The Long Hard Road

Chapter Forty-Five: The Long Hard Road

Factory 163

Perm, Russia

1^st July 1942

For the workers at Factory 163, life was an endless series of drudgery, only broken by the occasional whipping from the factory guards to keep them working. Despite that – despite watching a naked women being whipped to death as a ‘wrecker’ – production was falling and had been falling for weeks. Each worker worked on a single part of a tank – the more senior workers had the task of assembling the tank – and they did nothing else. Food and drink was in short supply; they had nothing to lose, and knew it.

The guards knew it too as they paced backwards and forwards. Accidents and accidents that were not accidents were on the rise. The daily propaganda sessions were punctuated by shouts and catcalls; the face of Stalin had been hit by thrown bricks and tools. They’d once been used to having their way with the female workers, but after a few guards had been castrated by the would-be rape victims, they were ordered to hold off. It didn’t help the guards’ morale at all.

The uneasy truce continued, both sides knowing that it was only a matter of time before there was an explosion, but neither side knew that the explosion would never come. Without a clear and present threat to bind them to working for the salvation of Russia, the Russian people were coming to realise that Stalin was their worst enemy. Radio Moscow blared out constant reports of great military victories – but the underground radio was proving more truthful and, if the truth were to be told, more to the population’s liking. The tales of how much food even the poorest person could eat in Britain – and of Stalin’s crimes against his own people – were having an effect.

All involved knew that if the Soviet regime lost its grip on the neck of its people, it would be destroyed by their collective fury. The NKVD patrolled, shooting whatever underground members it caught, having long since given up trying to extract information from them. Trotsky and Natasha Yar had organised well; each cell had a radio with a biometric scanner built into its casing. The NKVD simply didn’t have the ability to use them to track down the other cells.

The Russian people held their collective breath, wondering when it would be their time to be free…

The boulder entered the atmosphere on a steep trajectory, guided down by a series of very careful boosts from an MSV. Undetected, unseen except for a fiery streak across the sky, it fell into the atmosphere. Unbeknownst to the inhabitants of Factory 163, and the farms that provided its workers with their merger rations, it was building up awesome kinetic energy… and it was targeted directly on Factory 163.

The rock slammed into the building and the blast wave rippled out. The poor construction of the factory complex only made matters worse; the shock of the rock’s impact and sudden transmutation into destructive energies shattered buildings that might have been safer under other conditions. A stockpile of high explosives, used for mining, detonated as fires spread throughout the complex, completing the destructive work of the space-based weapon. The inhabitants simply stood no chance at all against the power of the rocks.

Later, when someone in the local NKVD office would realise that they had lost contact with Factory 163, they would send an entire armoured force to investigate. They found only ruins; there was nothing left of Factory 163, or its inhabitants.

Combat Zone

Poland/Belarus

1^st July 1942

Captain Yates cursed as the JS-2 appeared from nowhere, its main gun already swinging around to engage the Challenger. The two tanks fired at the same time and the Challenger shook under the impact, its front armour hardly dented.

“We’re alive,” Benton said. His voice was relived. “Where is the bastard?”

“Dead,” Grant said. “Unfortunately, he had allies.”

Yates cursed again. An entire line of JS-2 tanks, backed up by T-34 tanks, was raging towards them, clearly hoping to drown the British by sheer weight of numbers. They fired continuously, pounding away at the Marine force, even as the Marines returned fire.

“They’re coming,” Benton said, professionalism keeping his voice steady. The main gun barked again and again. “What the hell do they think they’re doing?”

The pounding on the armour grew louder as JS-2 tanks started to explode. The Marines were moving into combat position, spreading out to fire back at the enemy, screaming for help from the forward support aircraft. The Harriers acknowledged; they’d be on their way even now.

“They’re trying to batter us to death,” Yates snapped. “Forward, now.”

Benton gunned the engine just in time, moving the Challenger forward to avoid a JS-2 that was trying to ram them. It was crazy, like a modified version of Sudden Strike, thousands of enemy vehicles trying to impale themselves upon his defences. The Challenger thundered as shells slammed into it, then the harriers swept overhead, firing anti-tank weapons, and then a flight of helicopters firing Hellfire missiles.

“Thank God,” Yates breathed. “Report!”

“We lost four Challengers,” one of the other tank commanders said. “Seventeen fireflies are also down.”

“Shit,” Yates snapped. He quickly accessed the satellite display; the enemy didn’t seem to have caught on to their breakthrough yet, but there were some major Russian positions only half a mile ahead.

“We have to move forward,” he said grimly. There were three attack prongs heading into Poland and Belarus; one British, one American and one German. If the Soviets managed to prevent one prong from breaking through their lines, they might manage to defeat the other two prongs.

“Follow-up forces on their way,” the dispatcher said. Yates allowed himself a moment of envy; that man had a nice comfortable job in London, trying to direct the battlefield at long-distance. He’d heard that the American generals had had a collective shitfit when they’d heard about that concept.

“We need reinforcements as well,” he said, checking the other tanks. Three had been damaged by the attack; one damaged enough to mean that it should return to the forward base. He issued the orders and overrode the protests, issuing other orders to the intact tanks.

“The Harriers are going to plaster the enemy positions,” he said. “We are going to clean up after them.”

“Yes, sir,” Grant said. “Want to bet that the flyboys will screw the pooch, as usual?”

“No bet,” Yates said. The RAF had developed an unpleasant habit of bombing somewhere and declaring it clear – only to have underestimated their opponent. “Forward!”

The tank roared into life, leaving the short but very bloody battleground in the hands of the follow-up forces, mounted infantry. It was nice to see all the unemployed youths finally doing something useful, he thought; far safer than having them on the streets. The ground was bumpy; he shuddered as it occurred to him that they might be driving over a mass grave.

“RAF reports that the strike is inbound now,” the dispatcher said. Yates nodded; he’d been getting worried. The Russians might have been lousy at tank tactics, but they were tough defending fighters, particularly when armed to the teeth. Stalin might have skimped on things like human rights, but he was very aware of what his people needed for fighting. The Red Army had been the best-equipped army of 1939, after all.

“Here they come,” Grant said. Five Hawks, the new-old jet bombers, swooped overhead, dodging anti-aircraft fire with ease, before unloading their dumb bombs onto the Russian position. Flames leapt up when the FAE detonated, spreading rapidly to their ammunition supplies.

“Boom,” Yates commented, watching the series of explosions. He frowned; there was a… strangeness to the flames.

“Do you see…?” Grant asked. Yates nodded. “That’s a chemical fire,” she said. “What did they have there?”

A thunderous explosion shattered the Russian position. For a crazy moment, Yates thought that it had been a nuclear explosion, so devastating had it been, before realising that that was foolish. Whatever was in the bunker, it had been dangerous.

“Advance, slowly,” he ordered, and muttered more orders. Half of the force of tanks spread out carefully, while he and three of his comrades advanced on the Russian position. A Russian soldier lay on the ground, half-burned, but he was trying to fire at them anyway. Grant shot him with a burst of machine gun fire, just to put him out of his misery.

“Uh-oh,” Benton said. The tank had been sealed, of course, but the alarms went off anyway. “Sir, there was gas here.”

Yates swore. “Control, we have a confirmed Alpha-Red situation,” he said. “Confirmed; gas supplies in Russian positions, apparently meant for use against us.” He looked sharply at Benton. “Is there enough of it to analyse?”

Benton shook his head as the dispatcher replied. “Understood, Romeo-Alpha,” he said. “Is there enough of it to analyse?”

Benton sighed and shook his head again. “No, control,” he said. “The gas supplies were ignited and the equipment is very basic on the tank.”

“Understood,” the dispatcher said. If he was annoyed at dealing with a lowly driver, he didn’t show it. “Please stand by.”

“He’ll be calling the general,” Yates said dryly. “The general will tell us what to do.”

“This is General Flynn,” a new voice said. “Captain Yates; please secure the region. A team will be along in a few minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” Yates said.

General Flynn put down the radio and scowled. “Now we know the Russians have nerve gas too,” he said.

General Stillwell, who’d been very unhappy at being pulled away from his men for a quick conference, scowled. “The bastards must have been given it by the Germans,” he said. “What type was it?”

“Something unpronounceable,” Flynn said grimly. “The analysis team had much more sensitive equipment, and they were able to identify it. Fortunately, we do have an antidote for it, provided that it can be used in time.”

“And that does give us other responsibilities,” Stillwell said. “The Russians might start using it like the Japanese did; against our potential allies.”

Flynn nodded. On the second day of the offensive, they’d blasted the remaining territory that had been held by the Germans – which had been taken over by the Russians – and they were closing in on Warsaw. The few Poles that remained had been more than happy to aid the Allied forces, but they were scattered and terrified of the Axis powers.

“I’m more worried about our people,” he said. “We have certain… orders of what to do in the event of Russian use of weapons of mass destruction.”

“I know,” Stillwell said. The rules had been made clear; any Axis use of weapons of mass destruction would draw a nuclear retaliation. Flynn glared at the map; the British and Americans were closing in on Warsaw; the Bundeswehr was nearly at what would have been the Kaliningrad salient in 2015. Any Russian use of gas could be inconvenient.

His radio buzzed. “General, this is Colonel Dickens,” a voice said. “Sir, German trenches towards Kaliningrad have been gassed.”

Flynn cursed. “Understood,” he said. “Have them sent what aid we can spare.”

“They’ve trained for gas attacks,” Colonel Dickens said. “Those that weren’t killed or blinded at once and then killed have injected themselves with the antidote. We still have a couple of thousand men in urgent need of medical attention.”

Flynn spoke as if someone else was speaking through his mouth. “Have medical aid sent to pick them up and transport them back to Britain,” he said. “Move it!”

The field hospital wasn’t a nice place, certainly nothing like the comfortable hospital that Kristy Stewart had come to accept as her due, before the NHS funding crisis had driven her to private health care. It stank; the smell of disinfectant was everywhere. Blood and something she didn’t want to think about lay on the ground, signs of countless bleeding patients being moved quickly into the hospital.

A harassed male nurse had told her to stay out of the way, so she did, filming constantly with the camera on her shoulder. Some of the British soldiers had snapped at her, recognising her from the movies of her and Roth, calling her a collaborator or other – worse – names. She ignored them, pressed down by the darkness within her soul.

“This is the price for defeating the enemy,” she muttered, as she entered the room that served as a ward. German soldiers, bleeding and screaming in pain, lay scattered around the room, some of them paralysed by the gas. Her heart wasn’t in it; she looked into a sealed bed and vomited on the floor. Her vomit merely joined more on the floor, mixing with blood and urine and other by-products of men in a truly dreadful state.

“They used gas,” a voice said. She dimly recognised Rommel. “Look what they’ve done to my people!”

Stewart hung back as Rommel passed through the ward. The man who was the leader of the provisional German government seemed all too human as he walked, looking down at the men who’d followed him to the dismal fate. Some of them he spoke to, offering what comfort he could, others cursed him and brought tears to his eyes. Not all of them had been keen on fighting to save Poland; what was Poland to them?

“The Russians will pay for this,” Rommel vowed. Stewart shivered at the tone in his voice. “They will pay, in blood and fire and suffering…”

The German camp was well hidden and very well patrolled. Captain Dwynn expected that that made sense; with a British force swinging out around Warsaw, perhaps preparing for a lunge at the camp, and Russian NKVD units nearby, Himmler could be forgiven for being a little paranoid. He snorted; even the SAS hadn’t been able to get close to the camp.

“It’s a good thing our binoculars don’t flash in the sunlight,” Chang commented. Their tiny hideout was nearly a mile from the German position, mounted on a hill. “What are they doing?”

Dwynn wasn’t listening. “Fetch Vash,” he snapped. “That’s Himmler himself, I’m sure of it!”

His mouth fell into a hunter’s grin as Himmler shook the hands of three men, standing next to a lorry. Vash, the team’s sniper, came running up, but it was too late; Himmler had moved back into one of the armoured buildings.

“Shit,” Dwynn muttered. He turned his gaze back to the lorry. There was something about it that set all of his combat senses off, warning him of… what?

“Shit,” he said again, louder this time. He ignored Vash, staring at the lorry. It was carrying something heavy; he would have staked his life on it. It was moving west, towards Warsaw… and the Anglo-American force that was surrounding it.

“That’s the nuke,” he snapped. “I’ll stake my oath on it.”

Vash lifted his sniper’s rifle, but the vehicle was moving rapidly out of range. “I could hit the tires…”

“Then they might trigger the bomb anyway,” Dwynn snapped. “I need an option.”

His mind ran rapidly. They couldn’t catch the lorry, not on their own, and they didn’t have any weapon that could destroy it. “Call the RAF,” he snapped, “and then get into the bunker.” They’d found the old Russian bunker – it dated from the First World War – purely by accident. “If the RAF doesn’t make it in time…”

Squadron Leader Shelia Dunbar forced the Eurofighter as fast as it could go, pushing at Mach Three as it sped along, high above the ground. The orders left no room for interpretation; she might not return from the mission even if it succeeded.

Find a lorry. Destroy the lorry at all costs.

“This is Eagle-one,” she said. “Proceeding east. Status report?”

“Everyone has gone to nuke alert,” the controller said. She cursed; among other things, nuke alert involved shutting down equipment that might be damaged by EMP. She cursed again as a nasty thought struck her; if the EMP was powerful enough, it might damage the satellites. “I’m sorry Shelia, you’re on your own.”

“Fuck,” she sneered, willing the Eurofighter to go faster. Warsaw swept by under her aircraft as she flew lower, risking a lucky shot from the Russian anti-aircraft weapons for improving her accuracy. The maps weren’t detailed; they didn’t tell her everything she needed to know. At supersonic speed, there would be no time to recover from a mistake.

“Target only one mile ahead,” the controller said. Dunbar cursed the odds that had had her assigned to escorting B-29’s when the alert had been sounded. The only weapon she had that was any use against the lorry was her cannon, and she’d used some of its ammunition already. “Good luck.”

Dunbar committed a direct breach of regulations and turned off the radio. She didn’t need distractions. The hills and roads – mud tracks, mainly – swept past faster and faster, and then she saw it, just before her.

“Die, your fuckers,” she snapped. The lorry made a desperate attempt to escape her shells, but it was too late; the shells swept through the cabin, sending the truck cart-wheeling across the road. She had only a second to feel her triumph… and then the world went white around her…

Hauptsturmfuehrer Thierbach was saved by the purest accident. The driver’s shout of warning had made him throw himself away from the cab, and the cannon shells had missed him – and the massive bomb beside him. The British plane was close, too close, and Thierbach knew his duty. If the bomb still worked...it was his duty to detonate it.

Thierbach worked quickly, moving as fast as he dared as soon as the lorry came to a rest, checking the connections. Originally, the bomb had had a timer, but the weapon could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. He was certain that the British would have troops on the way, and he was tempted to wait for them to get them caught in the blast as well, but he heard the roar of the British plane and knew that there was no time. Quickly, calmly, he pushed the detonation button.