by Andy Farman
“Forgive me Karena,” repeated over and over. Exactly four minutes after the switch had been depressed, a bomb containing four pounds of Semtex H in Joseph’s briefcase exploded.
It had been the government and strong leadership of the armed forces, that had been the principle reason for the failure of the coup days before, and both of those elements had now been removed, permanently.
Leipzig, Germany: 1445hrs, same day:
Alontov was not in the best of tempers when he appeared at the brigade headquarters. NATOs fighter bombers and their artillery’s counter-battery missions had prevented him from doing more than re-securing the perimeter and forcing the enemy back a couple of hundred yards. The effort had cost him four of his precious light tanks and five APCs, along with almost a hundred and sixty casualties.
The enemy was fighting furiously and resisted his counter attack like men possessed. The prisoners they had taken were convinced they were going to be tortured and killed. Three in fact had been shot, when they killed one of the soldiers guarding them and tried to make a break for it. The Geneva Convention forbids prisoners from killing or injuring their captors, but as these men obviously believed his men wouldn’t play by the rules then why should they? The matter of the wounded was also a concern to him, two full field hospitals were supposed to have been delivered towards the end of the airlift in, but they hadn’t arrived. All he had were combat medics and two surgeons per battalion, and the equipment they carried was minimal. He could, and was using the hospitals in the city, but NATO had yet to unleash its full force, when that happened he would have civilians too, swamping those facilities. He caught the eye of the major commanding the signal's detachment.
“Get me the NATO commander on the radio; I want to discuss a cease fire whilst prisoners are exchanged.”
The major hesitated.
“Sir is that wise?”
Alontov looked at the man questioningly.
“Sir, our own signals intelligence…outside of this division, will be certain to intercept it…what I mean to say sir, is that your motives might be misconstrued by the High Command?”
Alontov gave him a cynical smile.
“The seat polishers will have to come here if they want to arrest me, I do not think I have very much to worry about on that score, so…do as I ask.” The signals major nodded and began to turn away. “But thank you for your concern anyway Major,” Alontov added.
Poland: Same time.
Elena Ludwej had knelt with her arms around her three sobbing daughters as the van that they had been bundled out of now disappeared around a bend on the forest track. She had no idea where they were, a woman wearing a ski mask had merely pointed down the track and stated.
“Go that way.” It was in the opposite direction to which the van had left in, and so she soothed her girls as best she could before picking up little Lulu and they had set off .
It was a warm spring afternoon and she had told stories to the children as they walked, it helped her put aside, temporarily, their ordeal at the hands of the masked men and women who had appeared in their home with guns and knives.
She never knew what it was that they wanted of them; they had been taken by the same van on a long journey, although how long not something she could tell as her watch was broken. She had been allowed to say just a few words to her husband by telephone on two occasions, the rest of the time they had been kept in a locked room without windows. Their captors had spoken rarely, but when they had their accents sounded like they came from the north of Poland. Her thoughts on being set free were to contact her husband and the police, who must surely have been searching for them and their kidnappers.
After two hours’ of walking, the children were tired and hungry. The track they were walking on was now running along the side of a hill and the trees thinned out on the downslope side. The bottom of the hill was only about a hundred yards away where there was a tarmac road. In the field on the far side of the road Karena saw a tank and the polish soldiers, who were the crew, sat on the vehicle’s turret, so she waved and called out. Apart from glancing in her direction the soldiers ignored her and Karena stopped her antics. This was very odd, she thought the soldiers looked rather dejected and there was something odd about the tank, which she could not quite place. If nothing else they could give her directions to the nearest village or town, or perhaps even use their radio to call the police, so she started down the hill. Her arms were aching from carrying Lulu; the two-year-old was growing so fast these days. At the bottom of the hill she heard the sound of heavy engines, their reverberating noise began to fill the air and she called the other two girls to her. Looking along the road in the direction of the sound of approaching vehicles, she saw it disappeared into a dark woodland tunnel where ancient trees spread their branches wide. Early leaves were bright green and they conspired to block out the sunlight that fell upon the road, and Karena felt a shiver of dread run up her spine. Three armoured, eight-wheeled reconnaissance vehicles shot out of the darkness and into the sunlight. Travelling at about fifty miles an hour they tore past, their passage ruffled the hair and clothing of the woman and her three children before disappearing around a curve. She looked across the road at the soldiers, who had watched the vehicles with disgusted expressions. The rattle of tank tracks emerged from the sound of heavy engines, drawing all eyes back toward the tunnel-like spot. Like the reconnaissance vehicles, the tanks when they emerged were travelling at speed and Karena pulled her daughters with her as she stepped back a few paces.
As the first of many main battle tanks thundered past, Karena looked opened mouthed from the small flag on its antennae and back to the tank in the field. The soldiers were making no effort to prevent the tanks flying hammer and sickle flags from driving into their country, and the polish tanks main gun remained pointing backwards across the engine deck, away from the road.
German/Czech border: 0021hrs 4th April
Forty-six aircraft crossed the frontier enroute for Leipzig, a further sixteen orbited over Czech territory, these last aircraft were the Il-76 tankers and an A-50 AWAC, within the protection provided by AAA and with friendly air riding shotgun.
Ten Su-37 Golden Eagles led the way, and as before they were looking to remove ground radar and AWACs to ensure safe passage for their charges, Il-76s heavily laden with ammunition pallet’s, mostly for the artillery.
For their debut, they had had the benefit of surprise and the use of the enemy’s radar data hacked and downloaded by Red Army intelligence. Tonight they had only their wits and radar absorbent skins to help them, because NATO was not going to be suckered again as it had during the battle for the Wesernitz.
The previous night, NATO had their AWACs aloft but they had bolted to the rear well before the Russian stealth fighters had come within firing range. Everywhere, radars switched off and stayed off, it was as if NATO could see them coming but did not engage them. What NATO had engaged though, were the transport aircraft and the Red air force could only theorise on the cause.
Between the line of German brigades and besieged Leipzig, NATO had a crescent of AAA systems that had IR tracking and acquisition capabilities.
Unlike radar, there is little to alert an enemy to IR scanning except the systems small super-cooled sensors.
Radars day as the all-powerful secret weapon became numbered not long after its birth, when someone realised that with the right equipment the source could be pin-pointed. Admittedly its death is a long time coming but come it surely shall, and the nail that seals the coffin will be some other form of long range surveillance technology, as good as if not superior to the cathode ray tube. The smart money is already on how long before the successors Achilles heel is found though.
Infrared sensoring on Jernas equipped Rapiers, thermal cameras on Crotale NGs, Piranha wheeled AA vehicles thermal sights for their Mistral missiles, Roland’s Glaive sight systems and the Stormers IR sensors formed a barrier that nothing warmer than its surroundings could cross undetecte
d.
The vehicles were in groups, and at least one would track the hi-tech Russian fighters for as long as possible once they had passed overhead.
Four pairs of F-117A stealth fighters were aloft and waiting for the advanced Russian fighters and they received their initial intercept data from the AAA units on the ground.
The first flight of four Il-76 transports were not to know it, but they were the bait that would locate the NATO AAA units that were so hindering the resupply of the airborne troops holding Leipzig.
72 Battery, Royal Artillery had divided into teams of three launchers each and were covering their sector, seven miles in length to the southwest of Leipzig. Elderly FV-432 APCs were the tractors that towed the Rapier FSCs. Field Standard C, systems to the firing points and the eight Mk2 Rapier missiles attached to the rotary towers.
Gunner Sally Whinley and L/Cpl Peter Gaurt unhooked the missile trailer before moving away the APC. The Dagger and Blindfire radars remained off whilst the passive infrared electro-optic sensor, mounted on the top of the turret was activated. The tracking device was soon in use providing passive target detection and acquisition in the Rapiers radar-silent mode. At the weapon control terminal the operator ran through his checklist and once satisfied that all was performing as required, the signal was sent that they were ready for business. Gaurt and Whinley got busy with pick and shovel and soon had dug a deep shell scrape, which they occupied, watching for enemy troops roaming behind the lines.
It was three hours’ before any airborne sources were detected and when they were the data was swiftly analysed. The pair of Su-37s they had detected was tracked as they passed them by and the data was passed on down the line.
In their hasty defensive positions Peter and Sally remained silent as they listened for hostile movement. Being so close was difficult for them as they were in the very physical discover phase of a relationship that had begun just a fortnight before, when Sally had joined the unit after a swiftly curtailed basic training course. It is hard to keep a romance secret in the closed environment of a mixed fighting unit and the other members of the unit had cottoned on quickly. Sally was a very pretty eighteen year old girl from Hertfordshire with an almost fragile quality about her and a lot of the ribbing Peter got from his mates was envy based. The battery sergeant major was not overjoyed when Gunner Whinley had joined the unit because she had no to-arms skills to offer the under strength unit. It wasn’t her fault that the war had broken out before she could complete her basic training and skills-to-arms course, so she was just an extra pair of hands and a warm body on the stag (sentry) roster. Peter was the 432s driver, and as such had no other skills other than the not too difficult task of attaching reloads, a skill quickly mastered by Sally. The unit had been stood down for essential maintenance the previous day and L/Cpl Gaurt had taken the Gunner Whinley with him in the 432 to a nearby village, ostensibly to forage for fresh produce. The healthy young couple’s relationship had taken the next step up in a small copse far from prying eyes, with a frantic half-hour’ copulating amongst the conifers. And so it was that they now concentrated hard on their tasks as sentries, in order to ignore each other’s presence.
An hour after the stealth fighters had past, the first lumbering Il-76 transports were detected at 8,000’, an altitude that was far higher than was safe but one that they had been ordered to fly at.
One of the transports was within their engagement area and a single Rapier 2 leapt into the air. The Rapier FSC system has the ability to process seventy five threats per second and sort out friend from foe whilst it is doing so, but for that it needed its frequency agile 3D pulse Doppler, J-band radar. There were not supposed to be any NATO aircraft in their engagement area so the missile was loosed anyway, without the need to go active on radar and inspect its credentials.
It took twenty seconds for the Soviet operators to pinpoint the firing point by radar backtracking, another thirty seconds to send the co-ordinates to the gun lines and three minutes for the first shells to leave the barrels. The time of flight for the shells was a further one minute seven seconds.
The launching of the Rapier was the signal for the sentries to return on the double because they were in danger of receiving unwanted attention, should the launch have been detected.
Peter reversed the APC up to their Rapier trailer and leapt out to assist the rest of the crew attach it. Adrenaline was coursing through all their veins in the knowledge that enemy artillery or ground attack aircraft could at that moment be heading towards them.
The trailer was hooked up and the crew dispersed at a run to their various vehicles. As Peter put the 432 into gear a flush faced young female Gunner closed the rear hatch behind her and let out a nervous giggle, relieved that they were now moving and out of danger.
Sixteen 240mm shells arrived on the battery’s position before it had reached safety, one landed squarely atop Peter and Sally’s APC, tearing through the thin top armour before exploding. It had taken the Gunners just too long to hook up and move on to their next firing positions.
When the shells arrived at the firing points before Leipzig, most of the AAA units were already in the process of relocating to new sites and one other was destroyed, also a were towed Rapier unit, it took longer for them to relocate. The Crotales, Pirhanas, Stormers and Roland’s were all self-propelled, so for them it was a case of shoot ‘n scoot, but three suffered damage from artillery fire that put them out of action for the night.
A somewhat ragged gap had been created for the ammunition airlift to enter, although eight more of the big transports were shot down whilst entering or egressing that night.
The Nighthawks had the advantage over the Russian stealth fighters inasmuch as they had a last bearing, course and speed to work from in hunting them, other than that it was back to the dark ages as far as night fighting went. The billion dollar aircraft were reduced to groping about in the dark for their enemy, much as their wire and canvas skinned, biplane predecessors had when looking for Zeppelin’s over London and the Home Counties, almost a hundred years before.
Two Su-37s left fiery trails down from the heavens to the hard unforgiving earth but so also did a Nighthawk.
North Pacific Ocean: 0910hrs, same day.
Uncharacteristically, an almost flat calm greeted the periscope of the Royal Navy Trafalgar class SSN, HMS Hood. The thin ESM mast with its radar absorbent skin had preceded the way to the surface to sample the electronic traffic, both radio and radar. Radioactivity had been monitored since even before they had turned about, they were at war and it was looked for as a matter of routine. The seawater was tested as they progressed along and the air above was also sampled whenever the ESM mast poked up above the waves, a RAD counter monitored the different rays and their levels whilst another device tasted the breeze for toxicity as it tested for Chemical and Germ warfare agents.
The vastness of the Pacific was diluting the highly irradiated water at ground zero. There were dead fish aplenty, many were from species that lived far below the surface where light never reached, siphoned to the surface by the thermal effects caused by superheated surface water.
There were no human bodies, nor any wreckage or flotsam from the carrier group in the area, all of that would now be dust and vapour. The ESM mast could detect no distress beacons from life rafts either, so once the periscope disappeared below the surface the ESM followed it.
The predominant currents and wind had been calculated to give them an idea of where any life rafts might now be, had any aircraft been outside the danger area when the Russian nuclear weapons had destroyed the USS Kitty Hawk and her escorts. The Hood altered course and her captain gave orders to go deep, they would approach the surface again in two hours’.
Nikki had regained consciousness during the morning but was extremely weak. They had no method of feeding her nutrition or fluids intravenously whilst she had been unconscious, and now that she was awake they had limited water and food with which to help restore her reserves. She
was propped up against the inflated wall of the raft, which improved the cramped conditions slightly. The seawater still was only designed to supply water for one person, but here they were with three of them now fully reliant upon it. The half-litre bottles of fresh water in their survival vests had long since been drunk. The best they could hope for was that it would rain and they could use the canvas sea anchor to collect the rainwater and fill their small bottles from that.
The fishing line was trailing in the sea and Sandy had it tied around his little finger, in order to feel any nibbles. With the slight increase in room, Chubby had used a marker pen to draw the squares on the ‘deck’ that they now used as a chessboard. The chess ‘pieces’ were squares of paper from Sandy’s notebook.
Chubby’s Knight was about to take Sandy’s last Bishop and put him in check when something collided with their raft.
“Anyone alive in there?” a Lancashire voice hailed.
Chubby was nearest the entrance to the raft and leant out to see an elderly man with sun weathered skin kneeling on the deck of a Ketch, he held the lifeboats painter in his hand, still wet from the ocean it had been fished out of with a boat hook.
“Yes…” Chubby was startled.
“There are three of us.”
He hadn’t noticed anyone else until a voice called out to the man on the deck.
“Who is it Eric?” The speaker was a tiny elderly lady who had the same accent as the man.
“It’s a bloody foreigner, that’s who!” grizzled the weather beaten sailor.