by Andy Farman
“You will all recognise Director Dupre, however the good colonel beside him is from JNAIRT, the Joint Nuclear Accident and Incident Response Team. There is a possibility that the bombing is not intended to a conventional one and suffice to say, should we find anything in the address it will be dealt with by JNAIRT.” This raised a lot of eyebrows.
With nothing to do but wait, Ben looked at his watch and wondered what the weather was like at 80’N 49’E.
Zemlya Georga: Same time.
Having burrowed into a snowdrift Major Richard Dewar had poked a small hole through to the other side to allow him to observe the innocent looking mounds three hundred yards distant. Richard and his men had made their initial approach towed on skis behind snowmobiles, their exhausts heavily muffled to the extent that the performance was well below that advertised for sporty civilian models. Wind was beginning to whip across the landscape; ice particles carried by the wind fogged his vision through his binoculars whenever the wind gusted. The wind chill factor had also lowered the temperature to a balmy –32’. The half-light made it difficult to judge distance; Richard had to concentrate on focusing his eyes. As he looked at the edge of one mound he distinctly saw its edge move, confirming that camouflage netting was in partial use at least.
Putting the last touches to his orders he moved backwards on his belly to join his section commanders for his ‘O’ Group.
“Gentlemen, thank you all for joining me here at such short notice, I hope the bikini clad hotel staff met with your approval?”
It was not possible to make out the features of any of his men, white thermal head-overs masked their faces, they were items of essential clothing as much as they were personal camouflage items. “Orders…”
10 Downing Street, London: Same time.
The damage to the doorframe and door to the cabinet room had not yet been repaired. The room contained the new PM with his cabinet picked from the opposition parties, the leaders of those parties and the Metropolitan Police commissioner along with the heads of the armed forces. Collectively they were all mirroring scenes from similar rooms across the world. No one expected one hundred percent success from their countries military and police anti-terrorist operations today, but even the seizure of one device would mean saving the lives of tens of thousands over the coming years. Cancer related deaths resulting from the nuclear detonations could match, if not outstrip, the body count of the original detonation.
The PM himself was no stranger to being at the sharp end of operations. Of all the politicians sat in the room with him, he was the only one present who had served his country in uniform. One of the telephones before him was exclusively for the result of his marine’s mission at Zemlya Georga.
According to the clock on the wall the first premises, in Wolverhampton, was about to be assaulted. All in all he would have felt far happier had he been on the ice with the marines than sat waiting.
Zemlya Georga
The two surviving buildings from the old facility, abandoned to the elements twelve years before, had been patched up to keep out the weather. The buildings faced one another with about twenty feet between them. A colonel and his 2 i/c, a lieutenant, commanded an eight-man security team and two technicians responsible for operating and maintaining the satellite transmitter and radio equipment. In the weeks they had been confined here the colonel had remained aloof from everyone, leaving the running of things to the lieutenant. The colonel ate and slept in the smaller building with the communications equipment, apart from attending to the call of nature at the one chemical toilet they had; he never left the building. When the colonel did venture out he ensured that the key to the small safe beside the communications gear was around his neck on a chain. The troops had dug communications trenches in order to stay below ground level when out in the open, with both buildings almost buried by the snow it was a simple procedure to also transform the appearance of the site with cam nets, providing overhead cover from view. Three fighting positions had been prepared to provide security but with only the lieutenant and eight men it was not possible to keep them all manned. Remaining on sentry in sub-zero temperatures cannot be safely achieved for periods of over thirty minutes at a time. Once a man comes indoors again he has to care for his weapons and equipment. All snow and ice has to be removed before it melts, rounds have to be removed from magazines, weapons stripped and all cleaned to ensure moisture does not freeze them to inoperability when next exposed to the elements.
With only nine men available, only one position was kept manned for 24 hours’ a day, two sentries occupied it at a time and every fifteen minutes one was relieved.
Major Dewar had sent two men to perform a close target recce, they had sketch mapped the layout, noted the sentry change over period and correctly identified the buildings functions. With these details to hand Major Dewar had briefed his men.
‘Silent noise’ emitted by the Royal Marines signallers kit was preventing any radio or microwave transmission or reception from the Russian position without alerting them. The marines two gun groups and sniper had moved into covering positions prior to the assault group moving to their jump off points.
Sliding below the cam nets and positioning themselves atop the communication trenches walls by both buildings the marines awaited the next sentry change. Lying immobile upon the snow sapped the warmth from the marines as they waited, threatening to trigger the body’s automatic defence of protecting the core organs by restricting blood flow to their limbs.
The outer door to both buildings opened simultaneously as sods law dictated that a communications technician would choose that moment to relieve himself in the toilet in the other building. With both buildings facing one another it meant both the sentry going on duty and the technician saw the danger to the other at about the same time as the Royal Marines Commandos slid down into the trench behind their respective man. The wind muffled the noise as mittened hands covered mouths and two knives were thrust home into the target's larynxes.
In the sentry’s position an impatient soldier looked down the communication trench for his relief. He was about to use the field telephone link to hurry the man up when a figure, huddled against the wind came into view.
Corporal Rory Alladay, RM, was not happy about his task, but the stakes were high and that did not leave any room for humanitarianism, at a range of eight feet he raised his weapon and opened fire on the Russian soldiers stood close together in the fighting position.
At both entrances to the two buildings the outer and inner doors were wrenched open. Grenades preceded the way into the living quarters, Lance Corporal Micky Field crouched beside the outer door until the grenades had gone off, then he rose and pushed at the inward opening outer door but the blast had jammed it shut. With another marine they both forced the door open and found the inner door half hanging off. As the marine with him came in view of the rooms dark interior there was a burst of automatic fire that pinned Micky beneath his colleague who had been hit in the head and chest, dying without a sound. The grenades had destroyed the lighting within the building and whilst Micky scrambled to disentangle himself a CS gas grenade was lobbed deep into the room whilst marines in the communication trench began firing into the room, with no target visible they were firing blind. He had just freed himself when an object thrown from inside the room hit the wall between the inner and outer doors and landed beside him. Micky had a split second of recognition before the Russian fragmentation grenade exploded.
Major Dewar had received confirmation that the building containing the communications equipment had been taken without casualties; however he had four men down at the second building. With no intelligence as to the opposition facing them, the M&AW Cadre had arrived fully prepared to take on a larger opposition force; he was however not prepared to lose any of his men to no purpose. Both his gun groups opened fire, providing cover as the two marines wounded by the grenade that had killed Micky were extracted from the communications trench. L/Cpl Field along with the f
irst marine to be killed were left in place.
The 66mm LAW is no longer in general service with British forces; its inability to defeat the armour of a modern MBT caused its replacement. A ‘66’ may not be able to fulfil its intended role but as a one shot piece of artillery it remains as a handy piece of kit for special forces, not that the M&AW Cadre would be pretentious enough to call themselves such.
In the communications building the satellite gear was moved to the far wall, protected by the bodies of the technician and Russian colonel draped across them before the marines withdrew, once clear the accommodation building was destroyed with two 66s.
Some fifteen minutes later the safe had been opened and Major Dewar pocketed a CD rom disc from inside and handed his signaller a series of times, bearings and angles above the horizon to transmit.
Wiccopie, Duchess County, New York State: Same day.
In the living room of the house, Audey Lee Mallory did not notice the smell of stale air from sweaty bodies and cigarettes as he watched a football game on the television. Keeping an eye on the laptops screen whilst monitoring their police scanner and watching the game too, was one of his subordinates. The other three members of the team were sleeping in the back room, two because they had pulled the night shift, one because he was drunk.
Audey was the product of a poor background and misspent school years, as were the others in the house with him today. Audey was one of those people who did not blame himself for the low wage jobs that had been his lot since leaving school; it was far easier to blame someone else.
He had been ripe for recruitment to the FA, an organisation that blamed blacks and Jew’s for all their woes. Their solution and recipe for an all-white America was the overthrow of the very organisation that kept blacks and Jew’s interests ahead of their own, the elected government.
The Audey’s of the world were not the sole membership of the FA, you can excuse to an extent Audey’s discontent, but the others, the hierarchy are harder to understand. In the same way it is difficult to understand how intelligent, well educated men and women, could believe an approaching comet was really a space ship, come to pluck they alone from the planets face and suicide was the way to passport control, so too is understanding how similarly gifted people can believe in the inbreeding of fascism.
FA had in their leadership, men and women with letters after their names.
Audey and Co were the foot soldiers, awaiting the code word that would signal the delivery of very powerful explosive devices to varying targets nationwide. Audey’s group was delivering their device to the banking centre of New York. The suitcase and remote control were concealed in the basement along with an impressive arsenal of small arms, which Audey had decided they would use once the bomb had exploded to create some more mayhem along Wall Street.
The latest security check had been sent some minutes before and the laptop operator decided to use the time out in the game as opportunity to take a leak.
Audey leant back and stretched, his head turned toward the sidewall as he did so. He paused and starred at the sidewall, he had not noticed that it had a bulge in it before, only a slight one but there just the same. Rising from the sofa and crossing the room he put his hand upon it and pushed.
Ben Dupre could not resist being in at the kill, he was not a part of the operational command structure and wanted to be the first to speak to his deceased agents ‘boyfriend’, one Audey Lee Mallory.
He was in the neighbouring house to that of the FA suspects, amongst members of one of his organisation's SWAT teams. Unlike them he was not clad in body armour and packing an MP5. They may have been ‘loaded for bear’ but Ben had only his elderly but trusty .38 revolver. It was no longer FBI issue but as the organisations chief he felt he could bend the rules, after all, he was never likely to have to use it.
The plan of action was to have an ATF agent deliver a Pizza to the front door as both persons in the living room would then be drawn away from the laptop. The fact that one had not been ordered would not be critical; it was merely a diversion.
Once both suspects were engaged at the door the entry teams would crash through the dividing wall and the rear windows to the bedrooms. The rear entry team was still a hundred metres away awaiting the approach of the deliveryman before moving to their assault positions.
The ATF agent was not due for five more minutes when the agent monitoring the surveillance cameras warned everyone something was awry.
“Shit…Target One has seen something…approaching the wall now.” The SWAT members clutched their MP5s more firmly and starred at the two sections of wall they had prepared for fast entry.
With a tearing sound a hand and forearm appeared through one of the entry points. Ben was the first to react, in two strides he was at the wall and grabbed the arm firmly in both hands, bracing himself he pulled with all his strength, dragging the rest of the arm and its owner through the wall shouting
“Go, go, go!”
Ben had Audey on the floor and the surveillance tech left his seat to kneel on Audey’s back and seize the other arm, one of the SWAT team squeezed past them to enter the hole into the suspects address, treading on Audey’s legs that still protruded through to the other side.
By the other prepared entry point, another agent threw himself bodily at the wall, bursting through to the other side.
The laptop operator halted his journey to the john when he heard the crash as Audey was dragged through the wall. His Colt .45 preceded the way as he re-entered the living room and saw the first two SWAT members coming through the wall. Double tapping off two rounds at each man he scored two hits, one on each, neither round penetrated but both agents were temporarily out of the fight. Coming out of the left hand hole the agent was hit on the side of the head, the Kevlar helmet deflected the heavy round but the agents head was snapped to the side with the force of the impact, temporarily paralysing him and giving him whiplash that would last for weeks.
The second agent was hit in the chest, his chest rigs ballistic plate stopped the shot from causing the fatal injury that would otherwise have resulted, however the kinetic energy from the round was transferred to his upper body, severely winded, he sat down hard, blocking the next agent to emerge from the right hand hole.
In the bedroom the three sleepers were awoken by the gunfire and grabbed their weapons. One moved the curtains aside to check the rear of the premises and immediately saw the rear entry team sprinting toward the back garden, the two rounds he snapped off broke the windows glass pane and caused them to scatter into cover whilst still 50m away.
The two other occupants of the bedroom were peering down the hall apprehensively, weapons at the ready.
In the living room, the laptop operator leaped for the keyboard. The right hand hole was blocked by the tangle of limbs consisting of the shot agent and the man behind. No one else had tried to squeeze past Ben; the two FBI agents and their prisoner were still blocking the way.
From his position knelt in the hole, Ben, looked over his shoulder into the next living room and saw the laptop operator move. When he was asked about it later, he stated that it was almost an out of body experience, as if he was a mere spectator looking through his own eyes as his body took over, drew his elderly .38 and aimed at the leaping suspect. He did not even recall hearing the shots but was aware of the revolvers kick as he aimed and fired, all in one movement. His men were proud of him, their boss, The Chief, had quick drawn and rapid fired two rounds from an old revolver, which hit a moving man in both the chest and head. Ben stated he felt as if he was still under remote control when he had then gone through the hole, leading the way for the rest of that entry team, and shouted to the last three to surrender, which they had.
Ben left the address on his own straight afterwards, stepping aside for the medics and other officers running up to the house, before walking down the street. A hundred yards along he turned into an alleyway, after glancing around briefly for onlookers he had bent over and vomited u
p the contents of his stomach onto the alleys floor. A law enforcement officer for over twenty years, he had drawn his weapon on half a dozen occasions but never fired in anger until today.
Nellis AFB, Nevada: 1452hrs, same day.
With over 8200 hours’ flying time between them on over forty different types, Major Glenn Morton and his wingman, Major Al Barrichello, USAF, were two of the most experienced pilots in the Air Force. It was for that reason that they were today entrusted with half of the United States inventory of ALASATs.
For the past three hours’ their two F-15C Eagles had been orbiting the desert at 18000 feet with a KC-135 tanker on call for their exclusive use.
Glenn had spent the time going over his pre-launch checklist for the fifteen year old weapon slung below his aircraft and was now as confident as he could be in launching a weapon he had only read of before today. The hot sun was sweating a few pounds off him as they traced their racetrack pattern above the desert. He was passing the time by performing calculus in his head when their controller sent them to top up their tanks from the KC-135. Once both had tanked and were clear the controller called them again
“Trident One and Two turn right to 220’, climb to 36000 feet and standby, we have a target for you.” Glenn gave Al a quick look as he held position on his wing before answering.
“Roger, Tridents turning to 220’ and climbing to 36000.”
The aircraft performed a tactical split putting them 500 feet apart, because after all, their weapons were not just fifteen years old; they were fifteen-year-old weapons provided by the lowest bidder.
Their Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-220 turbo fans carried the aircraft aloft with little audible effort and levelled off at the ordered height.