The Fall of Night

Chapter Two: Armageddon Rising

Moscow, Russia

The line of cars appeared out of nowhere, seemingly entering the city at the same time and angling into a single line that advanced mercilessly towards the Kremlin. They were all black, all with tinted windows; the police herded the population of the city out of the way as the cars flashed onwards. There were few protests; the citizens of Moscow knew that their lords and masters were in the cars, many of whom deserved actual respect. A handful of criminals, convicted and sentenced to work as brute labour, made obscene gestures as the cars passed; their supervisors, themselves brutes, laid around them with their whips. Order would be maintained.

General Aleksandr Borisovich Shalenko sat in his car as the vehicle entered the Special Security Zone at the heart of Moscow, the heart of Russia. Decades of war with the Chechnya rebels and the re-absorption of the former SSR states in Central Asia had made Russia a target for every international Jihadist group; even the extreme control practiced over the citizens by the new government found it hard to prevent all attacks. No one was allowed to enter the Special Security Zone without being searched, not even a General and one of the President’s closest friends and confidents; Shalenko would have had the guards executed if they failed to search him with as much care as they would devote to a lowly civil servant.

“Papers, please,” a guard said, his AK-2015 pointed just away from Shalenko’s chest. He wouldn’t hesitate to fire if there was something seriously wrong, or even if his suspicions became aroused; no one would forget the truck bomb that had devastated Stalingrad, or the LNG tanker that had devastated Oakland in America. Shalenko passed over his papers without comment; the days when Russian Generals could barge though security were long over. “You may pass, sir.”

The driver took the car into the car park, where it would be searched, while Shalenko himself walked into the guardhouse. The search process was through; the guards removed his service weapon even as they checked his identity, his possessions, and the contents of his security briefcase. They weren’t cleared for any of the information in the briefcase; they had to wait for one of the President’s aides to inspect it for them, just in case there was a bomb inside. It wouldn’t be the first time that an unsuspecting officer would be turned into an unknowing suicide bomber. Finally, however, Shalenko was permitted access into the inner heart of Russia.

“Welcome back, General,” Colonel Marina Konstantinovna Savelyeva said. Her official rank was Colonel; her position as chief aide to the President gave her status and power well above her station. In Russia, power, responsibility and rank sometimes existed in inverse proportion to one another; Shalenko himself had once been a mere Captain with Colonels and even Generals reporting to him. “The President is keen to begin the meeting.”

They walked the remainder of the way into the Kremlin in silence, their only escorts a handful of security troops, intent on ensuring that there was absolutely no threat to the President and the bureaucracy that made up the core of Russia. Shalenko had once considered it overkill, before the series of attacks in America had begun; the Russian state might have suffered some attacks, but nowhere near the number of brutal attacks that the Americans had weathered. The price for that was a police state that would have had the old KGB reeling in astonishment and a disregard for any notion of civilised warfare. They paused for a second in front of the new statue of Stalin — Russia had been caught for years in a wave of Communist nostalgia — and then entered the Kremlin, passing through still more checkpoints and finally entering the main room. It had been renovated in the years since the new government had taken up power; it was now both a testament to Russian military glories in the past, and the advanced technology that Russia had adapted from the West. The old and the new merged seamlessly, all embodied in the face of the man who accepted Shalenko’s salute as they entered.

He was old, but with youthful eyes; his short-cropped white hair seeming too white to be real. He was shorter than Shalenko, with a stocky body and hints of a greater strength than seemed possible, but he dominated the room by the sheer force of his presence. No one doubted that the man facing them was the undisputed lord and master of Russia; Shalenko knew that if the President gave the order, his own troops would shoot Shalenko down within seconds. He was respected and feared, a hard man to love, but not a hard man to follow.

President Aleksandr Sergeyevich Nekrasov.

“General,” Nekrasov said, without preamble. His power sat easily around him; the only times when he had ordered one of his inner circle executed had been when the member in question had concealed information from him. Failure wasn't an automatic death sentence, not like it had been in Stalin’s day, but lying to him was never tolerated. The Russian disease could not be allowed to spread. “I trust that your inspections were successful?”

Shalenko nodded. “The vast majority of units are ready,” he said, truthfully. He had kicked arse and taken names all over European Russia and Belarus to ensure that the units were at their optimum condition. “The commando units need to have their specific targets assigned, but in most cases they would be capable of carrying out their missions without further preparation.”

“We have time,” Nekrasov assured him. They had been old friends for years, long enough to ensure that they understood one another. Shalenko’s private fear had been that he would be asked to take up the post of Minister of Defence, but Nekrasov had spared him that; the role Shalenko held was the one he wanted. “We will review the operation as soon as the entire Cabinet is assembled.”

They trickled in, one by one, as they were all cleared by the security forces. Nekrasov waited patiently as they came in, taking the time to exchange comments with a handful of people, asking after the health of wives and children with one breath and discussing the career of promising officers with another. The new Russia needed promising officers; Shalenko himself had ensured that dozens of officers who had talent received training to go with the talent. The reform of the Russian military since the end of the Soviet Union had been a painful process, but it had all been worthwhile; Nekrasov controlled what was perhaps the most powerful land force on the continent.

As the doors closed, Nekrasov tapped the table. “My Friends, it has been over thirty years since the power of Russia was broken by the Americans and their European lapdogs,” he said. “We were cast down and forced to be humble; our power and prestige was stripped from us and we were outcasts, always the target of jibes, always prevented from gaining the help we needed to develop ourselves. Our people starved as America abandoned us and Europe lectured; military bases moved ever closer to our powers and America deployed ABM systems intended to ensure that our nuclear arsenal was no longer dangerous. I remember the final withdrawal from Poland…

“I swore then that we would return.

“For the past ten years, we have been pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps,” Nekrasov said. The room was very quiet. “We have developed our energy sources and have been using them to earn hard cash, that we have in turn used to develop and reform our military, and finally give Russia something for us all to be proud of. Now, we have a window of opportunity… and a deadly threat to our very well-being.”

Shalenko listened as Nekrasov listed, one by one, the insults and indignities piled on Russia by Europe. Nekrasov had nothing, but contempt for Europe; Europe wasn't the Americans, who had the military strength and geographic luck to back up their words. Brussels hectored and hounded, persecuting Russian immigrants, while meddling in the endless state of Ukraine unrest and assisting the Baltic States to break their agreements with Russia. Ever since he had come to power, Nekrasov had used the advantages of Russia ruthlessly, from ensuring that the fuel that Russia supplied came at a high enough cost to impede Polish economic development, to using the positions in Belarus to build a support base for the greatest military attack the world had ever known.

“We have been preparing for this for years,” Nekrasov finished. “We have been waiting for the window of opportunity… and now we are ready. In a month, Operation Stalin will commence… and a continent will be brought to its knees.”

The reactions ran around the room. Some of them had known from the start that the operation would be launched unless something very significant occurred to prevent it. Some of them had thought that the entire operation was a pipe dream, or a desperately impossible gamble; they had never expected that anyone would actually try it. They all burned to avenge the multiple insults that Russia had suffered over the years, but Operation Stalin…

Nekrasov smiled at them all. “General?”

“I have completed my review of the units that have been assigned to Operation Stalin,” Shalenko said shortly. “The security requirements were quite high — most of the units have little idea that they will be going to war within a month — but training and supplies are excellent. The logistics chain has been carefully prepared and the logistics units will be able to supply the advance forces with everything they will need to maintain the offensive. It would be nice to be able to capture European supplies, at least of fuel and rations, but we are not dependent upon it. We just completed RED STORM, a major exercise, and I am pleased to report that the battlespace management system worked fairly well. Striking the balance between control from the rear and local awareness of conditions was tricky, but we believe that we have successfully mastered the art.

“The Special Forces units have been largely prepared for their own missions, although we have been unwilling to assign them any specific intelligence on their targets,” he continued. “Their role in the operation is absolutely crucial, but until we are ready to inform them of their targets, further training is likely to be counter-productive; we will begin practical training once all units have returned to their barracks and entered lockdown. Security will be maintained.”

He paused. “The operation has been extensively wargamed,” he concluded. “Assuming that everything goes in our favour, we will win within a month; assuming that the enemy is aware of our intentions and takes steps to thwart us, we should still be able to win, but within six months. It is therefore important that the long-range strike plan is launched; if we can destroy the European logistics chain, our victory is certain.”

The Minister of Industry, Ostap Tarasovich Onyshenko, coughed. “That assumes, of course, that we neutralise both the European nuclear deterrent and the prospect of American intervention,” he said. “Can you guarantee that we can accomplish both?”

Nekrasov smiled thinly. “All warfare is based on risk,” he said. “We can knock out most of the nuclear deterrent in the first round. Olga?”

Olga Dmitriyevna Sedykh, the Foreign Minister, spoke from her part of the table. “The Americans are fully committed in the Middle East and Korea, where the North Koreans are preparing to launch an attack against the south. We have said nothing about this, of course; Kang is unlikely to need encouragement from us to attack either the Americans or his southern brothers. The rift between Europe and America is a deep and apparently permanent one; the Americans no longer have an obligation to come to Europe’s rescue. We expect that they will protest and secure Iceland, somewhere where we are not even preparing to threaten; even if they intend to interfere, they will have very limited forces at hand to interfere.”

She paused. “The main danger is the American ABM units in Poland,” she concluded. “They have to be neutralised… carefully. We cannot afford to give the President a bloody flag to wave.”

“I have a specialised unit prepared for that mission,” Shalenko assured her. “If nothing else, avenging the insult offered to us in Iran will seem like an excuse for the American public, as unreasonable as the Americans are on such matters.”

“In any case, they would hesitate, I think, before becoming embroiled with us,” Nekrasov said. “They will be confused, at first, as to what is actually going on. Maksim; what about our security?”

Maksim Nikolayevich Zaripov, FSB Director of External Intelligence, smiled. “There have been no signs that anyone within the American or European intelligence services suspects the existence of Operation Stalin,” he said. “We have very good penetration of the establishment in Brussels and Poland and while the Poles are worried about the presence of so many Russian soldiers in Belarus, to say nothing of the influx of refugees, they do not have any actual proof that we mean them ill. The greatest proof, I think, is the ROE that Brussels gave to the three EUROFOR deployments; Poland, Ukraine and Bosnia. All of the units have no authority to so much as blow their noses without permission from Brussels.”

“Requested in triplicate, of course,” Admiral Petr Yegorovich Volkov said. “Fifty-page forms, no mistakes, in three different languages.”

There were some chuckles. “I believe that our security remains intact,” Zaripov said. “Our deployment of submarines and weapons to the Algerians and Serbs has excited some comment, but nothing major; the main complaint is that we have been muscling out their weapon manufactures when it comes to sales to the Far East. For some reason, not many people trust European weapons.”

Shalenko smiled. The French had supplied weapons to Iran, weapons that they could turn off at will… and they had been caught at it. The Americans had forced the French to hand over the shutdown codes; the final radio broadcasts from Tehran had warned the entire world of the danger. The integrated European defence industry had taken a major drop in sales.

Nekrasov tapped the table. “Margarita?”

Shalenko found his eyes turning to Margarita Sergeyevna Pushkina, the FSB Director of External Operations, with interest. She was pretty, but dangerous; she was known as the ‘Black Widow’ behind her back. There were rumours that Nekrasov and Margarita were lovers, but informed opinion tended to disregard the possibility; the idea of the Black Widow having anything to do with anything as soft as love…

“We have established penetration of all of the countries within Europe, some of them through the use of long-term FSB sleeper agents, others with the assistance of the Algerians,” Margarita said. Her voice was soft and very musical, but there was a hard edge that undercut her dark-haired appearance and soft skin. “This has the added advantage that if the Europeans stumble onto some parts of our network, the Algerians and radical Islam will get the blame. The Algerian plan for a major uprising can, with our help, succeed to a certain extent.”

She smiled. There was no humour in the smile. “The Islamic Government of Algeria has been plotting its war for a long time,” she said. “Their problem was that they would get their arse kicked if they tried it alone; with our help, they have a fair chance at pulling it off long enough for us to make our gains permanent. Afterwards… well, it’s not as if we owe them anything. They have been smuggling in weapons and preparing terror cells for years; we took advantage of the opportunity to move some of our own people into the region.”

She paused. “I should stress that this part of the plan could fail,” she admitted. “I have every confidence that our own people will carry out their missions or die trying, but I don’t trust the fanatics the Algerians have been sending in, or the Palestinians who took up residence in France. Some of them probably suspect that we intend to stab them in the back as soon as we secure all of the vital targets, others will intend personal revenge, rather than anything that might help us. As long as they keep the French and Spanish busy…”

It went on and on; Shalenko found his head getting heavy as every last part of the plan was reviewed, examined, hacked apart and rebuilt and finally approved. The planners had built friction into the plan; Shalenko was too old a dog to expect that everything would go perfectly, even if the first steps of the plan were played to perfection. Over a million soldiers, sailors and airmen, some of them Kontraktniki officers, had been prepared for their mission; thousands of tanks, aircraft, missiles and warships had been produced for the greatest military attack that the world had ever seen. Nothing would ever be the same again…

“I think that we have taken care of every detail that we can control,” Nekrasov said finally, after the details of the diplomatic offensive had been examined. “Are there any final issues we must cover?”

There was a pause. Stalin would never have said anything like that, or at least he would never have meant it.

“There is a point,” Shalenko said. “We must avoid causing atrocities, at least until we are firmly in control, that involve the general population. If they believe that they have a future under our rule, sir, they will be less inclined to fight to the death.”

Nekrasov looked briefly at him, and then at FSB General Vasiliy Alekseyevich Rybak. Rybak was known, not without reason, as the ‘Butcher of Chechnya;’ he had brought peace to the region, the peace of the grave. He had also been mocked mercilessly because of his name. The International Criminal Court had tried to indict him; the Russian Government had told them to go to hell.

“We will have to establish control as quickly as possible,” Rybak protested. He met Nekrasov’s eyes. “We cannot tolerate defiance, but we can try to ensure that there are no… incidents.”

“Good,” Nekrasov said firmly. “Revenge can wait until we have won the war; we cannot take the risk of doing the Europeans a small injury, after all.” He looked once around the room. “In a month, Operation Stalin will begin… and the global balance of power will shift towards us. Good luck to us all.”