The Fall of Night

Chapter Forty-Six: Operation Morskoi Lev, Take One

Battlezone, English Channel

“I think that this is it,” the coordinator said. Langford peered over her shoulder as the radar screen began to fill up with detailed information; there were over a thousand aircraft rising into the air over Europe, many of them staggering under the weight of heavy bomb loads. The two AWACS that the Americans had loaned, added to the two that the British had deployed on their own, were picking apart the Russian formation. “That’s an order of magnitude larger than any previous raid.”

Langford nodded grimly. The Russians had worked the RAF over pretty hard; unlike Hitler, they had known beforehand that the key to actually winning was air supremacy, if not complete air dominance. They had been able to rotate their pilots through the war zone; Langford and his people hadn’t had anything like the same luxury. Their pilots were exhausted; over the last week, they had lost several planes a day, including some of their most modern aircraft.

The American supplies had helped, but they hadn’t been enough; the air bridge between Britain and America had been thin and the Russians had broken it more than once. The Americans had been careful to avoid something that would directly threaten the Russians; Langford would have given anything for the 8^th Air Force or another American formation just to give the RAF a breather, but that was impossible. The Russians had ground down the RAF… and now they would be coming to finish the job.

“Send the alert down the chain,” he ordered. The officers on the ground could pull downloads from the AWACS, but they would need to have the formal warning, just to put all of the emergency plans into operation. “Tell them that I am declaring a formal Cromwell Alert status and that they are to respond and report their positions.”

“Yes, sir,” the operator said. She paused. “Major Yuppie is calling you on the secure line.”

Langford took the handset. “Major,” he said. “I take it that you are seeing what we’re seeing?”

“Of course,” Erica said. There was a hint of relief in her voice; the waiting, at least, was over. “Sir, I know that we have discussed this before, but…”

Langford shook his head. “No,” he said. She couldn’t see him, of course; there hadn’t been the time to create a proper video link for the field headquarters. “One way or the other, I have to make the stand with the army.”

Erica snorted, but she didn’t press the issue any further. She had wanted him to remain in the CJHQ, exercising command from well behind the lines, so that he could escape with the evacuation ships if it was necessary. Langford had put his foot down; the government-in-exile would be far better operated by a politician, if it came to that. The Ambassador and Foreign Secretary would take the oath as Prime Minister in front of the King; the Royal Family themselves were in Canada. Langford hated the thought of them running out on the country, but again… they couldn’t be allowed to fall into Russian hands. The Pope had fallen into Russian hands and he now broadcast from the remains of the Vatican, praising the Russians in one breath and demanding a new crusade against the Muslims in a second. He hated to think what could happen if he fell into enemy hands; he had already determined that whatever happened, he would never allow himself to be taken alive.

“Yes, sir,” she said, finally. Langford was watching the display; the force of Russian fighters was starting to advance, zooming ahead of the bombers and heavy transports that had to be carrying parachutists and other surprises. The British had learned that the Russians loved paratrooper assaults; every airport in the entire south-east of England, and most of the other airports in the country, had been rigged with unpleasant surprises. They were short on men, materials, and many other things, but they weren’t out of tricks yet. “The Royal Navy is preparing to move in and reach engagement range.”

Langford scowled. He hadn’t liked that part of the plan; it would cost them, heavily, even if it worked. The Americans hadn’t been able to supply many cruise missiles to replace the ones that had been fired off during the early days of the war; the remaining fifteen surface combatants of the Royal Navy in home waters would be seriously disadvantaged, the more so because he could spare them no air cover. They would be operating at the limits of their range… and as for the ships from the Falklands, it would still be a week before they were in range. He wasn’t convinced that they could do anything, anyway; the Russian control of the air would be absolute by that time.

“Good,” he said finally. The submarines had been tasked with interdicting the Russian transports, something that would be difficult with the Royal Navy so badly overstretched and down to eight nuclear submarines. There were two more with Admiral Wilkinson, but they couldn’t reach Britain in time to help. The Royal Navy, he suspected, was about to fight its last battle. “And the RAF?”

“Fighters are scrambling now,” Erica said. “Operation Mousetrap has been activated and the American weapons are in place. If we can use it, we might just have a chance to limit the number of bombs and commandos dropped on our soil.”

Langford tried hard to feel optimistic. They’d caught and captured several dozen Russians as they had attempted to launch more terrorist attacks, or killed others who refused to surrender, but there had been brutal fire-fights breaking out all along the defence line as Russian commandos had been slipped onto the shore and sent to wreak havoc and force the soldiers to become nervous in their trenches. No one knew how many Russians might have successfully made it into Britain undetected; a handful had escaped one of the refugee camps, having managed to sneak onboard a refugee ship.

“Good,” he said again. What else could he have said? The pattern on the display was becoming more and more ominous all the time; the Russian fighters were streaking forward, hoping to force the RAF into a decisive battle. “And the evacuation?”

It had seemed as if everyone in Britain had wanted to flee the Russians; after CNN had broadcast some of the reports from occupied Europe, it was hard to blame them. The ports had been crammed with people wanting to flee, to get away somewhere, anywhere; there had even been more rioting as the fate of European Muslims under the Russians became clear. Langford had had to quell some of the riots with extreme force and ignore others; the only priority was to fight the final battle. If they could smash the Russian Army when it landed…

“The personnel marked for evacuation have been dispatched to the ports,” Erica assured him. They had given priority to the relatives of serving soldiers and policemen; the police, in particular, had done wonderful work. There was something of the old determination and ethos left in them after all; Langford only wished that it hadn’t taken a war and a threatened invasion to bring it to the fore. A handful of technical experts had been dispatched as well; the Americans had been insistent, once they had realised that the Russians were starting the long process of renovating the European technical base and using it for their own benefit. “Everything will be handled smoothly.”

“I hope you’re right,” Langford said. The American satellite data was buzzing up new warnings; the Russian transport fleet had set out to sea and Russian missiles were being launched towards targets on the ground. “I’ll see you again soon.”

“God willing,” Erica said. They had become friends in the terrible two months; he wished that he had known her before the war had begun. “For what it’s worth, sir, it was a honour to serve with you.”

Clutching their weapons, they waited all along the line; some confident, some nervous, some anticipating the moment when they would come to grips with the enemy. For some of them, it was their first shot at real combat; many of them had escaped being sent to the Sudan. For others, it was the chance to avenge fallen comrades and even the score a little before there could be peace. They took their positions with care and forethought, hiding from the bombers they knew would soon be high overhead; it wouldn’t be long before they discovered if they were brave soldiers, or cowards. No one knew until they came face to face with the elephant. Some said their final prayers as they braced themselves; Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu… united at last in defiance against the common foe. Others only waited for it all to begin. History was moving around them…

In Dover, Folkestone and a dozen smaller towns and villages, smaller detachments lurked. They had prepared the docks to surprise the Russians as best as they could; now they waited for the Russians to come within range of their weapons. They had prepared the towns and buildings for house-to-house fighting; the Russians would be forced to dig them out one by one if they wanted the towns. Many of them had sworn terrible oaths; the Russians would have to kill them all at their posts before they took the places they were defending.

Further back, mobile artillery and other systems waited, holding fire only until they had targets to service. The crews checked their vehicles carefully; they had seen all of the data from the handful of heavy battles the Russians had fought in Europe, and the Battle of Lorraine had made it clear; the Russians would hammer them into the ground as soon as they detected their fire and localised their position. They had prepared to move as soon as the Russians found them; they were determined that they would make the Russians pay a price for invading their country. Direct feeds to a hundred hidden soldiers, lurking near possible landing zones, lit up; all they needed now was targeting data, targets to destroy. It wouldn’t be long now.

All along the line, they waited.

“I have a direct lock on seven heavy enemy transports,” the weapons officer snapped, as the Winston Churchill evaded a missile from a Russian aircraft with ease. The Russians had concentrated most of their efforts on suppressing the land defences over the past few weeks and it showed; the Royal Navy had enough time to muster its final stand. “Captain; request permission to open fire.”

Captain Ward nodded slowly. The fighting was taking its toll… because they didn’t dare head any closer to the Russian-held coastline. The Winston Churchill had grown up in a world where missiles and guided-bombs presented a serious threat to ships… and no ship in existence, with the exception of the really big carriers, could survive a single hit with a heavy warhead. Her class might have been designed as the closest thing the European Union had intended to a battleship, but her armour was puny compared to that of the battleships that had last contested the Channel, back in 1940.

“Engage the enemy,” he said, as the first of the sea-skimming cruise missiles started to launch. The Churchill normally carried twenty-four; the battles had drained their stocks down to nine, and seven of them had just been launched against moving enemy transports. He understood the logic — without the transports, the Russians would be unable to land their army — but they had a lot of transports. Had they commandeered every last civilian ship in Europe? There had been hundreds of ships, many of them registered under different flags; had all of them been brought to land soldiers on British soil? “Air defence?”

“Four enemy bombers, heading towards the fleet’s location,” the air defence officer reported. Ward cursed; they had fired off most of their SAM missiles, and all they had left apart from that was the CIWS units, which were known to run out of bullets quickly. Replenishing them hadn’t been a problem — something that had been a relief, as they were around the only items that could be replaced quickly — but there would be no time to re-supply in the middle of a battle. “Requesting permission to engage.”

“Coordinate fire with the other ships and engage at will,” Ward snapped. “Weapons?”

“Three direct hits; they went up like firecrackers, Captain,” the weapons officer said. “Russian CIWS killed the other missiles and saved the transports!”

Ward cursed under his breath. “Bring us around and regain firing solutions,” he ordered. “I want…”

“Captain, the Russian aircraft are launching missiles,” the sensor officer said. “I have at least nine missiles homing in on our location!”

“Evasive action,” Ward ordered, sharply. The Russians were trying to smother them; they were making up for problems in some of their targeting systems by overloading the British point-defence network. “You are cleared to engage the missiles with CIWS!”

The yammering of the guns could even be heard on the bridge… and then they stopped. “Weapons jam, weapons jam,” the weapons officer snapped. “Three incoming missiles…”

HMS Winston Churchill, the last of her class still in existence, took three hits along the superstructure. The Russian warheads punched though the thin hull and detonated inside the ship, destroying the entire vessel in a shattering cataclysm. There were no survivors.

“I have fourteen Russian fighters advancing towards you, nineteen more holding in reserve,” Lieutenant Jacques Montebourg snapped, over the command network. “They’re trying to draw the RAF out to play…”

“I love you too, Jacques,” Flying Officer Cindy Jackson said, as she banked the Eurofighter Tempest out over the south-east of England, waiting for the Russians to come calling. The Russians looked as if they had expected the RAF to come engage them right in the heart of their formation, and before the Americans had made their unexpected delivery, the RAF had planned to do just that. “We’ll hold position and wait.”

There were thirty fast-jet fighters left in the RAF, mainly Typhoons and Joint Strike Fighters from the Royal Navy; Cindy knew that it was their last shot. She’d had it made brutally clear to her; if the RAF could knock out the Russian transports, it might just save Britain from Russian occupation. The Russians themselves were coming forward towards the British fighters; a handful more were remaining with the transports, probably cursing their luck at being stuck shepherding the slower aircraft. Fighter jocks were all the same; the Russians had a three-to-one advantage, just in the battlezone alone, and they weren’t going to waste it. They were coming towards her aircraft at supersonic speed and…

Someone down on the ground flicked a switch. A dozen CADS and several light American launchers that had been prepared for auto-fire opened fire, mingled in with old Rapier and Javelin systems, sending nearly a hundred SAM missiles into the air. The Russians, caught by surprise, scattered; many of them had already become victims as the American-made missiles locked onto their aircraft and entered their terminal runs. Some Russian pilots punched out of their aircraft, choosing to risk capture rather than die in fire; others tried to evade until the very last moment.

“Go,” Cindy snapped. The RAF fighters hit their afterburners at once and streaked south-east at supersonic speed, their weapons systems already receiving the download from the AWACS as they passed over the hidden weapons and headed into the teeth of the enemy transports. A handful of Russian fighters, the surprised escorts, were desperately trying to come into position to take a shot at her, but it was too late; they were too late. The RAF fired a hail of missiles towards the Russian transports and bombers, ignoring the fighters; twenty-three Russian aircraft exploded in midair as the RAF blew through them and kept firing, engaging every last target they saw. Russian fighters were trying to chase them out again, but the Russian formation was falling out of shape; their fighter controllers had to be going mental just trying to keep up with the rapidly changing situation. She laughed aloud, jamming her hand down on the trigger for her cannons; a Russian transport aircraft and its parachute soldiers died under her fire.

Her threat receiver screamed an alarm, moments before a tail gunner put a handful of rounds into the Tempest, which screamed in pain. She heard noises she had only heard in simulations as the aircraft started to disintegrate around her, but she couldn’t eject, not in the middle of the battle. That would almost certainly be guaranteed suicide; the Russians had fired on ejecting RAF pilots before, another trick to weaken the RAF still further. She still had weapons and options; she still had some possible tricks she could pull…

And there was one weapon left. Pointing the remains of her aircraft towards another aircraft, she reached for the ejection lever… too late. Her Tempest crashed into a Russian transport and both aircraft vanished from the sky in a tearing fireball. No one ever found a trace of Flying Officer Cindy Jackson, or her aircraft.

General Shalenko gritted his teeth as the losses came in. They had expected losses, and they had almost wiped out the Royal Navy in exchange for losing several transports and ASW craft, but the losses in fighter craft were appalling. It hardly mattered; they had crippled the RAF and slaughtered the Royal Navy. They still had most of the transports intact and the soldiers were waiting now for a chance to come to grips directly with the enemy. He wouldn’t let them down; Russians knew that victory was worth the price.

He turned to his aide. “Give the order,” he said, addressing her directly. “Deploy the landing force.”