by FARMAN, ANDY
“Yes, Mister President?”
“You have been to that sector have you not?”
Henry nodded in affirmation. “Yes sir, it was my first stop after meeting with General Allain.”
“Is there anything that could have been done, or was there anything left undone…anything you feel may have prevented this from happening?”
General Shaw had been to all the sectors, not just that one. He had met with the commanders of the units mentioned and also been to the positions to see for himself the state of the defences, the level of training evident amongst the troops, and of course to judge the morale of the men and women in the fighting positions. Henry had squatted in the bottoms of trenches and shivered with the cold along with humble riflemen, speaking in English with British, Dutch and their own troops, in passable bier hall German to Panzer Grenadiers and schoolboy French to Belgian infantrymen and French Foreign Legionnaires.
It hadn’t been his brief to crawl through a frozen wasteland at night, to spend three hours just a rifle shot from a fortified pile of rubble that had once been a factory, but he saw it as his duty as a commander of troops to share some of the hazards faced by the men and women he had been ordered to send into harm’s way. The troops in that foxhole hadn’t known who he was until the next day, hours after he had departed for another sector of the line. For an hour he had listened to the sounds of a wounded man, a Soviet paratrooper, crying for his mother in those ruins on the perimeter of one of the Red Army footholds on the west bank of the Saale.
In all it had reinforced something he and a good friend had discussed and agreed upon many years before, and that was that the only person to have the moral right to send men and women to war was someone who had themselves been in harm’s way in the armed service of their country. If that simple fact became a matter of law then there would be far more talking around tables and fewer body bags, but that discussion had taken place in disreputable bar cum brothel in Southeast Asia, where even the flies had sense to swerve to avoid the bar girls. They had been young lieutenants then, and he at the end of a three-month attachment to his friends unit to see why Britain was winning its jungle war when at the same time America was losing hers.
Over many bottles of Tiger and in increasing degrees of intoxication the two men had written a new constitution on the backs of beer mats, built around the foundation of his friends somewhat slurred words
“You shouldn’t be in a position to start a fight unless you’ve been in one yourself…no high office without first joining the brown adrenaline club.”
A campaign slogan for their bid for world power had read ‘Vote for me, I’ve not only shit myself in battle…but look here I’ve even got the soiled shorts to prove it!’
Henry had left the next day to return to Saigon with a hell of a hangover and little recollection of the previous night’s events, his friend however had a better memory and over the years whenever they had bumped into one another and shared a drink or six he would speak whimsically of one day making ‘The Beer Mat Constitution’ into a reality, and had even worked out how it could be achieved.
When at last the wounded soldiers cries had faded and gone forever it had given Henry a greater determination, the co-author of the beer mat constitution may be dead at the bottom of the Irish Sea, but the idea was very much alive.
“Mister President, those men and women are outnumbered fifty to one, they have fought and held this long despite the inadequate equipment and war stocks their governments provided them to do the job, and the fact that they are about to be over run, and where the blame lies for that, is no fault of theirs.”
A pin could have been heard dropping in the seconds that followed, and Terry Jones was not alone in realising a line had just been crossed. The President had been questioning whether there was fault in the ability of the men and women in uniform at the battlefront, but the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had laid the blame squarely at the door of government.
The Joint Chiefs are free to criticise the Chief Executive, but on a one to one basis behind closed doors, not in front of onlookers even if they were on the staff.
The President became very still, and his eyes narrowed a fraction as he looked at his top soldier. Henry met the President’s gaze and held it calmly in the knowledge that if he were to be relieved now it would matter not one iota.
The President broke the silence.
“A simple yes or no would have sufficed, General.”
Henry went on to outline what they believed the enemy would do once they achieved a breakout.
“We expect the Third Shock Army to head for Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Zeebrugge and Antwerp, with their Sixth Shock Army following on behind through the breach and to then swing south west for the French ports. What remains of Second Shock and Tenth Tank army will probably hook left and right to roll up the rest of our lines. These are their last, first class outfits and they about used up their second-class units in keeping up the pressure on us and trying to force the rivers up to this point in time. Which leaves third class units to assist in the mopping up, whilst the fourth class…those manned by troops in their forties and early fifties, will in all probability be used to secure the lines of communication.”
The President had rested his elbows on the table before him, and his hands were clasped together, the fingers entwined and he rested his chin on the spire they formed.
“What, may I ask, does General Allain intend to do about that?” The President followed on before Henry could answer. “There is just a cobbled together, infantry heavy division sat in the way of god knows how many tanks so does he honestly believe that will hold them until our new Corps arrives on the scene?” with that he sat upright and raised a coffee mug to his lips while he waited for the answer.
Henry responded with four words.
With a snort that sent coffee splashing across the papers in front of him, the President choked in mid swallow. An aide hurried over and began mopping up the spilt coffee before him, and the President coughed whilst fishing out a handkerchief and dabbing at a growing stain on his shirt. Leaning to one side to see past the charring aide he stared at Henry.
“What?”
“He’s going to attack.” Henry Shaw repeated.
The President knew what forces were in Germany, and so he had to ask himself, and Henry, if SACEUR had taken leave of his senses.
“General Allain is quite sane Mr President; he is just faced with desperate choices at a desperate time.”
Turning back to the screen Henry continued his explanation by highlighting two NATO units sat slightly to the rear of their own lines and at either side of the expected breach.
“These two units, the 2nd Canadian Mechanised Brigade and the French 8th Armoured Brigade, are currently in hide positions and have been brought up to strength as far as possible as regard reinforcements and supplies. Once the lead enemy manoeuvre units have passed through the breach they will close it behind them, sealing the breach.”
“General?” The President was pointing the end of a pen towards the screen.
“If memory serves, that Canadian unit was over a hundred miles away two days ago and holding a section of the line to the north, and the French brigade was a lot further south, so who is in those positions now?”
“The King Alfonso XIII Light Infantry Legion Brigade relieved the Canadians in place thirty hours ago, and the Lusitania Light Armoured Cavalry Regiment took over from the French 8th Armoured about this time yesterday. They are both Spanish rapid reaction units and as such carry little in the way of excess baggage so the move took very little time.”
The President was about to ask another question, clearly surprised that these moves and the Spanish units involved had not previously been even hinted at. He wasn’t certain that the Spanish units in question were even under SACEUR’s control. However, General Shaw had already turned away.
The map on the big screen panned back to encompass the south of Europe and the UK. Blue parachute symbols
were clustered about the locations of airfields far from the fighting.
“Tomorrow morning at 0300hrs GMT, elements of the Belgian, Turkish, Greek, Spanish and Italian airborne forces, along with three battalions of the 82nd and the British 1st and 2nd Parachute battalions will drop into occupied Germany to attack enemy airfields and supply lines.”
Henry paused before finishing and looked at all the faces peering from him to the screen.
“This is a one shot deal and there will be no reinforcement or re-supply.”
The President sat listening with raised eyebrows as Henry spoke, and when he had finished the President looked around the table.
“Why is it that this is first that I have heard of it? Why haven’t any of the European leaders spoken to me about this? Why General, was I not consulted?”
Henry gave him that answer.
“I think you will find sir that General Allain felt that the other leaders would only have seen it as throwing good money after bad, and would have wanted to preserve those forces for the defence of their own borders. He may also have felt that by consulting you sir, it would have put you in an awkward position.”
“No shit.” The President replied with much irony, and then as another thought occurred to him his brows knotted together in confusion.
“So how did he get those airborne units, General?”
“He didn’t consult the national leadership’s sir.”
Henry answered.
“Only the Generals’.”
What Henry had revealed was a deliberate subversion of the lawful chain of command in those countries, and the President could only assume that General Shaw had no part in it. As to the use of their own airborne the President did not have any cause to gripe, they were troops already ‘in theatre’ and under SACEUR’s command, as were 1 and 2 Para. Some of the Spanish and Italian unit symbols were centred over RAF Lyneham in England, as were Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch and Canadian air transport units, the means to carry those paratroopers to war. The President was at a loss as to why no one in the British Ministry of Defence had noticed a sizeable foreign force drawing rations.
“General Shaw, is the British government mixed up in this, are they colluding with SACEUR?”
Henry gave a short laugh.
“Mizz Foxten-Billings is so wrapped up achieving her own secret agenda she can’t see beyond her own little conspiracies, sir.”
The President looked hard at Henry Shaw, trying to judge the truth of his words. After a very long moment he gave up.
“Win or lose, the elected governments of those countries are gonna have that damn Canadian by the balls when this is over, and they’ll pin ‘em up right alongside the ones they cut off their own general staff’s.” The President shook his head slowly as he considered the fall-out which would surely come about.
“Mister President.” Henry Shaw interrupted the President’s chain of thought, bringing his eyes back to the end of the room.
“If the reds reach the coast then it is game over, and those governments won’t be able to touch him because some KGB troops will already have put him against a wall and shot him…but if it works and we stop them, do you really think Pierre Allain, or those general staffs, will give a flying fuck what the food will be like in whatever prison they may choose to toss them into?” The President and everyone else present were silent as Henry spoke, lecturing them as if they first graders who needed the rules explained.
“General Allan’s job is to defeat the enemy.” He went on. “That is a soldier’s job, and General Allain is one hell of a good soldier. He will be a sneaky sonofabitch if that is what it takes to save lives and do his duty, and if that means pissing off a few politicians, then so be it.”
Henry looked at everyone sat around the table.
“Pierre has more honour in a single finger nail then that silly English bitch has in both her little boy breasts.”
Terry Jones felt the President’s eyes upon him but his poker face remained in place. He had received a report from his chief of station in London, qualified by another from Paris that Henry Shaw had been getting about, probably by covert means during his fact finding mission to the embattled continent. Henry had even been present at the London police commissioners’ home when a veritable who’s who of military men and senior police officers, some of whom were retired, who had come calling. Art had cobbled together a hurried surveillance operation and had himself chosen to spend an uncomfortable night in a covert vehicle near the commissioner’s home rather than be present when the SAS arrested the cell responsible for Scott and Constantine’s deaths, which was indication in itself that his London stations chief had a gut feeling that something was amiss.
Terry had not had the chance to fully analyse the possibilities that the report could be indicating. There was every chance that Henry Shaw had been avoiding the time wasting that the meet and greets of announced visits would have entailed, but his presence in England at that gathering, and his apparent previous knowledge of SACEUR’s plans could put a very different spin on it. Had Terry known then what he had just discovered at this briefing then he may have read more into it if he had not also received information of a possible intelligence break through that had taken preference in the order of importance. That particular information was being analysed right now, and he could only give the President a heads up on what may, if it was genuine, be of considerable help to them. However, back in the here and now his President wanted answers.
“Mister Jones, did you know anything about this? Didn’t the Central Intelligence Agency have any hint that NATO armed forces were about to give their elected governments the finger and do their own thing?”
Now was the time he should have produced Art Petrucci’s report, but instead Terry shook his head.
“No Mister President, and to the best of my knowledge neither have the intelligence agencies of the European countries either.”
A very annoyed President looked back to the screen. He would consider what, if anything, he would do about this revelation after the briefings, and after a showdown he planned to have with General Shaw. A single sheet of paper lay inside a folder before him. The President had ordered it typed by a secretary but it was addressed to himself from Henry
“Okay then, let us move on.”
Henry briefly went over the events involving the destruction of the Soviet airborne brigade, chiefly because there was evidence that one of the Russian Premier’s shakers and movers in the starting of this war had been killed in the fighting.
“Serge Alontov was probably their most able airborne and Spetznaz commander; he had also performed a fair amount of intelligence and espionage work as a military attaché in London during the eighties. We also know that he entered the States illegally on at least two occasions in connection with Project October, which was a Cold War plan to cripple America on the outbreak of a war with the USSR, by espionage, sabotage and the assassination of key figures. We know he was a patriot and with his knowledge and experience he would be an obvious choice to carry through their plans. I believe Mister Jones has some related information on this for later in the briefing.”
“I am a little puzzled, General Shaw, as to what this man was doing in combat if he was such a close aide to their Premier?”
“Uriah, Mister President.” It was the first time Ben Dupre had spoken at the briefing. “Look up the Book of Samuel in the Old Testament. King David wanted to get rid of one of his generals without getting his own hands dirty, so he put Uriah in the front rank during a battle. It got him out of the way permanently.”
Looking back at General Shaw a moment, the President lowered his voice.
“Don’t tempt me Benjamin,” he growled before then returning his attention once more to Terry Jones.
“I assume the late Comrade Alontov did not leave a grieving Bathsheba for that bastard to covet though, and this was his way of disposing of future threats to his leadership?”
“Wife and only child, a
son aged two years, killed by a drunk driver while he was serving in Afghanistan, sir. He never remarried.” Terry did not have to refer to any notes on Serge’s private life, there was little to tell.
“It would seem the Russian Premier was merely cleaning house, sir.”
The President grunted before gesturing at Henry to move on, and five minutes later having finished the brief that this particular audience were cleared for, he relinquished his spot to a navy officer and returned to his seat.
The President already knew about the PLAN invasion fleet in the Indian Ocean, having been summoned from his bed for a video conference with the Australian PM three hours after its discovery. One of Admiral Gee’s staff, an earnest and slightly bookish looking officer took them through the preparations Australia was making, and the progress of the Nimitz battle group to get underway and intercept it.
“Mister President, at the outbreak of war you may recall that the USS Nimitz was undergoing refit. She left the yards with a great deal of work unfinished and with over a hundred civilian workers still aboard, who have continued that work whilst she was enroute to Australia and it is in fact still on-going whilst she is tied up in Sydney. She also left without her full complement of crew or a complete air wing, so we have had a ways to go to restore her to full combat readiness. Personnel and aircraft have been flown out to Australia where her air wing is dispersed for the moment to bolster the Aussies air defence, but another two, three days at the most should see the Nimitz and Bonhomme Richard putting back to sea.” The briefer was unused to the President’s ways, and columns of facts and figures replaced the view on-screen of the Pacific Theatre of Operations.
“Owing to a shortage in naval airframes, particularly of the latest model of F-14, we have had to refurbish and hurriedly add upgrades to mothballed aircraft from storage at the boneyard, which we are still in the process of flying out to her. However, if I can draw your attention to the graph I am just putting up on the screen…you can see that the speed at which these airframes are being refurbished, is increasing exponentially as the work crews become more proficient with practice, and…”
