to send steering commands.

The captain took a sip of tea and came to a decision.

“What’s the heading of number four?”

“202 degrees, sir.”

He was going to take a chance and try to provoke the Russian into reacting.

“Change its heading to 340’ and go active on number four only.”

“Change heading on number four to heading of three-four-zero degrees and go active on number four only… aye sir.”

He was gambling that the Alpha would be between the furthest torpedoes heading and the second or third torpedoes out of the tubes.

“Skipper… firm fix on Sierra Two Seven, range 9250 yards, bearing 170’, heading 180’ speed… Transient! Transient!..torpedo in the water bearing 170’… Sierra Two Seven has launched along number fours bearing… skipper, number three and four have acquired, three has gone active!”

Aboard Gegarin her skipper ordered countermeasures launched and a torpedo launched along the approaching torpedoes heading, seeking the enemy submarine that had launched it. Unlike the Hood, and the rest of the world’s submarine fleets, her torpedoes were launched in a cocoon, to protect it from damage whilst a piston drove it from the tube. The deeper the vessel was the more compressed air was required to launched the torpedo from the tube in the conventional manner and so the piston system allowed it to launch from great depth. Once clear the cocoon was discarded and the weapon sped on its way. Air used to launch the weapon was not vented into the sea behind the torpedo as it left the tube but was released back into the vessel’s reserve through valves.

The Alpha’s power plant drove the single screw to higher revolutions and the deck heeled over as the boat turned hard to port, only to find itself head to head with a second torpedo approaching from a different bearing altogether. More noisemakers were ejected as the Alpha reversed its turn.

Hood’s torpedo number four had been dummied by the first noisemakers, diving through the right hand counter-measure and continued to turn in an attempt to reacquire. Number three also chased a noisemaker and the Gegarin’s captain, on hearing the danger pass, ordered their turn reversed once more, ejecting another pair of noisemakers into their wake.

There were now six counter-measures mimicking the sound of a submarine at high rate of turn and two torpedoes close by, manoeuvring at 60 knots. With their own vessel now at twenty-eight knots it was impossible for the Gegarin’s sonar operators to keep track of where everything was, had they been able then her captain would not have reversed their turn that second time. With only fifteen seconds fuel remaining, torpedo number four detonated against the Alpha’s titanium bow as they met at a closing speed of 88 knots. At a depth of 1600 feet, the dynamic change in air pressure, as the bow disintegrated, ignited the air within the vessel, immolating the crew and detonating the torpedo warheads in her after torpedo room.

Hood immediately reversed course and sprinted away at flank speed for five minutes, using the reverberations as cover, putting distance between herself and the scene that would surely attract attention on the surface.

Once clear the Hood resumed her stalk of the, not too distant carrier groups which had again turned north into the wind to recover its air wings. Hood was almost abeam the lead ships.

Not a problem, thought the captain as he went about amending his original plan of attack.

Blistered paintwork, bent, twisted radio and radar masts, marred the John F Kennedy’s looks. Seawater was drenching her superstructure from sprinklers and hoses, as crewmembers in NBC clothing carried out decontamination drills. One of John F Kennedy’s UH-60 Sea Hawks had lifted off to do a damage assessment and head count, they came up three short, soon to be four.

The frigates USS Timmings and Norwich Falls were gone, disappeared without trace. The destroyer USS Timothy Hughes, had been capsized by the nuclear blast wave, all that remained visible of her was ten feet of charred stern, protruding above the waves. Soon to join them was the Ammunition ship USNS Ponder, AE-59, lying far astern, dead in the water and her superstructure engulfed in flames. Helicopters from the group shuttled the survivors to safety. The group could not expend the time in trying to save her, nor to search for survivors trapped within the hull of the Timothy Hughes.

Admiral C. Dalton, commanding the carrier group, called a meeting of the command staff. The air wing had not yet begun to recover and until new antennas had been jury rigged; the flagship was employing one of the E-2 Hawkeye’s, sat on a decontaminated area of deck as a command and control centre.

“Either way you look at it, we got our butts kicked. Coming north in the hope our satellite Intel would be restored in time to launch a strike at their carriers, the gamble didn’t come off.” He looked at his staff.

“Unless someone has a better idea, we head south at best possible speed?”

There were no dissenters.

“CAG, what state is the air wing in?”

“We lost Bobby Quinn and half of his F-14s, two F/A-18s from the Vipers and four from the Rattlers, we assume they were caught in the blast… ordnance is another issue, apart from what they bring back, and this ships magazine, that’s it. The bulk was aboard the Ponder.”

The TAO interrupted.

“It may not be quite that bad, the Brit Fleet Auxiliary has its inventory of air weapons.”

The CAG frowned.

“What about the Prince of Wales air wing, is there enough to go around?”

TAO waved a message form.

“Prince of Wales took a bomb through the flight deck, fires under control but she’s limited to VTOL operations only, as for her air wing, well… … only two made it, they are in the pattern, recovering here.”

“Okay,” began the CO.

“Keep the Snakes aloft, if I were the other guy I would be recovering airframes and turning them around for a second strike so CAG, get the remainder down and get them turned around also, those that can be.” Turning to the TAO he held a finger up.

“One, replenish the groups air defence stores asap. Two, we need to join with the Prince of Wales and her ships, we are light three AEGIS capable hulls, we need to incorporate hers, the sooner the better.”

With limited communications, the USS John F Kennedy was not aware that HMS Cuchullainn had exploded and sunk, nor too that the USS Dry Springs was sinking, her stern having been blown off.

South-southeast of the island of Komandorskiye Ostrova the Mao was recovering the first of its aircraft. Stood on the bridge, Admiral Li barked a command at his air operations staff

“I want the air wing rearmed as soon as they land, I want a second strike ready as soon as the Russian’s have the post-strike reconnaissance results!” Captain Hong stood at his post quietly, confining himself to the business of running the ship.

“What… is that!” He heard the Admiral demand, pointing aft. The Bridge now had its video monitors functioning and Hong looked at the screens. A dark smoky trail, a half-mile long announced a battle-damaged aircraft on approach.

“The damaged aircraft are landing first, those with wounded aircrew have priority… ” The senior air operations officer was explaining.

Cutting him short, the Admiral snapped. “Wave it off!” He rounded on the officer.

“Damaged aircraft will hinder the preparation of a second strike, make them circle… they can land later.”

The operations officer opened his mouth to protest but the Admiral had turned his back on him with the words.

“I will not have my victory jeopardised by your incompetence!”

Lt Fu Cheng had been slated number four in the landing pattern until he and the other damaged aircraft were sent into a holding pattern. One of his squadron mates had been number one in the pattern, losing blood from a thigh wound as he began his approach, Fu Chen watched as the stricken aircraft was waved off, the trail of black smoke continued over the flight deck and then on into the distance. Fu Chen called his fellow pilot over the radio but there was no reply, although he did not know if his malfunctioning radio was transmitting or not at the time.

Captain Hong kept his face impassive as he listened to the young officer calling his friend; the Bridge speaker for that squadron’s channel issued only static in reply. Captain Hong was staring in contempt at his Admirals back when the sound of the first of HMS Hood’s Spearfish announced its arrival.

Six miles ahead, a black and orange fireball arose, marking the spot where a torpedo had found a Zhuhai class frigates magazine.

“Sound of explosion at 308’, Captain!”

The captain had been watching the digital timers displaying the torpedoes run times. In a slight variation of his plan, the Spearfish had been sent curving around to attack from the northeast. The best he had hoped for was his sonar department reporting a flurry of activity as his torpedoes were detected; a hit was a bonus.

The Harpoons were programmed to fly on courses that diverged initially, before flying a zigzag route to their release points, where they would home on the largest targets whilst providing a difficult task of interception to the defenders. He called to his Number One. “Why don’t you do the honours.”

His second in command gave a nod of thanks before giving the commands to launch the anti-ship missiles.

The Admiral had ordered the Mao’s speed cut to the minimum required to recover their aircraft. Captain Hong suspected it was fear rather than prudence that had instigated the order, allowing their escorts to enter the believed danger zone, where a submarine lurked ahead of them.

The first warning they had of the Harpoons approach was thump of the mortars discharging, launching their projectiles high above the ship where they burst apart scattering chaff. The Mao's command centre announced the nature of the threat moments later over the tannoy and Hong ordered the helmsman to turn hard to starboard where they would present a smaller radar profile. Only two of the air wing had been recovered, the remainder went ballistic, seeking protection in altitude from their own sides air defences rather than an unhappy collision with an inbound anti-ship missile.

Unlike the anti-ship missile attack on the Americans and British, the Russian and PRC ships did not have the luxury of several score miles in which to intercept the inbounds, Hood had launched from a mere 9 miles away.

J-Band tracking radars picked up the inbounds, feeding data to the PLAN’s Hongqi-7, air defence missile systems. Yet another stolen invention from the west, where its French inventors called it the Crotale.

Aboard the Russian ships, their Klinok, close-in SAM systems performed the same tasks.

The Harpoons solid boosters provided 660lb of thrust as the missiles bore in at Mach.9. Admiral Li was pounding his fist on the edge of the bridge wing as the leading Harpoons constant course changes steered it through the defending air defence missiles. At last, one defender intercepted it a quarter of a mile from the Mao and Li staggered back in reaction to the two warheads combined detonation. There were still three heading toward the carriers and Li brushed a signaller out of his way as he sought safety below.

With the eighth and last Harpoon away the Hood sprinted east, putting distance, and depth, between the enemy surface ships and herself. She released a communications buoy as she went, its transmissions detailing her attacks on the Alpha and carriers.

Three hours’ later, a now debugged satellite surveillance system, downloaded the images of ships heading for the port of Ust’-Kamchatsk. Both carriers had taken a single hit apiece but their bulk had absorbed the damage, it would take more than that to put them on the bottom, they were walking wounded only.

Twenty miles behind them bobbed an orange life raft containing a young Chinese pilot, Lt Fu Chen had punched out of his crippled Flanker as the fuel tanks ran dry, by which time the warships were already departing the area at best speed. The young officer had managed to get ahead of the surface ships before ejecting, confident on his being picked up by a ship or helicopter as they passed by, hailing them from the life raft and releasing distress flares. All the helicopters were on ASW duty, none of the warships or fleet supply vessels had stopped, all had their orders from the Admiral, stop for no man. News of the executions, within minutes of his arrival on the flagship, had made the rounds of the ships under his command and no-one was willing to risk a bullet by disobeying. As the last ship disappeared from sight Fu Chen regarded the empty container of distress flares that he held, he was about to toss it over the side when he decided it may have some future use and he tucked it into a pocket of his flight suit.

“Ah… nu nu!” he shouted at the distant horizon. ‘‘Tits!’’ was about the strongest verbal expression of dejection he had left in him.

The first twenty vehicles of the US ^5th Armoured Division had already been loaded aboard ships when the order came to take them all off and entrain them again, this time for San Diego and San Francisco.

The first troops of the division had begun their air journey to Europe only to be turned around, brought back and transferred to California bound flights.

All, good, military organisations train regularly, be it in practical, hands on, exercises or TEWTs, tactical exercises without troops. The movement planners had actually solved far worse problems in theoretical exercises, moving trains, planes and ships toward a jungle theatre and then redeploying the whole shebang to invade Antarctica. The about-face they had been presented with was a less taxing scenario, but a logistical frightmare all the same.

Small details fall off the edge of the table at the best of times, the planners had X number of vehicles, stores and personnel that had been Europe bound and they re-routed X to Australia. Amid the catch-all ‘X’ was a ‘Q’ that was overlooked.

Captain Hector Sinclair Obediah Wantage-Ferdoux, 1^st Royal Tank Regiment, 1RTR, Officer Commanding the unit known locally as Queen Elizabeth’s Combat Team, had been trying without success to contact the British Military Liaison at the Pentagon. The Pentagon had been evacuated and dispersed and no one was prepared to give the liaison’s new number to a foreigner who sounded like the character ‘Higgins’ in Magnum P.I, and calling from a dockside payphone in Texas. His next attempt had been the British Embassy but that too had been evacuated and no-one was sure where it had been evacuated to. The United Kingdom’s Embassy building at 3100 Massachusetts Avenue had been severely damaged in the nuclear explosion and lay downwind of ground zero. There were no senior embassy staff left in the USA, they and the military attaché had been sharing the same Limo, stopped in traffic at the junction of 3^rd Street and Pennsylvania Avenue when the bomb had detonated.

Washington DC was a disaster zone and it would be quite some time until the system reset and lines of communication were restored to something approaching normal.

The only facts that Heck was sure of were that his boys and girls, their equipment and stores, were included in the redeployment. Putting down the telephone he thanked the dock manager and returned to the quayside. There was nothing for them to do at present and he was about to make his way back to the troops. The outer office had a television and CNN was devoting the vast majority of its airtime to the conflict. The pictures on screen of the devastation in the heart of America’s capital were horrifying. Heck had stood in silence, along with others. Nuclear war was a horror no sane person should ever inflict upon humanity; the sense of disbelief in the room was more intense even that displayed when the airliners had flown into the twin towers. At the end of the Washington report there followed an item on the events in the Pacific, including very brief details of a sea battle, more news on that as it becomes available, said the anchor person.

On the quayside there was a Soccer international in progress, it was not following FA rules inasmuch as each side had approximately three times more players than the rules allowed. The score stood at an amazing 23–27 and Great Britain had control of the ball. Sgt Rebecca Hemmings, of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, flew down the right wing, skilful ball control evident as she beat four US players in a row. Her hair was a wet plastered mop; boots and clothing were squelching water as she ran with the ball at her feet.

In the localised rules of the game being played here on the quayside in Texas, the player responsible for kicking the ball out of play had to fetch it back. If it went in one direction in particular, the player got extremely wet.

The retrieval of the ball from that direction was a cause of much amusement, but for some reason it was also greeted with enthusiasm by the other players and spectators alike, if it had been kicked out of play by a female. Players of both sexes found such feeble excuses as the non-ability to swim, fell on deaf ears. If the offender did not immediately plunge in, they were unceremoniously thrown in after it.

Captain King was stood on the quay watching the game when Heck returned.

“What’s happening?” he asked Heck.

“I couldn’t find out, things are understandably a bit chaotic, I cannot imagine that the situation will improve any time soon, so you may well be stuck with us Tone.”

Daniel nodded.

“Divisional staff are getting a briefing, we may know more then. I just phoned my wife, how about you?”

Heck shook his head.

“No point really, not until I know something. I suppose from your West Coast we could be going about anywhere… opening up a second front in Shanghai or reinforce Taiwan even, though I rather doubt that it is tank country, is it?”

“Mountains and a thin coastal strip, more suited to light infantry and mountain troops.”

“Just as well I joined the for the mystery and adventure, really.”

Daniel offered him a cigarette and they lit up.

“So what made you join the Army, Tone?”

Danny shrugged.

“We lived in Detroit, my Pa, Uncles and older brothers all worked at the plant, making cars, I just wanted something more. Worked hard at school, got to college and joined the Officer Training Corps… on account I was sweet on a girl who was OTC.”

“Is that your wife now?”

“Hell no!” Daniel chuckled, “Turned out I was the wrong gender… if you get my drift?” He looked at Heck.

“How about you?”

“Sorry old man, I don’t much fancy you either… no offence of course?” He paused to watch as a penalty was taken, he didn’t think that the shooter had much hope of getting it past the wall made up of two dozen opposing players.

“It’s a family thing, we all join the regiment, for a few years at least… with the exception of my cousin and great uncle of course.”

“Why of course?” Daniel asked.

“Cousin Armitage is as queer as a coot… but then, he was at Eton, so it’s only to be expected. Great Uncle George, now he didn’t join the regiment on account of being as mad as a box of frogs… ran around naked with his pubic hair on fire rather a lot.”

Daniel was smiling.

“I thought all you guys went to Eton?”

Heck was horrified.

“Lord no… buggered senseless the moment you step through the door, by all accounts. I went to Harrow and then to Cambridge.”

A Humvee arrived, stopping beside the dock office and members of the senior divisional staff appeared from the vehicle.

“Well,” said Daniel.

“We may not find out where we are headed but it’s time to get the show on the road.”

The Yorkshire Yeomanry and Recce Platoon, 1CG, were falling back before the advance of what they now knew to be, forward elements of the 2^nd Shock Army.

In front of 3 (UK) Mechanised Brigade were two motor rifle and one armoured division, man for man the Brits were outnumbered 12-1, the story was the same for the French on their right and the Americans on their left. Behind them sat a line of German brigades whom they would pass through to dig in and prepare another line of defence, when the time came. The strategy was to delay the enemy until the heavy convoys arrived with reinforcements from across the Atlantic. Falling back whilst bleeding the invaders as they did so. Colin Probert was just concerned that they were possibly going to be defending Calais by the time the cavalry arrived. He had got about two hours’ sleep following stand-to, after which the Royal Engineers had arrived and dug hull-down positions for the QRFs Warrior APCs.

During the early hours’, at the same time as Colin’s patrol had got noisy on the east side of the river, the Czechs had tried something similar on the forward slopes of 1 Company’s position, but at night they were just ambush bait.

The Czechs had tried to recce the location and had been chopped up, some had got away with enough of an idea of where the Forward Line of Troops was and as such the FLOT was likely to come in for some attention very soon.

All the enemy recce units that had been located over the previous two days had left been more or less unmolested, that changed with the news that the main force had crossed the border and the mortar platoons had performed shoot and scoot’s. It was inevitable that the enemy would have learnt something of genuine use to them, but a fair deception plan had been in force. The British had deliberately skirted some areas, hinting at minefields and driven along narrow unmarked lanes in real ones. Dummy positions had been in use, false radio traffic from dummy headquarters, in fact anything to throw the enemy off, even slightly. The Red Army recce troops had noted all of this, but with the coming of the assault their recce troops unwitting usefulness was at an end, and the mortars stonked their positions.

Colin was doing the rounds, ensuring that everyone was set and nothing had been left above ground. Everyone was wearing their NBC suits, but no masks yet. NBC clothing hampers and reduces a man’s effectiveness but without it he is as good as dead if chemical weapons are used. Just because they had not been employed in Belorussia did not mean they would be lucky here. Black rubber gloves, reaching halfway to the elbows were adorned with the soldiers watches, so time could be told without their breaking the integrity of their suits. Clumsy looking over-boots protected their feet, plastic soles and rubberised material formed a barrier to chemicals. Colin often wondered why they were called ‘NBC suits’, nuclear, biological and chemical protective, because the ‘Noddy suit’ gave the very minimum of protection from radiation and germ warfare agents.

There was sporadic firing from the east and Colin let his boys know what he did, that the Yeomanry, Recce Platoon and the attached anti-tank section was sniping at the lead formation. The helicopter battle had already started and NATO had been in for a nasty shock. Unlike their attack on Belorussia, the Czech and Russian forces they faced here had more up to date rotary kit, Kamov KA-52 ‘Alligators’, KA-50 ‘Hocum’s’ and Mi-28 ‘Havocs’ that had swept ahead of the ground forces. These one and two seat machines were nothing short of rotary wing fighter aircraft. Their primary target had been the NATO helicopter gunships. The Kamov’s were impervious to most ground fire, titanium armour protected the vitals. The MI-28 Havocs were not quite so well protected, having steel armour plate instead of titanium but you did not want to mess with them either.

CSM Probert was lying at the rear of one of the trenches, talking with its young occupants. He had been asked to adjudicate in a debate, of obvious importance to two soldiers about to see combat for the first time. If you only had an hour to live, which female singer would it be with?

“Okay,” said Colin. “At what level are we talking, holding hands and watching the sunset?”

“Be real sir!” Guardsman Robertson explained.

“One hour left to live out a fantasy… it would have to be in a hot tub,” he decided.

Next to him Guardsman Aldridge was nodding in agreement and added.

“And loads of bottles of crazy juice?” Robertson obviously thought this was an excellent idea too.

Colin smiled.

“All right, you have a hot tub, as much Newcastle Brown Ale as you can drink. Who’s at the head of the running order?

“Katy Perry or Selena Gomez.” Robertson said, looking at his oppo for confirmation and Aldridge nodded rapidly in agreement.

“And you think you are going to get them in the mood with Newcastle Brown?” queried Colin.

“Yeah… why not?” The dashing young romantics from Tyne and Weir answered in unison.

“Come on boys, two fit gorgeous creatures who are used to living in style… ..really?”

They both went into a huddle for a brief discussion before Robertson announced.

“A bottle of sweet white for the winner, then.”

Colin slowly smiled.

“Why not both, why not a threesome… after all, it is your last thirty-six hundred seconds of life?”

“Yeah, wicked!” declared Aldridge.

Both young men were happy now.

“The problem is though… ,” said Colin slowly.

“How are you going to leave a lasting impression in only an hour… I mean, you want to leave them with a good impression, don’t you?”

Satisfied that he had managed to sow confusion in their young minds, he moved on to the next position. He was half way there when he heard the moan of approaching artillery shells.

“Incoming!”

He sprinted the last ten feet and landed amongst the occupants of that trench in a heap.

All shell bursts, bomb bursts, smoke or strange mist are treated the same way. Biological and chemical weapons can be delivered in many ways and artillery is a favourite of the Red Army.

“Gas! Gas! Gas!”

Although the drills state you have to be properly masked up within nine seconds, which was a rather optimistic figure. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, British Special Forces came across a Mujahedin ambush in the mountains. Along a ridge was a line of tribesmen, all well camouflaged and already in the aim so as not to alert the enemy by unnecessary movement when they eventually turned up. It was a good site that they had picked, not too obvious, with little cover from fire or from view in the kill zone. It also had a good choice of egress routes for the ambushers. The only trouble was the ambushers were already dead when the enemy came and went unmolested. There were no bulging eyes, no terrible rictus of death with hooked fingers frozen in the act of clawing at throats in an effort to gain one last breath. They had just died, with no warning whatsoever, from a nerve agent sprayed by aircraft upwind of them.

Everywhere, the drill was carried out hurriedly, helmet off, mask on, hood up, buddy-buddy check the seals, helmet back on again. On the outside of their NBC suits, each soldier places sticky-back patches of litmus detector paper, if a chemical comes into contact with it, it will change colour. The section commanders and above had different detector paper, if their paper turns dark green, a nerve agent in vapour form is present. Yellow indicates a nerve agent gas and red is for a blister agent. At least that was what the manual claimed; Colin had personal experience in the Gulf War of the paper turning dark brown and even gold. The simple rule was, if it changes colour… worry!

Their own position received relatively little attention in that first opening barrage, which is more than could be said for the forward slopes, the known and the suspected targets, identified by physical reconnaissance and Elint, electronic Intel in the form of radio direction finding.

The Soviets have long been lovers of rocket artillery from multiple launch tubes, for similar reasons that the Luftwaffe placed sirens on the bottoms of Junkers, Ju-87 Stuka dive-bombers. The banshee shrieks of their imminent arrival tears at the nerves and induces panic. Although not terribly accurate, the warheads pack a punch, as the battalion was to discover. Bm-21 ‘Grads’ scattered their 40x122mm rockets from the backs of lorries, as they followed behind the advance. Further back, Bm-27 ‘Urgan’s’ 220mm loads joined the more modern 9A52-2 ‘Smerch’s’ 300mm rockets, in giving the rear areas their indiscriminate attention.

The trench was dug for two men and not three, Colin bundled the lawful occupants into the covered shelter bay whilst he crouched in the firing bay and waited for the initial barrage of the rear to lighten. He left the trench and crawled back to his own, midway he noticed the detector paper on his left sleeve turn yellow. Chemical attacks come in various forms, ‘blood agents’ will turn your blood to quick drying cement, and ‘nerve agents’ will attack your nervous system, while you are busy thrashing on the ground, your lungs fill with fluid and effectively you drown. Choking agents are heavier than air gases, very effective against entrenched positions, whilst everyone is sheltering from the barrage below ground, the gases flow, seeking the lowest point, pouring unseen into trenches and displacing the breathable air. In short, you either choke to death or get above ground and above the rising level of gas… into the shrapnel filled environment you originally dug the trench to escape.

Colin got back to his own trench where he could see Oz’s eyes behind the respirator screw up in a smile, glad to see his old mate back safe and sound. Colin crawled into the shelter bay where he used a field telephone to send a ‘Chemrep’ to the battalion CP, informing them that chemical weapons were in use.

The QRF were dug in under the trees, making use of their natural cover. To the left was a wide clearing on a gentle slope and to the right, the woods ran down hill to the Muhlsdorf/Liebethal road beside the river.

Colin had finished his report when they came under rather more attention by tube as well as rocket bombardment for a full twenty minutes, which is not long considering a two hour bombardment is considered a light working over according to the Red Army manuals.

As suddenly as it started it finished, and Colin stuck his head over the parapet, giving Oz the thumbs up and they left the trench, separating to check on their boys. In the first two trenches the Guardsmen were okay but shaken, the third trench revealed a lance corporal trying to rouse his mate who was blocking the way out of the shelter bay. Colin helped him pull the still form clear and a quick examination showed a very slightly bloody rent in the man’s NBC suit where a piece of shrapnel from an airburst had found the limb nearest the shelter bay entrance. The wound hadn’t been enough to kill him, it would have been fixed with half a dozen stitches and antibiotics, it was however enough for a chemical blood agent to enter the suit. The blood in the wound was already congealed hard, as it would also be through the arteries to the man’s heart.

Together they pulled him to the far end of the firing bay where Oz joined them, running awkwardly in the rubberised, protective over boot’s. Whatever Oz was about to say was lost in the roar of helicopters. Large, dark shape’s that skimmed the trees, their downdrafts whipped through the branches, causing mini cyclones of whirling leaves, pine needles and the like. Colin craned his neck to identify them.

“Oh, shit… ” He broke radio silence, reporting the presence of enemy troop carrying helicopters landing in the clearing to his left.

Two Ka-50 Hokum’s rode shotgun whilst four Mi-8 Hips began to land, troops poured forth, thirty-two from each ran outwards to form a perimeter. Unlike the British troops NBC equipment, these troops wore black and brown protective suits, the fabric of the Russian suits had been rubberised, for a tougher garment, but it retained heat even more than NATO suits.

Some of the Guardsmen were slow to react but soon caught on, fire was put down on the deploying Russian paratroops and a Rarden cannon from a dug-in Warrior APC scored on the furthest helicopter. It was ten feet off the ground, the last to land and still to disgorge its load, black smoke poured from the cargo bay and rents in the engine section. Its fixed undercarriage collapsed as it dropped the remaining distance to terra firma. The next three rounds from the warrior sheared away the tail section and with no negative torque to counter the still spinning main blades, it canted over, digging rotors into the earth that shattered and spun away in lethal shards. The lead helicopter was a mere 150m away but the SA-80s, LSW and even the gimpy’s were failing to penetrate the cockpit. Both pilots sat in plain view of the Guards position, safe behind armoured glass and plate.

The defensive fire had drawn the attention of the paratroops and the Hokums, which hammered 23mm cannon fire into the trees. The Royal Artillery came to the rescue in the form of a Stormer air-defence vehicle; its sensors scanning the 8-14 micron infra-red waveband had tracked the inbounds and had already knocked two troop carriers and an attack helicopter down. It had lost the signatures of the troop carriers as they landed, but the previously fast moving Hokum’s were now locked up and two Starstreak high velocity missiles were fired. The relatively slow moving targets, concentrating on the treeline, exploded in mid-air, one scattered wreckage and burning fuel on paratroopers on the ground, whilst the furthest machine set alight to trees at the north edge of the wood, 600m from Colin.

The forms of enemy soldiers were everywhere in the clearing and Colin dragged the dead Guardsman’s gimpy from the shelter bay, set the bipod legs on the trench parapet and got to work. Oz was lying behind the trench firing and the L/Cpl in the firing bay pulled a box of belted from beneath his dead mate, linking its end to the one already on the weapon. Colin worked rapidly, firing two and three round bursts into anything that moved or looked threatening. Return fire cracked past and overhead as high velocity rounds broke the sound barrier, finding one target as they did so, blood fountained, and a boot kicked Colin hard in the calf, as his young NCO spasmed in the bottom of the trench. He was aware of Oz dropping down next to him, taking over the No.2s role from the now dead L/Cpl. The noise was incredible, but Colin was happier when it increased. The section commanders had gathered the soldiers from trenches too far from the clearing to engage, and led them to where they could.

Despite the protection afforded by the armour plate and armoured glass, the Russian pilots of the lead Mi-8 were shouting at their paratrooper load to get the hell out of the aircraft with a tinge of hysteria in their tones. Ball and tracer rounds were still pebble-dashing the cockpit exterior as they pulled back on the collective and lifted out of the clearing.

The departure of the surviving Mi-8s signalled a hasty attack by the Russians in the clearing. The term ‘hasty’ does not mean ill prepared or even ill advised, it merely indicates the dispensing with, of prepared briefing’s and a formal plan due to the circumstances. The troops in the clearing had found themselves in a distinctly ‘hot’ LZ. The defenders had the initiative and the attackers now sought to take it from them. The paratroops skirmished forward, with half giving covering fire whilst the other half moved. A smoke grenade was thrown toward the trenches in an attempt to deprive the defenders of targets, but the wind blew it back in the paratroopers faces, more of a hindrance than a help.

Oz attached his bayonet to his own rifle before pulling the CSMs bayonet from its scabbard and doing likewise to his rifle, once that was done he resumed spotting for the gimpy.

The paratroopers had guts, braced with a little desperation and did not falter in their skirmishing advance. Despite their casualties and at a whistle blast they rose up and rushed the tree line that the Coldstreamers defended. A good half dozen made for the trench with bayonets fixed.

Colin was aware of an object flying toward them; it hit the piled earth of the bullet catchment area in front of the parapet and bounced over the trench, landing behind them. He released the GPMG and pulled Oz down with him below the level of the parapet. The detonation of the grenade shook the walls of the trench, black smoke and earth swirled as the bayonet and the muzzle of an assault rifle appeared over the lip of the parapet. Colin jumped high, pushing the barrel up as he did so and pulled. He could feel the heat of the barrel through the rubber of the gloves, it was hot but he ignored the pain and pulled hard, causing the owner to stumble forward. Oz raised his rifle for an over the shoulder thrust with the attached bayonet but the paratrooper was quick and kicked out hard, catching the Brit on the side of his helmet and knocking him backwards. It left the Russian off balance and Colin braced a knee against the trenches lip and leant back, pulling the man down in a cloud of dust where Colin ripped off the Russian’s protective respirator. The Russian took a lung full of poisoned air and Colin wrestled the weapon from the now dying paratrooper and thrust it upwards into the groin of another para, who dropped his own weapon to grasp at the sharp blade. Colin tried wrenching it free but the blades wire cutting notch had caught on the pubic bone and Colin squeezed the trigger, blowing the Russian off the weapon and freeing the bayonet once more. Colin could feel the blood pounding in his ears and smell his own fear as he saw another three closing in. Running hard as they fired wildly, two stocky Russian’s vaulted the body as it toppled back. Both thrust down at the Guards CSM.

Oz had recovered enough to get to his knees, aiming from the hip he fired upwards into the nearest soldiers rubber clad face, the man’s head snapped backwards and he toppled into the firing bay on top of him. Colin parried the lunge, batted aside the others bayonet. A large chunk of the trench wall gave way and the Russian landed in the bay next to Colin. Neither man had room to use his weapon and Colin jerked his right knee up toward the others groin but the Russian reacted fast, twisting slightly and taking the blow on the thigh. Colin could hear his own breath magnified within the protective hood that covered his head and ears. Fear and adrenaline coursed through him as he now wrestled with his opponent. He could see nothing of the man except his eyes through the eyepieces of the respirator he wore and he wondered if his own eyes looked as terrified as the others did. The Russian tried to head-butt, seeking to smash the eyepieces of Colin’s respirator with the edge of his helmet. Colin bent slightly, nodded forwards and caught the blow on his own helmet whilst snatching his K-Bar from its inverted sheath on the webbings yoke and stabbed forwards. The blades tip hit the Russians sternum, halting its penetration and both of the Russians rubber-clad hands locked on his wrist, trying to force it away. The dead Coldstreamers body at the bottom end of the firing bay prevented the Russian stepping backwards and Colin threw his own body weight forwards. The Paratrooper was off balance; his feet were wedged against the dead Guardsman and both his knees bent, bending him backwards. Colin now had gravity and momentum on his side and he used his free left hand as a hammer, punching the heel of his palm against the hilt. After a further moment of resistance, the sternum fractured and the blade severed the Russians aorta. Colin watched the eyes widen in horror and he felt bile rise in his own throat. You should never look at the eyes he reminded himself and closed his own as he worked the handle of the knife like a lever, two hands winding it in a circle, maximising the damage.

He was gasping for breath as he straightened, grabbing the last Russians AK-74M and looking about for the next threat. The blow hit him at kidney level, knocking him to his knees as pain shot through his left side. A pair of boots between the shoulder blades knocked him face down. Jumping into the trench on the British soldiers back, the Russian swore, putting his whole weight on the rifle, but the bayonet could not penetrate the steel mug on Colin’s webbing above his left kidney. Oz disentangled himself from the dead Russian who had toppled on top of him and lunged at Colin’s attacker, bayoneting him three times through the back. Oz wondered who was screaming in a mixture of anger and terror, with a start he realised that it was himself. The barrel of the SA-80 rifle he’d wielded was bent, so he tossed it aside, as disgusted with his own emotions as he was with the weapons inadequacy to do its job.

The Guardsmen from the far end of the position had cut down the last of the charging Russians, but there were no wounded amongst the fallen, the concentration of chemical warfare agents still present, had made sure of that.

The treeline on two sides of the clearing now contained British troops. The battalion Quick Reaction Force was dug in on the north side and the battalions defence platoon was starting to appear on the east, despatched from their positions around the battalion CP.

With the helicopters gone, the Russian paratroops furthest from the southern and western edges of the clearing were on a hiding to nowhere. They had been assured the landing zone was undefended. Their mates, about forty in all, had got into the trees where the two surviving officers sought to rally them. Just fifty-four Russian paratroopers remained from the one hundred and twenty eight strong company after only eight minutes of combat.

One of Colin’s Lance Sergeants landed next to the trench in a cloud of dust.

“Air strike sir, get the fuck out!”

They grabbed weapons and scrambled out, leaving the dead and ran to trenches further from the clearing. Seeing them go, the Russians in the clearing saw their chance to escape into cover and join up with the remainder of their force.

Although the infantry do have some regard for their brothers in blue, they were after all, ‘only the RAF’ and therefore lesser beings. It stood to reason that all other services were inferior to the infantry, because if they were any good then they would be there on the ground with rifles in their hands, not mincing about in aeroplanes or boats. Lesser beings have an appalling sense of aim of course, and so the troops on the ground sought to put distance between the intended targets and themselves.

None of the Guardsmen had reached cover when the RAF Tornados screamed overhead. The regimental sergeant major of 1CG was with the defence platoon and had called in the airstrike, describing the target area to the approaching aircraft. Colin and his men dived to the ground as the aircraft passed over them, feeling the thump of exploding munitions transferred through the earth.

Somewhere along the way, Colin’s PRC-351 radio had taken a knock and was now ‘U.S’, unserviceable. The same L/Sgt, who was now lying next to him, shook his shoulder; his radio was still functioning.

“The Razman say’s the RAF dropped CBUs… none of the bombs are on a delay and he wants any survivors mopped up!”

A CBU can have its bomblets armed to go off all at once or delayed, hindering an enemy further with intermittent explosions throwing shrapnel about the area over a period of time. The RSM, who is sometimes called ‘The Razman’, providing he is not within earshot at the time, had received this assurance from the RAF. The enemy had to be cleared out from behind the FLOT and from its proximity to battalion headquarters.

Colin left one man in each trench and designated the Warrior nearest the clearing, plus the trench he had left as points of fire for the gimpy’s and took the remainder west through the forest. Oz was not with them, he had been left to command the remainder and when Colin turned his half to face north, the senior of the section commanders was automatically the 2 i/c of this coming little action. Keeping command and control is a skill an infantry commander has to master, the noise and confusion of battle can lead to the unit failing to be just that, a unit, it can become ‘X’ number of individuals and groups fighting toward separate aims. In open country, on a sunny day, it can become difficult to keep control when only blank ammunition is in use. In a forest, where everyone’s senses are degraded by NBC clothing, live ammunition is in use rather than blank and some of the soldiers had seen their first ever dead bodies, it got harder. The British Army had asked until it was blue in the face, for individual radios for every man. They did not need to be long range; in fact short range was preferable, more secure. The US Army had the IC-F3S; it would have been ideal. Unfortunately, new ‘toys’ for the soldiers, didn’t rate very highly next to schemes designed to make the government more popular with cash rich, potential donors.

Command and control this day was achieved in the old fashioned way, by NCOs leading from the rear instead of the front where they should have been. The L/Cpl’s and L/Sgt’s could see the riflemen and Colin as they advanced toward the enemy paratroops, keeping everyone in line of sight.

Infantry battle drills consist of battle preparation, advance to contact with the enemy, reaction to effective enemy fire, locating the enemy, winning the fire-fight, the fight-through and reorganisation. However, they received no effective enemy fire on their advance, the RAF had done a proper job and Colin felt sympathy for the Russian soldiers, they had been brave men but the paratroops they did find were largely in no position to resist. Contrary to the opinion of the infantry on the ground, the airmen were in no way inferior. The nearest bomblet had landed a full 50m from the British positions and their CBUs had decimated the reorganising Russian airborne troops. Only eight had survived the battle at the LZ and subsequent airstrike, and of those eight only one was too brave or too stunned to drop his weapon when challenged. The seven survivors were handed over to the RSM and the defence platoon to deal with while Colin’s men returned to their positions via the clearing, checking the bodies, stripping the equipment and weapons before they could carry out a reorganisation and issue of an ammunition replen of their own.

Part of the battalion’s security was provided by its snipers, nominally a part of the recce platoon in peacetime, two joined each rifle company on operations and the remainder was the COs reserve. Most company’s had at least one sniper in their number and he got to choose his oppo, because snipers always work in pairs, always needed a spotter with more substantial firepower than they carried, riding shotgun.

L/Sgt ‘Freddie’ Laker and Guardsman Stephanski, who was known as either ‘Big Stef’ to his mates, or ‘Yoyo’ on account of the number of times he had been up and down the rank ladder. Stephanski would have done far better in an infantry regiment other than the Brigade of Guards. He had a low tolerance threshold for bullshit. There is a well-known saying in the Guards, ‘Join the army and see the world… join the Guards and swab the bastard!’ swabbing being soldier speak for cleaning. Stephanski had been a full sergeant once upon a time, until one day in Ulster when he and his platoon had returned to their company location in Strabane, Co. Tyrone, after an eighty hour operation. His men where dead on their feet, but on arrival the CSM of that company, CSM Brown, had been waiting for them. The brigade commander was visiting in several hours’ and the location had to be swabbed out… on the off chance he should inspect, which he never did.

“Excuse me sir,” Big Stef had said, once the platoon commander had disappeared.

“We start patrolling again in twelve hours’, these men need sleep and I find it difficult to believe the company commander ordered it?”

“He didn’t, I did Sarn’t Stephanski… because I don’t like flash cunts like you, so get cracking!” Stephanski had looked the CSM straight in the eyes.

“You know something Brown… I haven’t seen you shift yer fat arse outside on patrol even once in the last year, so as you are both well rested and no fucking use to man nor beast on account of the yellow stripe down your back… you swab it out!” The platoon members had paused in their journey to the dilapidated caravans that served as barracks. They saw the CSM turn purple with rage and open his mouth to reply, they also saw their platoon sergeant drop him with an upper-cut that broke the CSM’s jaw and follow up with a pile driver to the side of the head.

Stephanski had left the warrant officer out cold on the helipad. “Weapons inspection in thirty minutes, clean ‘em proper first time, and you get your heads down that much sooner.”

That had led to Stephanski’s first trip to Collie but his boys had got a full ten hours’ sleep before starting patrols anew.

North of Lohmen and three hundred yards from the safety of their own lines, Guardsman Stephanski and Lance Sergeant Laker had chosen a culvert beneath the railway line and camouflaged it by partially blocking the side facing the enemy. To even a skilful eye, the cambered bed of grey stones that the tracks rested on looked unthreatening, and only a close examination would discover the tin cans, with both ends removed, that permitted the soldiers to see, and shoot out of. Snipers are a hated breed but there are no cowards in their ranks. They do their job with cold-blooded professionalism, eliminating chains of command, shooting to wound rather than kill, to hinder and demoralise. Unlike their conventional brethren, they had no facility to call in support if they got it wrong and no one to blame but themselves.

When would-be snipers arrive at the School of Infantry, Warminster, it was assumed that they could already outshoot Annie Oakley, even if they had never used a sniper rifle before. The bulk of the course is devoted to fieldcraft and navigation, getting from A to B unseen, making the kill and bugging out. The first time the student got to fire the sniper rifles was a painful learning experience for some. They could be seen sporting sticky plasters or even a stitch or two on an eyebrow. ‘Snipers eye’ was the cause, getting their eye too close to the telescopic sight when they fired and the bare brass edge of the telescope would smack into their brow with the recoil. The final exam was in two practical parts, a stalk along a set route with observers watching for you and just to make it really interesting the observers knew exactly what route you had to use. The other part was a shoot, where the student was given his arc of responsibility, and it would be a big one! He would only get one chance, a three-second exposure of a target, sometime during a one-hour period. An exposure of that short a period meant he would have to stay in the aim, bearing the 15.93lb weight of the heavy weapon in order to be able to snap-shoot… and hit the target when it appeared, hence the name, ‘The Agony Snap’. Assuming the student passed both tests and had not upset an instructor along the way, thereby failing the attitude test, he got to wear a badge depicting a Lee-Enfield .303 rifle with a letter ‘S’ and the good chance of being tortured and shot out of hand by an enemy if caught. Skills pay does not apply in the infantry.

Today the snipers had the task of watching and reporting on enemy movement, the decision to ‘go noisy’ was left to them as it compromised their position.

One man remained on watch at all times whilst the other rested in the pitch darkness of the hide, waiting for the enemy to appear.

With all serviceable aircraft having been rearmed and refuelled, the USS John F Kennedy was keeping half of its remaining interceptors aloft and the carrier group running fast to the south. The PRC Xianfeng-7 satellite had passed over ninety-three minutes before and the Jianbing-3 was due past in another hour.

The repositioning of the satellites had been done hurriedly, without allowing a more measured interval of several hours’ between passes.

Both sides now had satellite surveillance benefits, but armed with the space commands information on the PRC over-flight times, Admiral C. Dalton believed he had the greater advantage.

Twenty feet below the carriers’ bridge lay Flag Ops and it was here that the Admiral laid out his idea for the operations staff.

“The way I see it,” he began.

“Is that we will have a twenty-one hour and twenty-seven minute window of opportunity, once that next Prick flies by.”

He would no longer bother to pronounce the letters P.R.C, to his mind P.R.I.C.K far better described that country.

The CAG and TAO had known the man a long time, getting beat and running away did not sit easily with them either.

“I assume that we are going to turn and attack once the satellite is past, sir?”

The Admiral was nodding.

“Damn straight!” he declared.

“I want to keep the remains of Quinn’s F-14s and the two Sea Harriers aloft as CAP, the rest launch a strike on the reds… what do you think?”

The CAG was silent, doing sums in his head.

“I need to get together with Intel, see what we know about their defences on land?” he said after a few moments.

“I can give an assessment then, sir.”

“Hawkeye’s state that the A-50s egressed after the nuke hit us… we splashed a recon bird half hour after the strike, probably a damage assessment sortie… so as far as I know, there are no other eyes upon us right now,” the TAO put in.

“How long until the group has replenished at sea?” the Admiral enquired.

“Another three hours’, maybe less… provided we don’t get visitors or a sea gets up,” replied TAO.

“Okay, let’s resume in one hour people, get to it.”

Sea Harriers, Papa Zero Two and Zero Seven had been relieved from their three hour CAP and crossed the fantail of the John F Kennedy in trail at a mere 80 knots before settling to the flight deck and following the decks instructions to a parking area. Lt Cmdr. Sandy Cummings and Lt ‘Donny’ Osmond made their way to the towering superstructure, pausing to watch an E2-Sentry trap and the crewmen at work high overhead.

The superstructure was a hive of industry as running repairs were made to the masts. This appeared rather hazardous as buckled lengths of steel were cut away and replaced with straight lengths that were welded into place.

“It rather looks like someone trying to build a skyscraper, starting with the penthouse and leaving the foundations until last,” observed Donny.

Lt Nikki Pelham had been posing beside her Tomcat with its brand new addition of four red stars below the fuselage whilst she and Chubby Checkernovski took turns behind the camera. Nikki had still not heard anything from home as to her family but she was not going to dwell on it. Nikki and Chubby joined the two RN, Fleet Air Arm pilots as they watched the Hawkeye catch the three wire.

“So how do you like being on a real carrier boys?”

“Bloody noisy… they stuck us in the janitors broom cupboard, right below the flight deck. Our little carriers and aircraft are far quieter, if you did this stuff on the ‘POW’ you’d get complaints from the look-outs that it was keeping them awake… I really can’t see it catching on!” Sandy said with a smile, using the abbreviation for HMS Prince of Wales.

“RN aviation is more civilised too, its far more dignified to stop and land, than it is to land and stop… much easier on the hang-over.”

Nikki laughed.

“Sorry boys, the US Navy is dry.”

Donny leant forward conspiratorially.

“Well don’t spread it around, but we have a limited supply of single malt in Mrs Miggins Pie Shoppe… otherwise known as the janitors broom cupboard.”

“How the hell did you get that on board?” asked Chubby.

“He had it stowed aboard the aircraft, just in case he had to land on a tropical island populated by bikini models, bereft of male company.” Sandy explained with a Scottish accent that Nikki found quite appealing.

The conversation was curtailed by the tannoy system called all pilots to a briefing.

“Looks like the opening night may be delayed, ladies and gents. Someone called Baldrick may have thought of a cunning plan!”

“Who?” intoned Nikki and Chubby?

“The faithful manservant of Sir Edmund Blackadder!” Sandy informed them

“Who?”

“As soon as I can get back to the POW and collect my DVD collection, we will have to have a Blackadder night, to start your education in the finer things in life… does your galley have any fresh turnips?”

The pleasant Pine, Sycamore, Oak and Beech forest on the high ground above Muhlsdorf was being reduced to the consistency of matchwood. Almost four hours’ of unrestrained artillery bombardment had pounded the earth or stripped trees of their branches and foliage with airbursts.

In his Challenger II, Major Darcy listened to the cacophony of noise outside the tank and wondered how many of his squadron still remained or if they were safe in their dug in revetments. The tank rocked back on its sprockets and red-hot steel rang on its armoured sides from a near miss. The terminal in front of him went blank. The lack of the Ptarmigan data would hamper his command and control even further.

“It’s at this point that one of you is supposed to say For God’s sake… play something they know!” said the major, in an effort to ease the tension.

“If it is all the same to you sir,” said his gunner. “I’ll just sit here quietly and carry on shitting myself.”

All his tanks had a good stock of spare radio antennas to replace any stripped off by the barrage; so far they had been lucky. Half an hour before he had checked his tanks own masts and all had been in order but the view from his vision blocks had been scary, their own piece of ground was no longer as wooded as it had been. The flashes of detonating munitions allowed him to glimpse the battlefield in a way the tanks lo-lite TV did not.

The Coldstream Guards CP was obviously still in business as his headset came to life.

“Hello all stations address group Kilo Hotel, this is Zero… ‘Wicker Man’, over!” The enemy armoured assault was on the way and the CP had dispensed with the preliminaries of radio checks to the ‘Sunrays’, commanders of the sub-units which now had to leave their present locations and move forward to their fighting positions.

The Kings Royal Hussars were shown first on the CNRMIS, Combat Net Radio Management Information Systems net diagram for that address group and Darcy answered immediately.

“Tango One Nine, roger… ’Wicker Man’… out.” He switched to the squadron net and passed on the instruction to his troop commanders but one failed to answer and there was a pause before that troops sergeant answered in the missing tanks stead. Darcy switched to interphone,

“Driver, take us to our first fighting position, now please,” before calling up C Troops sergeant.

“Hello Tango One Three Bravo this is Tango One Nine. Say condition of Tango One Three Alpha if known, over?”

“Tango One Three Bravo, their turret is only about ten feet from us, over.”

The tank revetments were all at least forty feet apart. An internal explosion triggered by a direct hit, had flung the 24,000kg turret from the tank as it was destroyed. They were at least one down that he knew of and had yet to fire a single shot.

Major Darcy’s driver, Trooper Paul Stott, reversed the vehicle out of the revetment before heading toward their first firing position. Fallen branches and tree trunks at wild angles created an obstacle course for them. The Challenger II had only 0.5m of ground clearance on a solid level surface, and the Russian barrage had created a potential tank trap every few metres.

After 100m Paul judged they should have been approaching the trenches of the Guards in-depth positions but he was having trouble recognising familiar landmarks. The forward slopes were the main targets of the artillery, the area beyond that had been of secondary importance, targeted only to prevent reinforcement. The reverse slope had come off easiest, rocket and tube artillery could not touch it due to the relatively low arc the shells and rockets flew, but mortars toss their bombs high up, 10-25000 feet upwards, to fall almost vertically once they reach the apex of their flight. These munitions, fired from 120mm portable, 240mm towed M240 and 120mm self-propelled 2S9 Anonas had the task of making life awkward on the reverse slopes. The huge M240 bomb earned itself a fearsome reputation in Afghanistan and Chechnya with its alternative charges. Its conventional charges could loft the bomb to 10,000’ and engage targets 9,700m away but with its rocket-assisted munitions more than doubled its range to 20,000m, which meant that the massive 240mm bombs screamed down from 25,000’ to bury themselves 10 feet in the ground before detonating. The good thing, as far as the Guardsmen were concerned, was that they could only fire one round per minute, needed an eleven man crew and the enemy only had twenty deployed against them.

The troops had been briefed that there would be no counter-battery fire from their side until the enemy committed his tanks and APCs, so they huddled down and took it with varying degrees of success.

If Major Darcy was grumbling about losing a single tank, he should have been a rifleman in the in-depth positions where men had been buried alive by near misses or obliterated by direct hits on their holes. The forward platoons had 10 % casualties whereas the rear platoons and the depth company, No.4, had 25 %. These were just the physical casualties, the number of young men reduced to screaming wrecks was almost equal that although some would snap out of it once the shelling stopped.

Colonel Pol Eskiva, commanding the 22^nd (Czech) Motor Rifle Regiment ordered his driver to edge forward toward the treeline where he could better see the ground before them through his night scope. He sat with his legs dangling into the turret of his T-90 main battle tank as he studied the map on his lap in the faint glow of a palm light. The locations of enemy positions and field defences were marked, courtesy of the divisional recce companies.

So far, all was going well, with the exception of the heliborne assault on the enemy headquarters that was thought to be somewhere in the area of the clearing, according to their intelligence. Six troop-carrying Mi-8s and three Ka-50 Hokum attack helicopter had mounted the assault and none had returned. 192 crack airborne troops provided by their Russian brothers, not to mention the air assets, had just gone. It called into doubt the intelligence they had as regards the quality of troops facing them. They were supposed to be part-time soldiers, failed applicants to the regular army and bored bank clerks. What was the term the intelligence officer had used, thought the colonel? Ah yes, ‘Weekend Cowboys’. He had observed two of their soft skin ‘jeeps’ destroy three tanks and two APCs before they were destroyed themselves and he had stopped for long enough to observe the field police interrogate a wounded young soldier. It had not been an interrogation as far as he could judge; rather the tormenting of a wounded animal, but the man had been defiant to the last, although his wounds were clearly not survivable. A field police Captain had seen him watching and ordered him to drive his tank over the prisoner, unaware of the colonel’s rank. Eskiva had waved back in apparent compliance, if he did not do it they would only order someone else. Once his tank had lined up on the wounded man, with the Captain a scant two feet from soldier, Eskiva had swung around the pintle mounted 7.62mm machine-gun. Directing a burst across the soldiers chest, from left to right and releasing the trigger just short of the Captains feet, causing the arrogant bastard to back-peddle, stumble and land on his arse in the dust.

Speaking an order into the interphone, he had kept the machine-gun pointing casually in the direction of the field policemen as the tank drew alongside them. “Congratulations Captain!” he had said to the furious man. “You have the honour of having been the first field policeman in the history of the Czech Army to have been close enough to hear the gunfire during a battle.” The colonel’s two escorting tanks and command post APCs had also moved forward, boxing in the men on the ground but none seemed to notice, all attention was on the colonel. There had been six field policemen, all armed with sub-machine pistols facing the colonel in the tank turret when the Captain screamed at them to arrest him. The cocking of the two other tanks machine guns caused them to freeze. Climbing from the turret, the colonel pulled a shovel from a tool bin on the side of the vehicle and thrown it to the Captain.

“Bury him,” he had instructed before addressing one of the other tank commanders.

“Remain here to see it is done. The battle has passed us by and there are no witnesses to see you kill them if they disobey, understood?”

His subordinate had nodded and the other tanks and APCs left.

That had been two hours’ before and as the colonel watched the British positions receive the bombardment, he put the finishing touches to his plan.

When his third tank had returned its commander had brought him the dead British soldiers effects. They did indeed confirm that the men had civilian occupations and yet had been well trained and courageous. The fact that they had eliminated the Russian Paratroopers and destroyed all the helicopters showed that they were well equipped also, contrary to the intelligence briefings. He discussed this with the lieutenant who had brought them to him but did not ask what had become of the police captain and his men, the fact that the loader was stripping and cleaning the machine-gun said it all. Despite his seniority, they would all have been arrested and shot, after the battle was won of course.

According to his watch he had twenty minutes to the start of the attack, the plough tanks would not lead the way though, he had to trust the recce troops information because the divisional commander was breathing down his neck. In their last conversation he had laid it on thick to the colonel, honour, duty and obedience before slapping him on the back in false bon homme,

“I will let you get back to your men now Colonel, you must be eager for the fight?” He had forced something close to a wolfish grin to his lips whilst thinking to himself what a total and utter arsehole his boss was.

“Nadrz^eny' sir!” eager for it, he said and saluted before leaving but muttering “Zmrd,” beneath his breath.

His first wave would be T-72 MBTs, BTR-80 and BMP APCs with his company of PT-76 amphibious tanks following three hundred metres behind to force the river. The barrage was heavy and continuous, which bothered him, it was as if the lack of counter-battery fire had persuaded the artillery batteries to forgo the standard operating practices, he was willing to bet money that they were not changing location regularly, more pressure from divisional HQ no doubt. The air force was meant to attack periodically during these relocations and although they moved fast they could at least see the enemy position and report back. The continuous shelling meant that would not happen of course, no one would send aircraft into the path of shells.

From what he knew of NATO doctrine, the enemy troops would be hampered by chemical warfare clothing, unlike his own troops. The stocks of chemical warfare shells were limited, many had been destroyed in the post Warsaw Pact period.

Of all the varied types of chemical agents, they all fall into two categories, which can be selected by the commander on the ground. ‘Persistent’, which linger and deny use of territory to an enemy, and ‘Non-persistent’, this last type dissipates rapidly but inflicts casualties initially and causes the enemy to suit up, restricting their efficiency. This was the category they had used in the opening barrage and he doubted that the British had unmasked since then, quite frankly he didn’t blame them.

The lack of counter-battery fire worried him too, no doubt NATO had supply problems and limited stocks since the wall had come down, but he thought that they should have made some effort. The same went for their air forces, apart from their attack helicopters; he had seen nothing, no attempt at air superiority or reconnaissance. He had mentioned this to the divisional commander and been told not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

One by one, his companies and attached units reported in that they were on the start lines and he picked up his handset whilst watching the luminous second hand of his watch.

“All stations… go, go, go!”

It took some bottle to drive into the heavier barrage around the forward fighting positions and Major Darcy’s worry was that they would not be able to get hull-down again because of fallen trees across the revetment.

That however was not the problem, but a large tree had fallen at the far end and would prevent them depressing the 120mm main tank gun fully.

Although he would have been prepared to leave the tank to shift obstacles himself, he was not going to call up Engineers to risk themselves in blasting the thing for him. They could not attach tow cables and drag it clear without exposing themselves totally, to enemy fire.

“Corporal Varney, have we got Sabot loaded?” he asked his loader.

“Yes boss, why?”

“There is a damn great tree blocking the far end of the firing position.” He gave it a second or two of thought. “Driver, reverse… ” to the loader he said.

“Load HE, let’s try and shift it.”

The Challenger II has three types of armament, a 7.62mm pintle mounted machine-gun is the smallest. To the left of the main armament is an American, Boeing 7.62mm Chain Gun and the main armament is the British Aerospace L30, 120mm rifled Charm 1, gun. Space for ammunition is always a limiting factor for a tank. Britain had foregone the inclusion of smoke rounds years before and also the conventional ‘cannon shell’ with its propellant encased in metal, usually brass. ‘Bag charges’, propellant contained in fabric, allowed more economic expenditure inasmuch as a single bag would be sufficient in propelling the round in shorter range engagements. It allowed the tank to carry 50 main gun rounds as opposed the US M1 Abrahms 36 if it carried only HESH, high explosive squash head and conventional APFSDS, armour piercing, fin stabilised, discarding sabot rounds which struck the target with a heavy tungsten dart rather than an explosive warhead. Today they carried only 45 rounds, as their load included the expensive DU rounds with its higher length to diameter aspect ratio and metal propellant case, at 36” long it took up a lot of space.

As ordered, Stott removed the tungsten sabot round and replaced it with a HESH round which although referred to as ‘HE’ by the tankies, tank crews, was an anti-armour round. Its explosive charge was smaller than that of artillery HE rounds, as it was in the form of a shaped charge, however it would have to do for now.

“Anyone remember if there are any of our positions nearby?” Darcy asked.

Darcy did not want to injure or add to his own sides danger, they had all visited the fighting positions on foot, for ease of recognition once the muck started flying, but none of the crew ever imagined that it would resemble the present moonscape.

He received negative replies, no one could tell and he could recognise little himself through the viewing blocks.

“HE loaded!” Corporal Stott called out.

Darcy peered ahead, judging for safe distance. Here goes, he told himself as the barrel depressed.

The 22^nd (Czech) Motor Rifle Regiment had advanced in good order toward the river below the wooded hill to the north of the town of Lohmen. His right edge of the advance ran along the highway, a forest was the other side of that. Colonel Eskiva, was no farmer, he had no idea what crops were being crushed beneath the tracks and wheels of his regiment. Hedgerows, many hundreds of years old were being destroyed, splintered and crushed as the AFVs advanced. Eskiva was stood upright in his turret, as were all the vehicle commanders in the absence of fire from the British positions. His tanks had communications far inferior to that of NATOs but the reason for using flags as a form of signalling at this moment was security.

NATO had secure encrypted messaging systems, a high-tech email for its passing orders and short-range encrypted radio communications for performing manoeuvres such as this, denying an enemy any electronic warning of their coming. The moon was out tonight, and the flashes from detonating munitions on the wooded slopes ahead looked surreal.

Two loud explosions sounded above the noise of their own artillery’s bombardment and then were joined by secondary explosions as a BTR-80s 30mm and 7.62mm ammunition cooked off. Bringing his scope up he saw a T-72 missing a road wheel and its right track, a full two hundred metres away the APC was self-destructing as its 30mm cannon ammunition exploded in the inferno that had engulfed it, and its occupants.

Eskiva looked down to check his map, this was supposed to be a clear route forward; the mine fields marked by their recce troops were being skirted. He looked up and cursed as more mines went off as his vehicles crossed over them. There was a tearing sound overhead which caused him to look to look up, recognising the sound of many projectiles, travelling east instead of west.

“What the hell else can go wrong?” he said to himself.

In their hide beneath the railway line, Big Stef had been on the gun when the Czech armour had appeared in the distance. Isolated as they were from the rest of the battalion, masking up with the onset of the enemy barrage had increased their sense of vulnerability; they had only each other to rely on, truly on their own. Both snipers had been feeling the effects of nerves since the morning when the Yeomanry and their own recce platoon had returned to friendly lines. They knew how many friendlies were roaming out toward the enemy, the number of vehicles and the troops in them. It had been sobering to watch them return, damaged, without their full complement or with obvious wounded aboard. Some had returned on foot, usually singly or in pairs, but the numbers had been less than had sallied forth several days before. Right until the point that the enemy AFVs had appeared out of the distance, Freddie and Big Stef had hoped to see stragglers whom they knew, but they were disappointed.

They broke radio silence for the first time in three days to give the heads up. Freddie had their Swiftscope spotting telescope to his eye while he sent the contact report. Big Steph had gripped the L96A1 firmly as he used the Schmidt and Bender 6 x 42 telescopic sight to assist in accurately assessing the size of the opposition. Had it been darker he would have replaced the sight with a nightscope, but the magnification was sufficient for their purposes right now. For the past several hours’ the ground had vibrated with the shells and rockets that hammered the positions behind them but that was forgotten now as they watched the enemy vanguard draw near.

With the contact report sent the snipers prepared to get noisy and Freddie was spotting for decent targets, i.e. officers.

“Tenth from the left, front rank, antennae tank with a twat waving flags about… must be the company commander, he’s got more antennas than all the rest in that rank,” his voice muffled by the respirator he wore. Big Stef swung the muzzle to the left.

“Got it.” He committed the target to memory and moved on to the next one that Freddie identified.

When the lead company drove straight into the minefield to their front, they gave muted cheers.

“Hellooo… what have we here… Stef, one-o’clock, six-hundred metres, right at the back… could be a big boss, command tank mate!”

Stephanski could not pick it out at first, not until a man in a turret very helpfully picked up a map.

Taking up the first pressure he murmured,

“And you sunshine… can say goodnight… forever.” In the confined space of the hide, the report was like a thunderclap.

In the last company of the regiment, its company commanders torso jerked spastically before sliding down out of sight into the turret through the open hatch. A blood splattered map fluttered away behind the tank and Colonel Eskiva, 75m behind it realised the danger.

“All stations, beware snipers, beware snipers!” he radioed to all his tank commanders before lowering himself down until only his head protruded, stuffing his own map inside his coveralls.

Switching frequencies he reported the current situation to division, giving the approximate location of the minefield but ended the transmission with a mere

“Proceeding,” before changing back to his regimental command net.

All but four of the leading company’s tanks and APCs had struck mines. He may have told division he was proceeding as planned but he had no intention of doing so. To have asked permission to change the axis of advance would have been fruitless, so he got on the regimental net and gave his orders, despite the very real possibility that someone back at division was monitoring this net, he had no choice.

The plough tanks had kept pace with the regiment, to the rear of the command element and they now accelerated, angling left to where his map showed a minefield to be. He already knew that there was a thick field directly ahead where none was supposed to be. Perhaps the British had deceived the recon elements of his army, perhaps not. The orders he gave stopped the regiments advance and turned them left where they would reform into columns behind the tanks with the mine ploughs. The British could not have mined the entire area, indeed they were not supposed to have any mines. Either way, the mobile troops who had harassed them on the way here had to have some means of returning to their lines through safe lanes.

Fifteen miles west of Wunschendorf, lay the field headquarters of the composite NATO division facing this Red Army thrust into Germany.

NATOs forces today bore little resemblance to that of the armies that had faced the Warsaw Pact until the nineties. Not the least of their problems was that of language, with English, French, and German being used, but the commander was a French-Canadian with a German wife, which eased the problem somewhat. Dialect and accent were another matter, when the commander found himself speaking to a native of Newcastle, Belfast or Glasgow. On the occasions that he spoke with some signallers from 3 (UK) Mechanised Brigade, he would interrupt them in mid-unintelligible babble, reverting to Quebecois.

“Se fermer la trappe,” and pass the handset to a Brit with a Gallic shrug. He knew that he was speaking English, he just didn’t know what language the men and women on the other end thought that they were speaking!

The staff had been plotting the location of the enemy’s artillery gun-lines and vehicle concentrations. Due to the high angle of flight of the enemy mortars, two different mobile radars were required to locate mortar, rocket and tube artillery lines. Cymbeline, mortar-locating radar, had detected the flight path of the mortar bombs, and taking two their trajectory’s it plotted the Grid Reference of the enemy base plates.

Phoenix Unmanned Air Vehicle’s (UAVs), small, stealthed aircraft roamed beyond friendly lines. The real time surveillance and target acquisition systems of the surveillance suite’s sent back information via datalink to the ground station that, in turn, transmitted the intelligence gathered directly to artillery command posts. The Phoenix’s Kevlar, glass fibre, carbon reinforced plastics and Nomex honeycomb construction, was kept aloft by 25hp, two stroke flat twin engines. The design made it hard to see with the naked eye, IR, radar or detect it by sound.

The headquarters also received Elint from its teams of mobile troops equipped with MSTAR, a lightweight Pulse Doppler J — Band, all weather radar. Being ground-based, it reached out only 20km but freed up the airborne JSTARS to concentrate beyond that range. MSTAR had the job of detecting helicopters, vehicles, infantry and assisted the artillery observer in detecting the fall of their own shot. The MSTAR electro-luminescent display, shows dead ground relief and targets track history, it also has the ability to superimpose a map grid at 1:50,000 scale, to ease transfer to military maps. All this information had told NATO that the enemy artillery was being very dumb, gambling with its own safety and security in order to deliver a heavier barrage. For the first hour and a half the Red Army guns had relocated after each shoot but since then had remained in place, pounding NATO lines. NATO had several reasons for not using its guns from the outset and fairly low ammunition stocks were one reason. The other was to preserve their guns for the armoured assault against them, first hammering the enemy artillery before dividing the guns to go for headquarters and logistics targets on one hand, and fire support for its troops on the other.

The divisional commander judged that the time was now, time to unleash his gunners and ground-attack aircraft on an enemy grown complacent.

At about the time Colonel Eskiva’s Motor Rifle Regiments lead Company hit the minefield, the NATO guns and MLRS let fly at their counterparts in a TOT shoot, timed over target, so the different calibre shells fired from differing ranges, all arrived at the same moment.

“You missed the bastard, Stef!” The Guardsman looked briefly across at his spotter.

“Maybe I didn’t hit the geezer you were looking at, but I got an officer in an antennae tank.”

Ahead of them the assault ceased its movement directly toward them and turned south, leaving Stef to pick his own targets whilst Freddie reported the change to the battalion CP.

Most of the commanders in the tanks that sported clusters of antennas, marking them as commanders of company’s and above, were now only exposing their heads. It is far easier to see what their commands were doing with the naked eye rather than through viewing blocks. Stef aimed at his next target, allowing for the vehicle speed and aiming slightly ahead. The Czech officer in the tank kept rising up to look around at his vehicles and Stef suddenly noticed that he wore no respirator or chemical protective clothing. He panned the weapon around, none of the enemy in sight was wearing NBC, and the only logical explanation was that they knew the chemicals would have dissipated, they had to have been non-persistent category weapons. Swinging back to the antennae tank he controlled the flow of his breathing, taking in oxygen as he aimed, letting a breath out as he took up the first pressure on the trigger and squeezed at the bottom of the breathing cycle, following through to watch the fall of shot. The company commanders head disappeared in a red mist and Stef shouted to Freddie that the enemy was unmasked and not wearing NBC clothing either. Freddie got back on the radio and Stef paused to listen beyond the walls of their hide, the enemy shelling had ceased.

The cessation of the enemy barrage allowed the British infantry to sort themselves out and in the midst of this came the order to carry out local tests and unmasking drills. CAM L1A1, a hand held monitor was the first step in testing for CW agents that may still be present. It would respond to vapour agents as it searched for nerve, blister, blood and choking agents, its micro-processor flashing up the results on its LCD display. However, there was always the chance that not all the machines were working as advertised so human guinea pigs carried out the second stage.

Across the battalion area, pairs of men were chosen to carry out the drills, take off their respirators and breathe the air of the battlefield, it was at times like these that you find out who your friends are.

Moving out from cover and kneeling, facing each other, those who had drawn the short straw or pissed someone off recently began the business of decontaminating clothing and equipment before the unlucky half unmasked.

Fullers Earth in squeeze bottles and impregnated in bang pads were used with vigour before the mask was removed. The guinea pig had closed his eyes first before letting the outside world into the mask, just enough to take one breath before replacing it. His oppo watched closely for any signs of his mate being effected by chemical warfare agents that may still be present, ready to stab him with an Atropine pen which would combat the chemicals effects whilst also inducing mild belladonna poisoning. The drills progressed to the point where the subject was breathing normally the unfiltered night air and the order was passed to unmask everywhere.

East of the river, in the rear areas of the Red Army assault the NATO barrage arrived with devastating force as conventional shells airburst over, or impacted on the gun-lines and other high value targets. IM’s, improved munitions, broke apart to rain dual purpose improved conventional munitions, small bomblets, down on the target areas.

At the Czech Divisional HQ, the commander had been informed that his lead regiment was no longer advancing towards the enemy but had changed course without permission. He listened for himself on that regiments radio net before summoning the Field Police and ordering Colonel Eskiva’s arrest and summary execution.

Phoenix rather than Elint had located the divisional CP, as the headquarters had three ‘antennae farms’ well removed from the CP, should NATO attack the radiating source of the radio traffic. Elint located the antennae farms but it was the small, remote operated aircraft that carried the cameras and heat sensors which located the camouflaged command post. People walk and leave marks on the earth and turf, and they generate heat.

The Royal Artillery rep for 3 (UK) Mechanised Brigade allocated three MLRS, 227mm basic tactical rockets for the target, which arrived just as the Field Police BTR-80, pulled away. Each thirteen foot long rocket dispensed 644 submunitions from its warhead section, seeding the entire area with fragmentation and shaped-charge munitions. Only 81mm x 38mm in size, the dual purpose submunition performs two tasks on detonation, firstly the high explosive packed around the inverted copper cone at the business end detonates, transforming the copper cone into a white hot slug moving at supersonic speed in the direction of the explosive blast. On contact with the armour of the target it burns its way down into the armour plate, melting it as it goes. On the inside of the target a blister forms, red-hot metal contained by a thin skin of rapidly heating steel. The blister is burst by the white hot copper slug it enters the targets interior and the molten steel of the blister scatters throughout the interior, igniting anything flammable, including body fats. Whilst this process is under way, the outer casing of the submunition acts like an anti-personnel grenade’s casing, fragmenting into over seven hundred shards of steel that scythe out to 4m.

Two of these submunitions struck the roof of the armoured personnel carrier on its way to the front to arrest the lead regiments’ commander. The armour plating on the top of the BTR was less than an inch thick, less than a quarter of the thickness that the submunition was capable of penetrating and in less than half a second after impact, the BTR disintegrated.

Following the almost simultaneous detonation of one thousand nine hundred and thirty two submunitions, in an area just the size of three football fields, a strange eerie silence fell upon that area of the forest, broken only by the crackle of flames.

A total of three rounds had been needed to restore the hull-down revetments previous arcs of fire before Major Darcy’s Challenger had been able to enter the fighting position. The tanks secure messaging terminal, Ptarmigan, had gone down during the enemy barrage but they had managed to reboot the system and Darcy could see how his tank squadron fared. Apart from the loss of a troop commanders tank they were all there but two had damaged fire control computers, which needed replacing. One tank had thrown a track enroute to its firing position but the rest of its troop would cover its arcs of responsibility until it made it up to them.

They could only depress their main guns by 10 degrees so they had to start killing enemy vehicles at maximum range for the sabots at 3500m.

The Czech vehicles showed up clearly in the gun sights of the British tanks on the high ground, the heat generated by the tanks, the APCs and air-defence vehicles gave off signatures that identified them by type. Darcy was not entirely sure what the enemy formation was doing, or intended at that moment as they were moving across his front from left to right. They had apparently hit a minefield but he had missed what had gone on before, due to his own tanks slow, cautious move to the firing positions. His laser rangefinder showed the first two enemy company’s, now moving in parallel columns, were both with range and he was preparing to engage them when the Guards CO called him up personally. The CO explained that although his Milan teams and infantry were moving up to occupy positions on the top and forward slopes, his men had taken a beating in the artillery bombardment and he was even more reliant on the tanks main guns. Darcy had not seen a living soul in the move from the rear, let alone anything that resembled a trench. Okay he thought, let’s get to work and called up his troop commanders, instructing them to prioritise antennae tanks and Anti-Aircraft Artillery vehicles, before long the NATO fighter-bombers and choppers would be over the battlefield, they were not to commence firing until his command. His eyes were fixed to the sight and he used the manual commanders over-ride to search for the first target, his job was to provide command and control for the squadron, not have fun but this first kill was going to be his.

“Target… ..… AA vehicle… Gaskin,” a SA-9 missile system mounted on a four-wheel BTR chassis with radar mast and reloads in racks down the vehicles sides. He depressed the rangefinder button with his thumb, glanced at the figures displayed before continuing, “Range, three thousand one hundred, centre of second column… HE.” They already had a HESH round in the breech and the loader immediately called out.

“Loaded!” as he pulled across the safety gate. Standing behind the breach of the 120mm gun as it fired would cause massive crush injuries as the gun recoiled. After loading the required round the loader had to step to the side and close the low gate, if the gate wasn’t closed, the weapon would not fire.

“Firing!” Darcy stated, and the Challenger rocked back as the 120mm gun sent the round streaking eastwards.

The last time Darcy had fired a weapon in anger had been during the Gulf War and he smiled in satisfaction as the Czech AA vehicle exploded violently, its own anti-aircraft missile warheads and solid fuel in the motors made a spectacular firework display. He released the override and instructed the gunner to carry on, and got on with his own job of controlling the fight.

When the lead division’s headquarters went off the air the Corps headquarters dispatched a flight of helicopters to investigate. With a key link in the chain removed the formation that was already engaged had no access to artillery fire support or close air support. The plan had been to assault and overrun the NATO forces on the promontory before driving between the flanking units, just to its rear, and then splitting to drive north and south, rolling them up and creating a gap for the main manoeuvre unit. That unit was a tank division equipped with the best and the latest equipment available to them. Plan B was to drive either side with two more divisions in order to achieve the desired breakthrough.

The division’s towed artillery assets had taken 77 % losses in just five minutes of bombardment by NATO, the SP, self-propelled guns crews had the protection of armour, they lost 46 %. The towed artillery had more surviving equipment than they had crews, airburst, ground burst AP munitions and bodies don’t mix well.

The Staff officer who arrived at the remains of the divisional CP spent little time there, there was no point. 100 % casualties had been inflicted on men and equipment. It took only another ten minutes touring the divisions area by helicopter for him to report that the division was combat ineffective owing to the destruction of the command and artillery support elements. After making his report he contacted the four regimental commanders, only one was in contact and the two motor rifle regiments on its flank and the tank regiment in reserve were still in cover, awaiting orders. He called up the lead regiment again for a full sitrep and Colonel Eskiva decided he had no choice but to inform him of his change of axis and the reason. The Staff officer accepted Eskiva’s decision without question, if he assumed the late div commander had ok’d it he made no comment. On his next call to the corps HQ he recommended that the next division, five miles back take over command and control of the present attacks tank and motor rifle regiments. It would need to move up rapidly, giving priority of road movement to its artillery units whilst the air force pull out all the stops in close air support to make up for the currently absent artillery support.

The Staff officer then directed the pilots to take them west, toward the battlefield so that he could observe the attack first hand. The corps commander accepted his subordinate’s recommendations, the man was a talented soldier, and destined for higher things and his commander did not question his judgement.

Colonel Eskiva’s regiment was taking casualties from the high ground, initially from tank guns but now anti-tank missiles were starting to be used against him also as his company columns finished forming behind the plough tanks.

Most of his tanks were T-72s and T-90s, cheap export versions of the superior T-80. Whereas the Russians had stolen the self-stabilising gun and Chobham armour from the British, by way of taking apart a Shah tank and copying it, after the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, it was the best tank in the inventory. The T-90 was an under-powered MBT, lacking the armour and reliable main tank gun of the T-80, but the gun was self-stabilising.

Dismounting some of his Sagger, ATGW, anti-tank, guided weapons crews and 120mm mortars, he used them and a company of T-90s to concentrate on fire suppression. The tanks would stay on the move, thereby providing harder targets for the British whilst the Mortar and Sagger crews fired from cover.

He expected the enemy air force to appear at any time and he withdrew half of his AA vehicles, those with IR targeting capabilities back to the tree line, where they could fire from cover. His ace in the hole was six ZSU-2S62S6 Tungushkas, if NATO feared the ZSU-23-4 and 57-2, then they would loathe these. The vehicle’s had passive radar guidance and IR tracking for its twin 30mm cannons and 8 SA-10 anti-aircraft missiles.

After 300m without a single mine going off, the colonel was considering on taking a gamble when artillery started to burst around the head of the regiment, seeking to knock out the tanks with the mine ploughs. That decided it for him, he ordered his companies to bypass the plough tanks and proceed straight ahead for another 1000m before wheeling right and making for their original intended crossing point on the river where they would revert to the plan as first briefed. He looked up at the sky for NATO aircraft before ducking swiftly into the turret as one of his escorting tanks blew up after being hit by a sabot round fire from the hill. He looked briefly at the map with its carefully marked minefields and tossed it out of the open hatch, he knew what NATO had done and he now had to close with them, get too close for them to be able to use their artillery and air power.

Coming in from the northeast were five Czech Air Force, Su-17M4 Fitters that had survived an ambush by NATO fighters. The elderly but still effective aircraft were more suited to bombing than dog fighting, and at the moment they were hungry for payback for their seven comrades, swatted from the sky by NATO. The aircraft hugged the ground, trusting in their terrain following radar as they wove their way along undulating valleys towards the battle. Overhead, the clouds were moving in also, thick and threatening with the promise of heavy rain. By the time the Sukhois reached the scene of the conflict, they would have masked the moon for the rest of the night.

When the positions were first being prepared, Lt Col Hupperd-Lowe had ordered three sets of landlines laid between the battalion CP and his companies CPs. It had seriously pissed off his signals platoon who had the time consuming and backbreaking task of line laying between the locations, not once but three times. The CO was well aware that the enemy would be listening for radio transmissions, for their intelligence content, frequencies and to DF, radio direction find the source of the transmissions. He needed to communicate at all time and the field telephone was the most secure method.

He had lost contact with 1 Company, on the right after two hours’ of solid bombardment by the massed artillery across the way. There were lines bypassing each company CP, creating a network with built in redundancy, should a CP be taken out. He had ordered a signaller to contact them via 2 Company but they had no joy there either.

The silencing of the enemy guns had given him the first chance in four hours’ to see what had happened to his beloved battalion and he judged it safe to break radio silence, 1 Company CP was alive, well and still in business.

The snipers report had instigated the local NBC testing and once the result was arrived at he left the battalion in the hands of the 2 i/c and took an infantry section from the defence platoon with him as he went forward.

Both rifle companies had already moved men up, to the forward slopes where they could put direct fire down on anyone wishing to force a river crossing. The CO went there first, to judge the morale and resolve of the Guardsmen and he was in for a rude shock, plenty still had fight in them but there were faces he knew well, that were missing. He counted himself fortunate that only seven were too shocked to fight, he dealt with them firmly but kindly, he had been well to the rear, away from the most intense shelling, he was not going to judge a man for failing what he himself had not yet endured.

The Tanks and artillery were already striking at the Czech regiment across the river when he made his way to 2 Company’s CP, his stop was brief because the company commander had his own fight coming up, so after encouraging words he left them to it.

1 Company had its signallers out looking for the breaks in the landlines and their OC wanted them fixed PDQ before the enemy artillery started again. Guardsman Morgan was not the world’s greatest soldier, granted that he could talk a good fight, looked good in his ‘glory order’, bearskin, scarlet tunic, tweeds, etc. and always looked busy when he was being watched, but he became a signaller to avoid getting shot at as frequently as he would do in a rifle company.

The method for finding breaks is to carry a field telephone and follow the wire, stopping every 25m to call in until either no one answers or the station at the end of the line does. Once that happens you back track 12m and try again, moving back and forth, shorter and shorter distances until the break is found. It’s a tedious process at the best of times, but tonight atop the hill that now looked like a moonscape, it was hard going and bloody difficult. The four regimental signallers split up, dividing the workload in order to get it done as fast as possible, feeling their way along the wires in the dark.

Morgan could hear aircraft over the crack of tank guns, they were NATO aircraft but he didn’t care, he just wanted to get back below ground into the safety of the CP bunker. His heart was beating and his hands shook as he traced the wire he was following, under, over and around broken, splintered trees and cratered earth.

Without the benefit of night viewing aids of the quality their enemies had, Colonel Eskiva could see that his units’ accuracy was suffering when the moon disappeared, so he ordered his dismounted mortarmen to put up para-illumination rounds. NATO could already see them so he wasn’t giving much away by employing a double-edge tool.

As the enemy assault grew closer it became more difficult for Major Darcy’s tank to engage them, the barrel was depressed to its maximum and undergrowth on the slope was further hindering their efforts. The enemy had changed direction yet again and where now heading for the river at an oblique angle, heading straight for them. He ordered his driver to reverse out of the position and proceed to another over to the left. It meant exposing themselves, briefly skylined for about 40m but the clouds had blocked out the moon and the only light was across the river, provided by burning enemy tracks. He had, however, forgotten to take into consideration that the route was littered with obstacles and would have to be negotiated slowly.

Back across the river, in the hide beneath the railway, Big Stef and Freddie were getting frustrated too. Until the clouds had arrived Stef had fired almost continuously, as the litter of empty cases on the floor of the hide attested. He worked the bolt back and forth, sighted once more and fired yet again, with something like a 75 % kill rate. Most of the tank commanders were out of sight, having buttoned up the tanks and others raised their heads only rarely, never more than shoulder high above the hatch either. The Challengers and Milan crews were making the Czech’s for every yard they approached and the snipers targets were now mainly the survivors of knocked out tanks and APCs. They ignored the obviously injured crewmen and infantry, taking out the healthy ones who would be put straight back into the fray in replacement vehicles once this battle was done. There were exceptions however, and twice Freddie had looked across at Big Stef as he had ignored the targets he’d identified, to shoot a different one entirely. Freddie made no comment about the wasted ammunition though, because he too would probably want someone, friend or foes to end his suffering if he emerged from a wrecked vehicle as a human torch. They had reported the withdrawal of AA vehicles back into the trees, but could not pinpoint the present positions, so artillery was landing in the trees in a ‘best guess’ sort of fashion. The loss of the moonlight would require switching the present sight with the nightscope, which was less accurate. Reluctant to do so unless as a last resort, Stef peered through the sight, seeking an opportunity whilst Freddie tried to identify a target with his MIRAS sight that his oppo could see to shoot at.

As the para-illum rounds bursts overhead the hilltop and plain were bathed in a combined total of two million candle power of light, from gently undulating flares that floated earthwards beneath small parachutes.

Colonel Eskiva saw the Challenger II on the skyline and shouted the target indication into the interphone. As the turret turned and barrel raised, he saw a Sagger crew hunched down in a ditch, squinting against the glare for a target but had not apparently seen the British tank. Leaning across the turret's coaming, he shouted at the top of his voice to them, pointing as he did so and two weapons fired at exactly the same instant, one was 7.62 calibre, the other was 125mm.

One the hillside Major Darcy was on the Guards battalion CP net giving a sitrep and didn’t hear gunners exclamation of

“Oh fuck… we’re for it now!” as he saw night turn to day outside.

In Colonel Eskiva’s T-90, the 1A45T, automatic fire-control system ordered the carousel automatic loader to retract and the gunner took over. The smoothbore gun recoiled as it sent a discarding sabot round at the exposed British tank that was picking its way around splintered tree trunks.

Fluids do not take kindly to compression if they are confined inside a sealed vessel, such as a skull. The sonic shock wave that preceded the bullet into Eskiva’s open mouth had already folded back the colonels tongue, forcing it down his throat with such force it tore off at the root. As the bullet itself entered the skull through the top of the colonels mouth, the accompanying shockwave forced the fluids and soft tissue away, displacing it as a boulder would if dropped into a pond. There was nowhere for the displaced matter to go and the fluid refused to be compressed, so something had to give. The colonels skull came apart and his eyeballs burst outwards from their sockets. It all happened in less than a thousandth of a second and the colonel did not even know he was dead.

On the hill the majors tank was struck on its right side, on the turret ring, the joint where turret meets chassis. The depleted uranium tip was ten times denser than water and not even the Chobham armour of the British tank slowed it. The energy created by the impact turned the armour plate molten, and the round passed through into the interior of the turret, decapitating Darcy’s gunner and instantly raising the inside temperature to 560’ centigrade. The flash point for the propellant inside the British tanks bag charges was considerably less than the furnace like temperature of the turret and they exploded, setting off the stored HESH warheads as they did so. If Colonel Eskiva’s gunner hadn’t been staring at the ruined head of his colonel, whose still twitching body had tumbled back into the turrets interior, he would have seen the Challengers turret part company with the chassis, spinning end over end, down the hill and into the river with a huge splash.

Guardsman Morgan had grown anxious to the point of desperation as the return fire from the Czech’s indicated how much closer they were. He had lost the telephone cable he had been following and could not find it again in the pitch dark, nor could he find his small torch, with its tiny aperture, made smaller still by strategically applied masking tape. Cursing and shaking he was close to panic as he pulled a chemical light stick from a map pocket. He fumbled with the wrapping until he got the thing out and bent it at the middle, breaking the glass tube inside the plastic casing, allowing the chemicals inside to mix.

Lt Col Hupperd-Lowe and his nine strong escort were feeling their way through the darkness towards 1 Company’s headquarters CP when the colonel saw a bright green, fluorescent light suddenly appear. Recognising it for what it was he was almost speechless with rage, not fifty metres from the CP some idiot was showing a naked light, a sodding bright one at that and he made towards it, shouting as he went.

The Czech Su-17s reached the valley but could not raise the regimental commander of the attacking unit on the radio. They could see firing and knew roughly what ground the enemy held but no more. The leader of the formation cursed as a Starstreak missile slammed into one of their number, sending it into the earth in a pillar of flame. Quite suddenly there appeared directly ahead on the top of the enemy hill a bright light. It was not a big light but in the pitched dark on top of the hill it acted like a beacon of bright green. He could see no future, quite literally, in hanging around without some instruction from the ground forces as to where they should place their ordnance, so he called the other three aircraft and ordered them to dump their loads on the light ahead before egressing the area on burner.

Guardsman Morgan was gaping at his furious commanding officer when the first of eight canisters of napalm hit the ground and burst open twelve feet away, engulfing him, the CO and the entire section in flame. He did not die an easy death, none of them did. As the ‘Fitters’ turned hard for home the last two canisters landed atop 1 Company's CP, tearing a gaping hole in the command and control ability of half the battalion’s area of responsibility.

Coming in low and fast under control of the RAF forward observer on the ground, two pairs of RAF Tornado GR4s approached on different bearings in order to make the job of the enemy AAA harder. The first pair was tooled up with HARMs for the AAA radars and the second pair with Brimstone, anti-armour missiles. Five minutes behind them were another two pairs; these carried one HARM apiece amid their anti-armour ordnance.

The first four split ten miles out; their paths would converge over the ruined crops of the fields just east of the Guards position, but separated by several seconds. If any arrived too soon they risked a mid-air collision or damage from ordnance dropped by the aircraft preceding them. If they arrived too late, then the shock effect would be lost and the AAA that much more ready for them.

The first Tornado located targets for its four HARMs whilst still several minutes out and west of the river, popping up for a look-see its threat panel lit up, the enemy saw them too. It broke their locks by descending again and once the panel was clear it turned hard right toward the river, keeping a low hill between itself and the action. The Tornado was low when it reappeared, pulling four G’s in a hard left turn to follow the river north and pickling off anti-radiation missiles as it did so.

Just inside the woodline to the east, three heat seeking, ground to air missiles leapt from launchers and 30mm cannon reached out for the British bomber.

All four HARMs scored on ZSU-23-4 and Strela-1, SA-9 vehicles but the Tornado took a 30mm cannon shell through its vertical stabiliser which did not explode, as it punched out chaff and flares. The air in front of the aircraft seemed to be filled with tracer, all coming straight at the cockpit and the ‘missile launch’ warning was constant. The flares that the aircraft’s threat suite automatically discharged were enough to defeat the missiles fired at them, it was the tracer and subsequent loud impact behind him that caused the young pilot to break left, flying straight into the hillside that was being fought over, at 600 knots indicated speed above ground.

The last aircraft of the four scored kills on armoured vehicles with all its weapons and chose to turn east to egress, banking on the ground to air missiles in the wood line having poor head-on engagement abilities. Both crew members chuckled with relief at escaping the conflict unscathed but neither man saw what killed them, as they collided in mid-air with one of the first wave of four regiments of Su-25 attack aircraft, inbound to pound the NATO mechanised brigade across the river.

From his vantage point, just behind a row of trees in the elevated rear seat of Mi-28A/N Havoc, the Czech staff officer utilised the two-seaters surveillance TV system to watch the battle. He became aware of the colonels death when he noticed that the regimental commander’s voice was now absent from the airwaves. Switching frequencies he assumed command of the battered regiment, giving brief orders before switching back to the Corps frequency where he spoke directly with the Corps commander, logically arguing his point. After three minutes he changed back once more to urge those commanding the companies to begin the forced crossing of the Wesernitz.

The 2 i/c of the 1^st Battalion Coldstream Guards was unaware that he was now the boss. A heavy air attack was underway, the commander of the attached tank squadron was not answering calls and he had now lost radio communications with 1 Company’s command post as well as the landline link. In short, he was very, very busy.

It took fifteen minutes for a runner from 3 Platoon to establish what had happened to their company headquarters and contact the battalion CP direct, by which time the platoon in the hamlet opposite Barraute reported enemy dismounted infantry clearing the buildings on the east bank and heading for the bridge. The 2 i/c had hoped that the enemy would try to cross it at speed, using vehicles but that was not the way it looked. Rather than have the enemy infantry start ripping out wires from the demolition charges, he gave the nod to the engineers to blow it now.

Freddie and Big Stef were now staring at burning armoured fighting vehicles and the wreckage of fighter bombers, British and Czech that littered the fields before them. Only three of the eight Tornados had escaped unscathed and these accompanied two damaged aircraft westward.

The Guardsmen decided it was time to bug out and rejoin friendly lines, quitting the hide they breathed fresh air for the first time in days, wrinkling their noses in disgust at the flavour of death it carried from the battlefield. They had recce’d a fordable point on the move-in and this was clear of the enemy, who were north of them now and had crossed the railway to begin the assault of the river. As they reached the bank they heard the sound of engines from behind them, emerging from the eastern treeline as the remainder of the enemy division advanced. The flanking motor rifle regiments were aiming either side of the Guards positions, heading for the Light Infantry to the north and Argyll’s to the south of the promontory.

Although 1CG now only faced a formation half the size it had been when it began, they were not out of the woods by any means. By the time the amphibious PT-76 tanks and APCs would reach the crest, the divisions tank regiment, 5^th Tanks, would be half way across the fields, following in the late Colonel Eskiva’s footsteps. The dead Guards COs intention to hold for 24hrs at the very least was starting to look very optimistic indeed.

With the loss of their company command post the platoon commander of No.3 Platoon took command of the 1 Company, as the senior officer. Unintentionally, the Czech’s had crossed the river at the juncture of 1 and 2 Company’s real estate, which presented the young lieutenant with the prospect of trying to deal with two assaults on each flank of his company’s front. After a quick call to the battalion CP for the ok, he liaised with 2 Company and passed control of the right flank platoon to them before calling in fire missions on the east where his own platoon was engaged in a fierce fire-fight with the enemy troops in the town.

The anti-tank section moved forward into the copse opposite the fordable section of river below the town where it was joined by two Yeomanry rovers with their Milan posts.

Across the river the Czech commander of the 23^rd MRR facing them, was fairly certain that the main British resistance was on the high ground to the south of him and only infantry held the hamlet across the river. The bridge had been blown but he was not unduly put-out by this, the original crossing of the river in years gone by was the wide ford that still existed to the south side of the bridge. His problem was the lack of artillery support as the following division was still road marching forward and the air support was in exclusive use against the high ground, attempting to make up for the lack of artillery, which would normally ‘shoot them in’ to the target with a rolling barrage. The T-72 and T-90s of his lead company would remain on the east bank to provide direct fire support but they were not to expose themselves until all the companies AFVs were in position and about to cross the start line.

Back at the centre of the battalion line, the Challenger IIs of the Royal Hussars could no longer depress their gun barrels enough to engage the tanks and APCs which were now moving down the river bank to begin their assault. They were instead engaging the follow-on tank regiment at extreme range, leaving the closer enemies to the infantry Milan and LAW-80 teams of the Guards.

The Czech 21^st Motor Rifle Regiment, to the south of the Guards hill had just begun to emerge from the eastern treeline and orient itself to charge across the flood plain, at the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders regular battalion in its defence positions to the Guards right rear. They were too far off for the Hussars tank guns but the lieutenant who had inherited the squadron contacted the Argyll’s CP to warn them that trouble was a-comin’.

Major Sinclair, the Coldstream Guards 2 i/c, did not have time to send anyone to look for the missing commanding officer and his infantry section escort. The CO was old enough and ugly enough to look after himself, he reasoned, and got on with fighting the battle in his absence, ordering the Hussars to despatch a troop to cover the old road that ran from the, now blown bridge, diagonally through the battalion area to their right rear. At present only a platoon from 3 Company and CSM Probert’s quick reaction force was covering it, should the enemy break through at the ford. Although the Hussar squadron attached to the Light Infantry were waiting for the enemy armour to enter the fields in front of their positions, their Challengers guns would be useless if the enemy swung south into the trees behind his own battalion, on clearing the ford. Only one tank reached the desired location though as the other two threw tracks.

In the copse near the ford, the anti-tank section was watching the build-up of armour across the river. They could not see the vehicles of the 23^rd MRRs lead unit as they were forming up out of sight, but they knew where they were by looking through their thermal sights. The unoccupied buildings were all cold with no inhabitants to warm them, but the vehicles exhausts and sundry heat sources warmed the brick work on the exterior walls near the tanks and APCs, these showed up in white on their sights. The damage inflicted on the Tornados by the AAA vehicles in the far woods made the RAF reluctant, to send more to run the gauntlet until their threat had been minimised, if not destroyed. Tube artillery had been firing blind at the AAA in the woods, with little effect so it now switched the small town beside the river in the north, a young lance sergeant calling in the fire.

“Hello Zero Delta, this is India Six One Charlie… fire mission, over!” With the loss of the 1 Company CP he was forced to change to the battalion net to call down the artillery.

“Zero Delta, send over.”

“India Six One Charlie, shoot Delta Foxtrot One Nine now, over.”

“Zero Delta… wait out!” The business of calling in the mission was speeded by the pre-arranged DF plan.

There was a delay of over a minute before the artillery rep at the battalion CP confirmed the mission with a brief, “Hello India Six One Delta… shot One four five, over,” meaning that the first rounds were on the way, arrival time in forty-five seconds. This information is important, because had the unit requesting the mission been in direct combat with the target, the shells would arrive when friendly forces were as exposed as the enemy was. Knowing the time of flight of the shells allows the commander to keep up the its own units efforts until just before the shells arrive, when they take cover.

The artillery already knew the targets range and bearing, so conventional shells tore into the target or airburst above it without need of correction.

Inside the small town the barrage pre-empted the assault before the Czechs were set up. They could not turn around in the confines of the narrow streets, nor could they stay where they were and risk being trapped by falling buildings or taking a direct hit on the thin roof armour of the AFVs, they had to go forwards.

With the appearance of the first BTR and BMP APCs the lance sergeant commanding the anti-tank section held his fire as the enemy vehicles raced for the ford. By some fluke the lead vehicle, ahead of its mates by about 50m, made it to the river and began to cross, whereas the next six hit the mines buried by the Royal Engineers. The wrecked vehicles impeded the approach to the water but did not block it completely and the lead vehicle commander wrongly assumed that the vehicles behind had been hit by tank fire. He began shouting for their own tanks to get their fingers out and get out of the town and give them some support. He was still busy on the radio when his BTR reached the western bank and hit a mine all of its own. Five minutes later the eastern bank was littered with the burning hulks of eighteen APCs and closed to traffic until they could be dragged away. The anti-tanks finally got to let-rip as the enemy tanks poked their snouts out from behind buildings, far too late to support their infantry comrades. Five were knocked out in short order by the Guards anti-tank crews who had the advantage of a heat signature to at.

JSTARS, far to the rear was watching the movement forward of vehicles behind the assault and eventually classified them as self-propelled artillery. The divisional headquarters were informed that they had about fifteen minutes before enemy artillery would again be supporting the assault. This in turn was passed on down the line until it arrived at 1CGs CP where Major Sinclair decided to pull out his forces in the cops and move them to a north facing position with the single Challenger that had not thrown a track from that troop. He dispatched three Warriors from the rear and ordered the young NCO and his section to bug-out with the two Yeomanry call signs.

The Challengers on the hill were steadily taking their toll of the tank regiments T-80s but they had been firing continuously for almost an hour and ammunition was running low. Three of the tanks had been destroyed and three had thrown tracks. Of the six that remained there were just five to take on the second wave approaching the hill. The lieutenant in command informed the battalion that he was withdrawing three of those five to the rear for an ammo replen. He then rounded up some of the infantry on the rear slopes to form a chain and remove the ammunition from the disabled vehicles, transferring it to his tank and the one that remained with him.

To the south of the main action, the motor rifle regiment there went totally unhindered between the minefields before spreading out and accelerating across the cultivated flood plain toward the 1^st Battalion Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders. If they thought they were fortunate, they were not, many sets of eyes, mostly electronic, watched them come on and the NATO forces MLRS oriented their launchers to the correct bearing and elevations and waited. It was an exercise that had been practised many times, they were not aiming at the tanks and APCs but assigned areas of ground. Computers worked out the sequence of firing, taking into consideration wind, temperature and humidity, range and times of flight.

Forty-one thousand, seven hundred and fifty sub-munitions arrived simultaneously in an area of terrain occupied by one hundred and forty-one armoured personnel carriers, main battle tanks and self-propelled anti-aircraft vehicles. In the OPs along the southern edge of the high ground, young men watched one of the most expensive fireworks displays in European history. Secondary’s, the vehicles own exploding fuel tanks and munitions, were more spectacular than the detonations, which caused them, and like a fireworks display the results were accompanied by appreciative “Oohs!” and “Aaghs!” from the spectators. A grid square had been removed, along with the 21^st Motor Rifle Regiment.

On the forward slopes the Guardsmen were unable to prevent the enemy crossing the river and this was unfortunate because the APCs disgorged their infantry on reaching the western bank, these men deployed and began the assault on foot, clearing the way for the AFVs. The riflemen and gun groups in the trenches beyond the crest moved up to the crest and forward slopes and began the business of killing their counterparts.

Coming out of the Czech Republic at treetop level, skimming the Bohemian Forest, were twelve exceedingly futuristic looking aircraft. They were swing-wing, high performance combat aircraft previously seen only at air shows in its experimental prototype form during the late 1990s. Their wings swept forward instead of backwards, in a reverse of the conventional norms and the horizontal stabilising canards at rear of the cockpit, were more familiar on Sweden’s Viggen and Drakken airframes.

The Su-37 Berkut or ‘Golden Eagle’, was designed in response to the USA’s stealthy generation of airframes and was of RAM, radar absorbent material, construction, nothing new there, except that the ordnance it carried was also stealthed and launched from two rotary bomb bays.

At 40,000’, 25 miles south of Leipzig the NATO JSTARS and AWACs played follow-the-leader, in a monotonous racecourse pattern with their intensely bored F-15C Eagle escorts in tow.

Major Caroline Nunro was one of the US Air Forces prime recruiting assets, adorning posters that stated women could be fighter pilots, or anything else they wanted to be, in the modern United States Air Force, and tonight she commanded the rear element. Caroline had turned down the opportunity to adorn the centrefold of the world’s most famous men’s magazine and the $750,000 cheque that went with it. The magazine had envisaged a strong visual image of Caroline stood in a flight suit, fists on hips, legs spaced apart and the distinctly non-regulation flight suit unzipped beyond the crotch, revealing that there was nothing fake about the blue-eyed blond jet jockey. Caroline knew she was a smart, shit-hot pilot but she did not need to undo the hard work she had put in overcoming the sexual prejudices of her male colleagues. Her logbook showed seven different types of aircraft she had flown since getting her wings, from the high tech but un-sexy F-117A to the USMC Harrier; she had fought to be where she now was, quite literally. A month before she had been placed on administrative suspension following an incident at a Washington charity ball. In dress uniform she had been dancing with a Senator who had allowed his pre-conceptions, and Champagne cocktails, to get the better of him.

“Honey,” he had whispered in her ear.

“Why risk your cute butt flying fighters when you could make a fortune, in perfect safety on your back?” He had emphasised the financial offer by dropping his hand from the between her shoulder blades to her ‘cute butt’. The reporters and photographers for the various papers, society pages had raced to file their stories and pictures, of Caroline’s right hook and her sprawling dance partner.

The Senators spin-doctors had moved fast and before midnight they were plugging a different version of events to both the media and the Pentagon, so by the next morning Caroline was facing charges of conduct unbecoming due to excess alcohol and by her propositioning him. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, was the exact quote from the Senators legal rep.

The Senator had always been a strong supporter of the Air Force, it came as no surprise to her that he had called in markers, and her investigators came on hostile and aggressive. A blood test took care of the drink allegation which was really only calculated to increase the size of the target area for the mudslinging.

During her interview the chief investigator had asked why she had punched the Senator, so she’d replied that her uniform’s, evening dress skirt was too restrictive to permit the permanent re-location of his testicles, a knuckle sandwich was the most she could manage, but thank you for asking anyway.

Although she did not know it, the president himself had been following the events and had seen details of a resulting FBI investigation into her private life. He knew the Senators reputation, not his public one but the one known by those in power. The middle-aged satyr had got his long overdue come-uppance and a message had been sent, ‘back off and let the story die of old age’, which was about a fortnight on the hill. He wasn’t going to stand by and let good officers career be wrecked. There was no indictment so the FBI buried the file and Caroline got to cool her heels for a while as punishment for losing her temper.

The incident had earned her a new nickname and she accepted it with glee, even though the air force aren’t into nicknames in the same way that the navy is, but as a flight commander and deputy squadron commander, it put her mark on her subordinates too.

With the radar set to standby, not generating any energy, Caroline’s flight of four covering the JSTARS had nothing to do but be ready for the AWACs, five miles ahead to alert them of any trouble.

To the south, the twelve Su-37s split, with two flights of four turning north and the remainder going single, heading for the first targets on their lists.

At 0139hrs precisely, the Russian advanced fighter-bombers began launching their ordnance without once switching on their own radars. A satellite down-feed was passing them data from ground stations within Germany itself; radar information hacked from civilian, air traffic control radars. The first targets were the AWACs and JSTARS above them; the second were the civilian radars themselves, along with a number of military ones. The data was in turn passed to the air-air missiles, guiding them toward their targets without radiating a single erg of radar energy.

Last but not least were ground targets of strategic importance, such as the Hauptbahnhof, Leipzig’s railway station beside Willy-Brandt-Platz in the centre of the city, and the autobahn junction where the Nuremberg to Berlin route joined the east/west A14, northwest of Leipzig/Halle airport.

Major Nunro’s life was saved purely because she had a stiff neck and was turning it from side to side when she saw the tell-tale fiery trail of approaching missiles.

“Smoke in the air… Prize Fighters break!” she called out on the general frequency of all the aircraft engaged with her, as she broke left towards the missiles, rolling inverted and pulling back on the yoke, vertically jinking to break lock. The manoeuvre wasn’t quite a wasted exercise as none of the weapons was as yet guiding, but a second later they were, sent active by the aircraft that had launched them and Caroline was heading in the most survivable direction when that happened.

The huge K-99 missiles ramjets were already driving them along at an economic Mach 2.4 from their launch point 130 miles distant. On acquiring the targets for themselves they accelerated to Mach 4.2. The missile headed her way didn’t have her name on it, just her initials, as its proximity fuse set off the warhead eight feet from her tail pipes. She was in burner and headed earthwards when the missile went off behind her and she dragged the throttles to the rear as the engines turned to expensive scrap. Glancing at her airspeed she saw she was travelling far too fast to eject safely and pulled back on the stick, extending speed brakes as she did so.

Danny Gray, her wingman, was also in burner when his aircraft was hit, shrapnel tearing a hole in the joint where fuselage meets left vertical stabiliser. Danny did not kill his speed as Caroline had done because his engines were still good to go so he continued to accelerate. The increasing stress acting on the damaged stabiliser snapped it off when he was travelling at over twice the speed of sound, and the aircraft began to spin around its own axis. Fighting the blackness that threatened to overcome his senses Danny thought he had done well to punch out, but the sense of achievement was fleeting. His seat flung him out into a vortex of opposing forces, which dislocated his arms and legs and snapped his neck like a twig.

Caroline was too busy to see the destruction of the JSTARS and AWACs or that of five other escorts, as she sought to glide her crippled fighter homewards. She was trying to work out if a dead stick landing were possible when she saw another damaged F-15 tumbling past her about 700m away, its pilot already having quite the machine. She gave up any thought of saving her aircraft when a second missile slammed into the pilot-less Eagle, so checking that her speed was below 400 knots she punched out also.

If NATO thought that the operation had been to solely aid the Russians Czech allies on the Wesernitz, they were only partly correct.

The French/Canadian general had lost real-time intelligence at a critical point in the land battle, as well as his primary aerial command and control platform but he had allowed for a premature withdrawal to the next line if need be. He still had troops arriving at the front from the rest of Europe via air, road and rail, he believed he had a rope on it still. He would have been less confident if he had known that those three supply and reinforcement routes were about to be chopped off short of their present terminus.

With radars knocked out or switched off in that corner of Germany, Colonel General Serge Alontov sat back in the cockpit jump-seat of the Il-76 Transport aircraft that led the air armada toward its target. He had personally planned this operation, although not a Spetznaz mission he did have one of his own two company strong units aboard this aircraft. The other company was already on the ground and in action, having entered Germany a month before in varied guises. The remainder of the airborne division of the 6^th Guards Army rode the other Il-76 aircraft that followed his own. The tenth aircraft held a young English speaking Senior Lieutenant of paratroops who was now wondering if he should not have taken up his cousins offer to remain in England.

NATO anti-aircraft sites around the city of Leipzig, and security forces at the airport came under attack from Russian Special Forces within minutes of the attacks by the Su-37s on the ground radar and early warning assets in the air. For the most part the attacks were successful, certainly at the airport the commandos made short work of the missile sites but the ground troops charged with guarding the facility had back up on hand. A battalion of the 82^nd Airborne had arrived from the states a half an hour before on the way east to act as infantry in the battle near the border. The Russians were wiped to a man but the airborne soldiers carried only their personal weapons and six magazines of ammunition apiece.

The Russian airborne division numbered six thousand in three brigades, which dropped on separate DZs. The brigade with the hardest task dropped on the airport, its job being to secure it before putting blocking forces at the

Autobahn junction that had been heavily cratered by the airstrike, and into the town of Schkeuditz.

The second brigade dropped several miles south of the airport and just beyond the Elster-Saale Kanal, denying access to the city from the west whilst the colonel general dropped with the last brigade into the Rosental, the city of Leipzig’s park.

By dawn a stranglehold would in place around NATOs supply line where it was most needed and handing a dilemma to the commanders and politicians. Whether to carry on fighting with the enemy at the back door until forces could be diverted to clear them out, or whether to pull back beyond the city of Leipzig, handing them the northeast of Germany on a plate.

Despite the best efforts of tank and infantryman, the Guards had first been forced from the advance slope positions, by the weight of the numbers opposing them. The enemy artillery was back on line and was being used to snuff out the British Foot Guards strong points, one by one.

The Czech, 5^th Tank Regiment had completed its move to the river over an hour before but the enemy still held the crest of the hill that overlooked it, having been pushed back up the hill by the infantry. The tanks were stalled until the arrival of bridging equipment, which was now in the process of throwing three ribbon bridges across to the western bank under the protective guns of the tank regiment. They were receiving 81mm-mortar fire but nothing more substantial; their enemy had run out of Milan anti-tank rounds and NLAW weapons some time before.

Calling up his quick reaction force, Major Sinclair ordered CSM Probert to relocate in order to cover a fighting withdrawal by the rifle companies. He then pulled back all the surviving Milan crews attached to 1 and 2 Company, with the exception of the section covering the road. Those pulled back went to the harbour area of the battalions Warrior AFVs, a point midway between the crest and the juncture of 2LI and 1 Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders positions; this was at the rear of his depth company, 3 Company.

Over to the north, in the fortified buildings near the blown bridge, the 1 Company platoon had been receiving artillery rounds, however this only made their positions harder for an enemy to assault. The old buildings had deep stone cellars and these provided ideal cover from the worst of the fire. Enemy infantry had attempted to force the river at the ford on three occasions; they needed to dig out the Guardsmen in order to clear the dead APCs blocking the approach before they could put armour across. The platoon was isolated from the rest of the battalion by more than just distance, their last surviving radio had been destroyed an hour before and only the landline link to the battalion CP remained.

Major Sinclair had to work out a set of orders, and issue them over the fragmented communications system in order to extract what remained of his Battalion as a fighting force. The CO had forsaken the FV-435, command vehicle for a hole dug by the Royal Engineers and roofed over with the trunks of pine trees, which themselves had two layers of filled sandbags atop them, the ‘435’ was at the vehicle harbour. Inside the CP, illumination was provided by ‘kero’, kerosene lamps, which hissed a continual fine spray of kerosene onto their wicks. Although it was a headquarters, it lacked the bulky paraphernalia a higher headquarters might sport, there were no power cables, nothing bulky, all radios were on battery power, as were the phones and laptop computers. There was nothing there that could not be picked up and carried away relatively easily. At this moment everything not vital had been removed to vehicles or was packed and ready. Major Sinclair intended for the two forward rifle companies to withdraw past CSM Probert’s QRF, before covering the CSMs men as they fell back to 3 Company’s lines. The three Challengers that had thrown tracks had now been recovered and tracks replaced, they were however empty of ammunition, so were now loading up.

The young lieutenant who commanded the Hussars was directed to cover the withdrawal of the remnants of 1 and 2 Company, plus the four Challengers that had 'replened' earlier, there had been five, but one was currently burning brightly on the crest. Picking up a radio handset he glanced around the CP and saw the RSM looking very grim as he listened to the sitreps, situation reports, coming in.

“Sarn’t Major, get 3 Platoons Warriors moving to the old barn a klick behind their present position. I’m going to order them out now and they can RV there.” A klick, being one kilometre.

Grabbing his personal weapon and Bergen, the RSM departed the CP with the full intention of misinterpreting the order to mean his personally going with the APCs, toward the fighting.

After three minutes of fruitless tries to contact 3 Platoon, the major was in the process of giving his orders to 1 and 2 Company to begin a fighting withdrawal, after which he would order out 3 Platoon, his extreme left flank sub unit by landline.

He heard something screaming toward them, along with everyone else in the CP his eyes were on the log ceiling, as the massive 240mm mortar round arrived.

Colin had split the QRF into two teams of two Warriors and their sections, with Oz commanding one half. He took his two vehicles south with the intention of covering 2 Company whilst Oz covered 1 Company and was on the road when he heard the Czech mortar round pass over head and detonate way off to his right. Despite the distance, landing as it had beyond 3 Company, the explosion sounded like a freight train hitting buffers at full pelt.

Enjoying his role as a commander of troops, the Czech staff officer had ordered the Hokum’s pilot across the plain towards the river where he could better control the 22^nd Motor Rifle as it fought on the slopes of the hill. He had been witness to the total destruction of the 21^st Motor Rifle Regiment before it had been able to fire a single round at the British to the south-west. He was worried that the same thing would happen to the 23^rd MRR, stalled to the north, and the 5^th Tank Regiment, which sat behind his own temporary command, providing fire support to clear the enemy so engineers could put a bridge over to the western bank.

The Blowpipe section of 1 Company had temporarily abandoned their launcher on several occasions to fight again as riflemen in pushing off Czech infantry who had got to within 150m of the crest. None of the light support weapons were in action anymore, having overheated repeatedly and been cooled by the battlefield expedient of urinating on the barrels, eventually the breaches had warped. The makers recommended that the weapons be allowed to cool naturally, which reflected how little they knew about the required function of their product. Every available rifle was therefore needed to repel the enemy thrusts.

Guardsman Troper and L/Cpl Veneer returned to the shell crater that served as their firing position and retrieved the Shorts Blowpipe VSRADM, very short ranged, air defence missile. They had enjoyed little success with the weapon so far; its 3000m maximum range and relatively slow speed ruled it out as a counter for fast jets. They had fired ten missiles and received only abuse from the riflemen nearby, who weren’t exactly ecstatic about having them as neighbours in the first place. AAA of any kind are priority targets for an enemy seeking battlefield air superiority over an opponent. The lack of fan mail from the other trenches had pissed off Guardsman Troper, the big man from Lancashire had stood up at one point, the missile he had just fired went wild after a promising start, chasing a Su-25 before deciding to boldly go where no 11kg missile had gone before, straight upwards into the clouds.

“You’s cunts should be grateful we're here, highly trained specialists we are… CO himself said so!”

A clod of earth flying out of the darkness indicated their peers vote of no-confidence, hitting Troper on the helmet where soil and grit added to his misery as it trickled down his neck into his clothing. “Take yer specialisation back to London, ya fuckin’ foreigner!” yelled the unseen thrower. The Coldstream Guards recruit from Yorkshire and the north-east of England, but there are exceptions, Guardsman Troper being a case in point.

“It’s Lancashire… and don’t think I don’t recognise your voice, Arkwright… I’ll have you later!”

As they now sat in the shell crater, the occupants of another trench spotted the two-seater attack helicopter across the river.

“Oye, you!” one shouted.

“The wankers with the Blowpipe… betcha can’t hit this bastard!” Veneer and Troper realised that they were being addressed and two heads popped up above ground level. Troper had a soggy roll-up in his mouth that he spat out on seeing the easy target, 2000m away. Both soldiers looked at one another and said

“My turn!” in unison.

“Fuck off, is it… you missed the last one and I’m senior!” declared L/Cpl Veneer. He jerked Tropers helmet down over the other mans eyes and grabbed the weapon, hauling its 22+kg’s off the ground and scrambling from the hole. Choosing a spot where he had cover from fire from the enemy infantry below, and an unobstructed back blast area, he seated the weapon on his right shoulder. Troper scrambled up beside him.

“You’d better not miss… a fiver say’s you miss?” L/Cpl Veneer was sighting on the target and replied out of the corner of his mouth. “I’m broke… will a photograph of a four pound note and change do?” Troper gave one last look over his shoulder; to check that no one had wandered behind them where the weapons back blast would singe more than eyebrows.

“Done,” he replied, and tapped Veneer on the top of his helmet to indicate he was clear to fire.

The mortar platoon had also been alerted to the presence of the hovering helicopter and lobbed some rounds its way. The impacting mortar rounds were too far away to cause damage but close enough to cause the pilot to pull back on the collective and gain altitude. The Hokum was at a little over two hundred feet up when the 11kg Blowpipe missile impacted above the fuselage in the rotor assembly, shearing the retaining ‘Jesus Nut’ completely off. Fuselage and rotors parted company and both the pilot and staff officer were screaming aloud as the helicopter impacted nose first into the soft soil of a potato field. The impact fractured the fuel cells and aviation fuel poured forth onto the hot metal of the engine, creating a Roman candle of roaring flame in the fields of the flood plain, before exploding in spectacular fashion.

On the crest the four Challengers there withdrew, leaving the infantry to their own devices, ignorant of the fact that the foot soldiers had not received the word to pull back.

Once in position the QRF Warriors wheeled and headed east to a point where they could see the crest, the Challengers passed them on their own way west and Colin called up 2 Company to tell them he was in position. The company commander of 2 Company had received no orders to withdraw and was not prepared to take the word of a mere ranker. Precious time was wasted as he tried, without success to raise the battalion CP by radio and by landline. Common sense should have told the man that a soldier of CSM Probert's calibre was hardly likely to have made the story up so after listening to the man for a few moments, Colin decided to have a one way conversation. There are four categories of officers who hold the Queens Commission, ‘Good’, ‘Bad’, ‘Indifferent’ and ‘Would be good, if only they did not have their heads stuck so far up their own arse’. 2 Company’s OC was in the last group and Colin resorted to subterfuge as he depressed the send button on his radio. When Colin apparently called the battalion CP over air, it sounded to the 2 Company commander that Colin was in radio contact with them, but that for some reason 2 Company could not receive the battalion CPs transmissions.

“Nine Nine Alpha, roger out to you… hello Two, this is Nine Nine Alpha… from Sunray Zero, fall back now in bounds to Three’s location, my call signs will support, over?”

Fortunately, Oz did not have the same problem with the two remaining platoons of 1 Company that were on the crest and the battered remnants of the rifle companies began to leapfrog backwards.

Just before dawn a Battalion a third the size it had been, just 24 hours’ before, withdrew through 2LI and the in-depth 7^th/8^th Argyll’s, they had far more vehicles than they had soldiers to fill them. The attached RA and REME had also taken losses, the survivors of their knocked out vehicles fought as infantry during the withdrawal. Of the twelve Challengers IIs that began the fight, only eight remained and all bore scars. An hour later they were joined by the RSM and three more empty Warriors. 3 Platoon had not received the order to withdraw, nor a replen of ammunition since the fight started, and the RSM had watched helplessly through binoculars as an infantry attack on the platoons location had reached a crescendo of firing and grenade detonations. A brief silence had followed the enemy assault on the tiny stronghold, before brief bursts of gunfire announced that the enemy was taking no prisoners, whether wounded or healthy.