Designated targets aot-2

by John Bigmingham

  "What the hell's going on here," asked an air vice marshal.

  Halabi couldn't remember his name. She held up one hand to silence him while she skimmed the mission brief.

  "Don't you wave me away, young lady!" he blustered. "I've got every fighter wing in the country up there right now. If the fat's in the fire, I need to know."

  "Mr. McTeale," she called out, trying to concentrate on the screen in front of her.

  Her executive officer appeared at the shoulder of the RAF man. "The captain is extremely busy, sir. Please step away from her station."

  Halabi typed out a quick reply to Muller.

  Transmission confirmed. Stand by.

  "Mr. Howard, to the ops room, please."

  As her intelligence boss left his station, McTeale struggled briefly with the RAF officer. Air Vice Marshal Simon Caterson, she now recalled-a bit of a prat with an irritating habit of holding forth on all manner of topics, whether he knew anything about them or not.

  "Air Vice Marshal, you will restrain yourself, or I will have Mr. McTeale turn you over to the SAS lads, to use as a practice dummy. They broke their last one."

  With that, she headed for ops. She was certain she heard Caterson say, "Wretched woman," as she left.

  Howard joined her there, a few steps down the corridor in the central hull. It was a smaller version of the CIC, with backups for many of the same systems. It was also mercifully free of 'temps.

  "You're familiar with the Muller jacket, Mr. Howard?"

  He nodded. Howard was responsible for tracking all the skin jobs on their bionet. Thirteen in all. "He was going after an engineer. One of the brighter kiddies."

  "Well, he found him," said Halabi. "And this guy claims to be our secret admirer from yesterday. Do you think it's possible?"

  "Brasch?" The lieutenant commander thought it over. "It's definitely possible. The project data we received matches up with his AOR. But it matches a couple of others, too."

  "How many?"

  "Two. An admiral in the Kriegsmarine, and a Luftwaffe colonel."

  "What're Muller's mission specs?" she asked.

  "Quick and dirty. A hostile debrief, followed by Sanction Two."

  "Really?" said Halabi. "I thought Muller was a pilot. He's not really trained for that sort of business, is he?"

  "Jacket says he volunteered. He's a Jerry. Figured he'd fit right in."

  Halabi, who had an intimate understanding of cultural dislocation, doubted that, but she didn't have time to debate the point.

  "Excuse me, ma'am," the comm operator called over, interrupting the discussion. "Eyes only again, for you."

  Halabi took the message on the nearest screen. She had a feeling it was Muller again.

  She was right. It was a one-line message, but it cut through the Rubik's Cube of possibilities she'd just been playing with.

  Brasch requests extraction.

  "Better get the War Ministry for me," she told her comm officer.

  "Captain! We have incoming. Sorry, no, we don't. London does."

  "What do you mean?" she asked. "More jets."

  "No, ma'am. Missiles. Cruise missiles."

  30

  NORWAY

  These were the finest men Aryan blood had to offer, and he was immensely proud of them. There were only eight of them, two units of four men each, something they had learned from England's much-vaunted Special Air Service. The SS wasn't so arrogant as its opponents imagined. It was more than willing to adapt and improve upon their ideas. But if they wanted to think of his troops as mindless automatons, then let them.

  He would laugh on their graves.

  It felt strange, however, to be standing in front of an American aeroplane-a Douglas Dakota, they called it, captured in North Africa. Stranger still to be addressing men dressed in the uniforms of the enemy.

  As the moment finally arrived, and Operation Sea Dragon began to unfold, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler could have been at the missile base in Donzenac, or with his new airborne regiment at Zaandam. These eight men, however, were about to embark on a personal odyssey entirely of his own design. They were going to drive a dagger into the heart of England, and so he had chosen to join them on a small, nameless airfield at the edge of the North Sea.

  Three of them spoke English perfectly; most of the others with a slight accent, hence the uniforms, which identified them as Free Polish forces. Englanders thought of all Europeans as essentially the same. Wogs or wops or some such insulting nonsense. That ill-considered sense of superiority would cost them dearly over the next few days.

  Only Colonel Skorzeny, the commander of the group, would proceed without a thorough mastery of English. But he was the one man Himmler knew he could trust with a job like this. Given the need, he would walk through mountains if they stood in his way. The Reichsfuhrer's only regret was that he wouldn't personally get to watch as Skorzeny completed his mission. But if the colonel survived, he would entertain everyone at the Wolfschanze with his vivid tales of the adventure.

  The giant storm trooper, who was dressed as a simple corporal, stomped up and down in front of his men as they stood in line like carven marble statues. "So who amongst you will slaughter this fat pig for the fuhrer?" he roared at them.

  "I will, sir!" they all chorused in return.

  "No," he boomed back, laughing like an elder God. "I will choke the life out of him, and you shall do nothing more than gather around to slap me on the back, and tell me what a fine fellow I am. Are we understood?"

  "Jawohl, Herr Korporal!"

  Skorzeny seemed to find that immensely funny, and another gale of his rich laughter peeled away into the night sky. It was uncomfortably chilly on the runway, which had been carved out of an ancient birch forest high above the waters of the Skagerrak, and Himmler wrapped himself more deeply into his greatcoat. He would never share the bond Skorzeny had with these men, the easy familiarity they had with each other and with the likelihood of their own deaths. But he could appreciate their camaraderie, and even Skorzeny's high spirits.

  He coughed loudly, and the colonel yelled at the men to attend to his words.

  "Please, please, stand at ease," said Himmler.

  They unbent just a fraction.

  "You men make me proud to be German," he said. "You have all volunteered for this most dangerous mission, and it will take you into the deepest recesses of the enemy's lair. You are few in number, but the effect of your actions will be unmeasurable. To me, you personify all that is great in our party. You are supermen, and my best wishes go with you. Heil Hitler!"

  "Heil Hitler!"

  Himmler bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment, and Skorzeny yelled at the pilots to spool up the Dakota's two engines. As they coughed into life, thick smoke and blue flame belched from the cowlings. Skorzeny slapped the first man in line on the shoulder and he turned with mechanical precision to climb into the cabin. The others followed, until only Skorzeny was left.

  "The fuhrer has much to occupy him right now," said Himmler, "but he wanted me to tell you that he will be thinking of you and your men especially."

  An uncharacteristic solemnity came over the SS colonel. "Thank you. That is most gracious, Herr Reichsfuhrer. We shall earn that honor, or die to a man in trying."

  They saluted, and Skorzeny disappeared in through the darkened door of the plane.

  MOSCOW, USSR

  The lights hadn't been put out in the Little Corner for nearly a week. Even with Hitler's attention elsewhere, this was a very dangerous time for the Soviet Union. Josef Stalin had napped only fitfully during the last three days, although physically he felt fine, thanks to the medicines his physician had been given from the British ship named Vanguard.

  Sitting in his office, the Soviet leader allowed himself a rare moment of relaxation, sipping from a long glass of hot tea, as he contemplated a world remade in his own image. It might take another ten years, and it would without a doubt be a bloody business. But at the end of it, the revolution would b
e safe from fascists like Hitler, traitors like Khrushchev, and imperialists like Churchill and Roosevelt.

  There would never come a day when his statues were tipped over and melted down for scrap. Indeed, he amused himself by imagining a statue large enough to replace the Washington Monument. A great towering Comrade Stalin to keep a stern watch over the liberated workers of the United Soviet States of Amerika.

  "More tea, Comrade?" asked Poskrebyshev. "Before the others arrive?"

  "No, I will need a bucket under the desk, if I drink any more."

  Stalin stretched his tired frame. A light dusting of snow lay on the cold stone laneways of the Kremlin, outside his window. He knew he would feel more secure once that white blanket was properly draped over the Motherland. Zhukov was doing wonders with the Red Army, now that he had time to train and equip his divisions properly. When the thaw came, no matter what the correlation of forces in the West, the Soviet Union would be safe behind an Iron Curtain.

  That phrase, which Beria had taught him, was most appealing. Having faced annihilation at the hands of the fascists a few short months ago, Josef Stalin was much taken with the image of an iron curtain falling across the frontier with Germany, no matter who controlled it.

  He suspected that it would be the Allies. Their industrial capacity supplied them with an advantage that would be nearly impossible to overcome. And now, augmented with the wonders of the next century, they would surely triumph over the fascists.

  But he would not be helping them. Not if that support meant the eventual collapse of the revolution. Or the conquest of the Rodina by a- What was Beria's phrase? A digital Hitler. The situation had been so finely balanced that when that mincing dandy Ribbentrop had offered a cease-fire, he had not dared let the opportunity slip by. Not when the reports from the Pacific illustrated how powerful the weapons were that the fascists had obtained. For one very tense week, he'd actually expected Himmler's storm troopers to crash in through his windows at any moment, cocooned in armor that made them virtually invulnerable.

  Of course, he'd been wrong about that. As it had turned out, those bastards had only picked up the table scraps, while the bulk of the windfall had gone to Roosevelt and his allies.

  But that didn't matter now.

  Stalin placed his empty drinking glass on a silver coaster and leaned forward to pick up the model again.

  The NKVD had retrieved it from the Vanguard. It was a model of the ship that had materialized at the edge of the Siberian ice pack. A beautiful weapon; unusual, with its three hulls and featureless deck, but deadly looking nonetheless. Like an assassin's dagger. How strange that it had arrived a whole day before the Pacific Emergence.

  Stalin wished for just a moment that the burdens of state didn't have to lie so heavily on his shoulders. He would have loved to make the journey to the special facilities that were being constructed around the ship, just to see it with his own eyes. But such things were not possible.

  Then he snorted in amusement. Was there anything that could be called impossible nowadays?

  "Vozhd?" his secretary asked. "Something amuses you?"

  "Life amuses me, Poskrebyshev. Life, and everything about it. Tell me, are they here yet?"

  "Yes. They are waiting outside."

  "Well, bring them in, bring them in."

  Poskrebyshev carried his narrow-shouldered, slightly hunched frame out of the room. He'd never really been the same since the NKVD had executed his wife. He had an impressively ugly countenance, which Stalin admired because it frightened visitors who came to the Little Corner. That countenance wore a perpetual scowl.

  He reappeared, with Beria and Molotov in tow. The secret policeman seemed as chipper as ever, which was to say not at all, but at least relentless morbidity was his natural state of being. Molotov, like everyone in high office these days, looked as though the executioner stalked his every move.

  They sat in hard wooden chairs in front of Stalin's desk. He spoke first to Molotov. "So, Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich, we have acceded to the fascists' request for assistance on this one little matter, and I can see that you are still not happy."

  "I doubt the British will see it as such a trifle," said Molotov. "They are rather fond of Churchill, and will not appreciate the fact that we have helped the fascists to kill him."

  "Yet our involvement is quite deniable," said Beria. "Our man should be able to get himself out to Ireland, and then home when he is done."

  Stalin, like his foreign minister, still was not sure.

  Britain had come close to declaring war on Russia when he'd impounded the ships of convoy PQ 17 at Murmansk, just before signing the cease-fire with Germany. Their anger was quite reasonable, he admitted. With one backhanded sweep, he had done more to damage the Royal Navy than Hitler's oafish admirals had managed in two and a half years.

  The vessels were still there: thirty-five merchantmen and their escorts, including four destroyers, ten corvettes, two antiaircraft auxiliaries, and four cruisers. He had been scrupulously fair, refusing every German entreaty to turn the ships over to the Kriegsmarine. And the crews were being held in relative comfort, given the deprivations of wartime Russia.

  But it was important that he maintain the facade of neutrality, and that meant detaining the combatants. The materiel in the holds of the ships had always been meant for his country, so he kept the hundreds of tanks and bombers, the thousands of trucks and other cargo. The trucks, in particular, had been very useful, when it became obvious that the Vanguard could not be moved. He stroked the model of the trihulled warship.

  The Nazis, with their pathetic attempt to deceive him with the Demidenko project, would have fainted dead away if they could see what Kaganovich and Zhdanov had built around the Vanguard. Well, they would know soon enough. His country might be poor, but it was still a giant, and vast amounts of her resources were now being directed to exploiting the windfall of the Vanguard. If he could just keep the fascists and the capitalist gangsters at war with each other, and away from his own jugular for a little while longer, he would soon be able to strike at them both, and set history right.

  The Nazis dismal efforts at maskirovka would come back to haunt them, for while it was true that Demidenko was draining much-needed men and materiel from his real efforts, it was also costing Hitler and Himmler an unknowable amount of treasure to maintain the facade of rapprochement. And his Soviet engineers were ingenious enough to quietly learn enough from the "mistakes" at Demidenko to advance the Vanguard project all the much more quickly. If only they'd been able to take and keep more of the crew alive…

  But as dialectical materialists, they would work with what was, not what he might wish to be.

  "All right, Beria," said Stalin. "Your man is cleared to help the fascists, but there must be no way of tracing our involvement. Do you understand?"

  "I will take all necessary measures," Beria replied.

  HMS TRIDENT, THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

  "They're coming," said Halabi.

  The giant battlespace monitor, which covered two walls of the Trident's hexagonal-shaped Combat Information Center, swarmed with hostile contacts. Thousands of them. So many, in fact, that although Posh could track each individual enemy unit, her human operators had no chance of keeping up.

  Thus most of the smaller contacts were simply tagged with a number and buried under layers of more pertinent data, such as the flight of hundreds of slow transports making their way across the air-sea gap between the eastern coast of the British Isles and a series of airfields in Norway.

  The highest priority contact, however, was a formation of three blinking red triangles screaming across the French countryside from an originating point just north of a village called Donzenac.

  They were hypersonic Laval GA cruise missiles, and the ship's Combat Intelligence had calculated that they would impact somewhere in the U.K. in approximately four minutes. They were even curving around through Belgium and the Netherlands to put themselves well out of reach of any possible
countermeasures she might have deployed. Not that there was any need. The Trident could have dealt with them had they been aimed right at her. Her Metal Storm and laser pack weapons systems were specifically designed to neutralize such threats. But there was nothing they could do from hundreds of kilometers away.

  "Weapons, can we get an intercept lock?"

  "Negative, Captain."

  That was the answer Halabi expected. "Mr. Howard, does Posh have an attack profile yet?'

  "They're ground-attack variants, Skipper. Almost certainly taken off the Dessaix at some point, and transferred to a makeshift launch tube. They may have even dismantled part of her VLS and used that."

  "Doubtful," she mused.

  "No projections on likely targets yet, ma'am, but if it was me I'd hit the key sector stations-Biggin Hill, Hornchurch, Debden, and North Weald. Luftwaffe's been leaving them alone, concentrating their bombers on Croydon, Rochford, and the others. Those stations are near critical, and a lot of capacity's been shifted to the undamaged fields. A hammerhead run would knock the RAF out of southern England."

  "Comms, you got that?" Halabi asked. Air Vice Marshal Caterson and a couple of the other tourists began to advance on her command station. She ignored them for the moment. "Better give them a heads-up on shore. They're about to get the shit kicked out of them."

  "I think you'd best explain what the hell is going on," Caterson demanded.

  "Three ground-attack missiles are heading toward England at over five thousand miles an hour," she said, without betraying any emotion. "We cannot stop them. We don't know where they're going to hit, but whatever the target is, it will be gone very soon. My intelligence chief has indicated that the most likely targets are your main sector stations. There's only three missiles, but they're carrying enough submunitions to destroy all four airfields, and then some."

  "I see," Caterson said quietly. "And having brought this upon us, what are you going to do about it?"

  Halabi ignored the baited hook. "We're going to do exactly as we planned and stay here, providing battlespace management data, waiting for the German surface assets to attempt the crossing."