'Advance to Contact' (Armageddon's Song)

by Andy Farman

  "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." interrupted Justice with a grin. “Although I did think that was a line from Henry V?”

  “If you’re going to steal my lines…you can give the next State of the Union speech, ok?”

  “Your lines?....I think I just heard William Shakespeare turn in his grave Mr President, lucky for you he hated us lawyers or he’d sue your ass for that one!”

  The President held up one finger, giving the bird to Justice before continuing.

  “I want all available resources that can be of assistance federalised. They aren’t going to get rich on the pay or fat on the rations but I want them put to work on all aspects of disaster relief. Search and rescue remains voluntary of course but I want special payments to be made to all those who take part. We have a hell of a lot of people and equipment out there who are already working for free and more turning up all the time, let’s not freeload. The lawyers here have looked it over and it is legal, so let’s do it.”

  Justice was scribbling away as the President spoke, until finally he looked up again and nodded.

  “Next item, the enemy cells who carried out the attacks this morning…what can you tell me Ben?”

  “Mr President, these would appear to be the work of sleeper cells of Chinese and East European origin. I would like to say that we have early leads, but we don’t. Air Force Captain Leo MacNamarra for instance, the man we believe may be responsible for planting bombs on our specialist anti-satellite squadron’s aircraft, appears to have been born and raised in New York State, and then attended the Air Force Academy. When he flunked pilot training he went into security where he underwent, and passed, an in depth security screening. However, initial DNA tests on samples at his apartment show he is most probably from the Urals, rather than a fifth generation Irish American. We are stretched to the limit and calling on former and retired agents to re-up and assist, as are most government and police agencies at the moment.”

  Terry Jones had replaced his deputy on screen and looked bleak.

  “Sir, we may have a problem…”

  Henry Shaw interrupted.

  “Sir, we sure as shit-fire have a problem, there is no maybe about it!”

  “Terry, as you started then please give me your take on whatever else has gone to hell today?” prompted the President.

  “We have lost satellite and landline communications with our embassy in Warsaw, the consulate in Krakow and our consular agency in Poznan. I have also been informed that the NATO liaison team working with their High Command has not been in contact, they were working on a counter strike to assist the Belarussians and the last progress report was just before 11am yesterday. A lot of damage was done to the country’s communications net during the coup attempt, so it has been a bit haphazard since then but it was improving. This morning NATO aircraft have been refused entry into Polish airspace…I sent a courier from Berlin to find out what was going on, he was turned back at the border…alleged partisan activity outside the towns and cities attacking road traffic, is what he was told. I have contacted our allies and it is virtually the same story, so I contacted a friend at the new Polish embassy in Chicago, they were just about to contact us at it happens, all the embassies and consulates around the world are cut off from the homeland. At this time we have no intelligence as to what has happened to Poland’s elected President, his government or the high command of the armed forces”

  The President closed his eyes for a moment, allowing the consequences of a worst case scenario to formulate in his mind.

  When he opened them, General Shaw gave him an apologetic half smile before speaking.

  “I had a JSTARS do some snooping sir, there is a lot of armour heading south through Poland by road and rail. There is remarkably little radio communication going on. The police, ambulance and fire service are off the air, so are taxi cabs and all manner of commercial radio traffic. The cellular phone system is down and military radio traffic is minimal…but we have heard Russian call signs and speech, not much and in every case the speaker got a new arsehole torn by a higher authority for breaking radio silence. I’m thinking a second coup here Mr President, successful this time. It means our northern flank in Germany is vulnerable; we no longer have Poland as a buffer and ally. Their forces could even now be repositioning from their jump off point on the Belorussian frontier, to come south with the Russians.” He paused while he tapped away on a keyboard and the large screen in the President’s war room lit up with a map of Europe before zooming in to focus on Poland, Belorussia, northern Germany and the Czech Republic. Icons were displayed that showed unit positions, the enemy units were shown in red.

  “You will see that our northern flank is made up of a German Armoured Division, a French Mechanised Division, one Belgian and one Dutch Mechanised Brigade. Two brigades from our own 82nd Airborne in reserve with the British Airborne. Sir, 1st (UK) Armoured Division and their 2nd Mechanised Brigade were slotted for the left flank but are on their way to Leipzig. In twenty-four hours ten enemy divisions, thirteen if they can get the Poles to fight for them, will come crashing into our three division’s worth, north of Berlin.”

  “Does SACEUR know this?” asked the President, enquiring if the Canadian General commanding NATO forces in Europe had the same information.

  “I sent it all to him before I came online sir” Henry Shaw answered.

  “What would you do if you were SACEUR, Henry?”

  “You won’t like the answer, but if it is any consolation, the Germans will like it even less. I would stop the units moving up to Leipzig before they could engage, form a defence line south of Leipzig and disengage all units in contact, pull back to the new defence line and make a stand there. It would mean abandoning the north of Germany and the capital but that is as good as gone anyway if the northern flank is overrun…and it will be. Once they have done that the enemy will probably roll up the units facing east and Europe is as good as lost to us. SACEUR, General Allain will probably come to the same conclusion. He is going to need some political clout backing him to convince the German Chancellor to pull his troops back with ours…if that cannot be done, and the Germans refuse to budge, their army will fight alone …and die in place, sir.”

  “Where are the convoys Henry, anything to spoil Grease Spot?”

  The convoys’ positions came up on the screen, which had altered to depict the Atlantic.

  “They should make port in seven days…if all goes well and the river don’t rise….” He drawled, meaning if nothing else goes wrong. “Admiral Mann has full discretion, if you can’t trust Conrad Mann sir, you can’t trust anyone.”

  The President held up his mug and looked over at an aide who hustled over and took it from him.

  “Put sugar in it this time!”

  The head of his secret service detail opened his mouth to protest but the President shot him a look and a growled. “Stifle it, Mike…and not one word to my wife or the witch doctor, unless of course you want to be humping an M-16 around Germany come this time tomorrow!”

  “Don’t listen to him Mike…” Chuckled General Shaw, “…but if he fires your ass there’s always room in the Marine Corps for a good man.”

  “No offence General, but if I get fired I’ll run against him as a Republican.”

  The chuckle turned into a full-blown guffaw.

  “If anyone knows where the bodies are buried, it has gotta be the secret service detail!”

  “Damn straight!” replied the agent with a grin.

  “Ok, ok, ok…beat it everyone, reconvene in one hour after I have spoken to SACEUR and the Chancellor.”

  North Atlantic: Same time.

  CIC aboard the USS Gerald Ford was humming with activity when Admiral Mann entered. A digital map of the Atlantic showed the position of all known merchant shipping, surface combat groups, submarines and air traffic.

  To the north, HMS Ark Royal sat in the van of the Canadian convoy; older Mk 6 Sea Kings flying off the decks of container
ships augmenting her sub hunting Merlins.

  Half of the convoy screen was Canada’s own warships, and the Admiral smiled to himself when he remembered how startled the news services had been at the beginning of the year when HMCS Vancouver had seized a sanctions busting tanker in the Arabian sea. The thought that the other nation occupying the North American landmass would do anything warlike had seemed faintly ridiculous. It had given satirists new material and they had set to with glee. One punster had written a spoof interview.

  “You’re kidding, right? Canada has a warship?” asked the United States Defence Secretary. “Like for war?”

  “Does Canada know?” he had added.

  The Canadian fleet wasn’t a secret it was just characteristically modest, as the Canadian people are, whilst being extremely professional.

  Ten of Canada’s Halifax class multi role frigates were now carrying out ASW duties, four of her Iroquois class destroyers were air defence pickets whilst two Victoria class SSK’s, HMCS Chicoutimi and HMCS Windsor ranged ahead, looking for Red Banner boats.

  Canada also had ships with the second remaining Royal Navy carrier, HMS Illustrious and her ASW group, ranging the Atlantic independently, as was Spain’s VTOL carrier Principe de Asturias, with her own Harriers and ASW Hughes 500M and Sea King helicopters.

  Plugging the gap between Iceland and the North Cape had been taken on by

  France, Norway and Denmark, but three Polish warships numbered among the European ships there, receiving replenishment in all things from their neighbours, defying repeated orders to return to home ports.

  The 38,000-ton nuclear powered French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle was providing air cover for France's own helicopter carrier the Jeanne d'Arc, released from duty as a training ship, and the rest of the ASW ships of the group.

  Charles De Gaulle’s Rafale M and Super Etendards provided the big stick, whilst three E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft told them where to swing it.

  Her AS-565 Panther and Dauphin helicopters joined the effort in stopping further surges or infiltrations of enemy submarines into the Atlantic sea lanes.

  Britain’s HMS Invincible had performed the air cover duty for the scratch team guarding the North Cape at the start of the war, but her compliment of Sea Harriers had been too small for the task. Invincible now lay on the seabed, along with half of the original surface combat ships and submarines, the victims of torpedoes; air launched anti-ship missiles and nuclear mines.

  The sluggish start in maritime air patrols was improving day by day as reactivated airframes, from the so-called boneyards, were collected by reservists and flown to bases and naval air stations.

  USN Orions, Canadian CP-140 Auroras and British Nimrods did what they could in the north, flying out of air stations in Nova Scotia, Keflavik and Aldergrove in Northern Ireland.

  The south and east of the shipping lanes got their maritime patrol coverage from off a small island and from European soil. On Pico, one of the nine volcanic islands that form the Azores, eight hundred miles to the west of Portugal, the USN had returned to the naval air station at Lajes that had been disestablished on 30th September 1993, when the Soviets had been deemed a spent force.

  The newly arrived Orions from the States eased the pressure on the crews based at NS Rota, in Spain.

  Portugal’s Esquadra 601, the ‘Lobos’ (Wolves) were flying around the clock out of Lajes too, as well as Montijo near Lisbon and Ovar, further north on the mainland.

  To the south of USS Gerald Ford’s convoy, USS Wasp and USS Iwo Jima carried SH-60B Sea Hawk ASW helicopters amongst its CH-46E Sea Knight, UH-1N Iroquois and MH-53E Sea Dragon troop carriers, adding to the Texas convoy’s ASW cover.

  Submarines were the great threat at the moment, and would remain so until they drew closer to Europe. The air threat would be dealt with by the RN’s Fleet Air Arm Sea Harriers, Iwo Jima and Wasp’s AV-8B Harriers and the Gerald Ford’s own air wing.

  Canada had been prevailed upon to allow the New York convoy to draw abreast of it by slowing their own, in that way the ultra-secret, Operation Grease Spot, would be more effective.

  Most projections of an old Red Army invasion of Europe had included the simultaneous invasion of Norway, Denmark and Sweden. With Scandinavia neutralised, her airfields would then have held a deadly threat to any convoys from North America. The only reason that this had not happened now was simply that the new Red Army did not have the resources that the old one had had.

  Apart from their own four attack boats and the Canadian long range patrol SSKs, the Royal Navy had four SSNs employed also. The submarines had been doing their jobs well, without yet firing a shot.

  Conrad Mann stood before the big screen, peering at icons a day’s sailing away.

  “Have all ‘Pointers’ acknowledged my ‘make for the hills’?” he asked.

  “USS Twin Towers acknowledged receipt twenty minutes ago admiral, she’s the last. The position she was at when she transmitted put her still within ‘Bravo’ but on the eastern edge.”

  “Rick Pitt’s cutting it fine…I hope he’s running at flank.” He turned from the board to face the room. “Okay, Grease Spot is a go, the TT’s skipper knows the score, and they will have to take their chances CAG, you launch at 1800.”

  Germany: Same time

  A silence had fallen over the battlefield west of the airport whilst both sides honoured a two hour cease-fire.

  One hundred and seventy-two paratroopers of the 82nd, captured when the airport had been overrun were to be reunited with their comrades. Most of the returning 82nd men were wounded, but all had been taken care of whilst in captivity.

  Oz’s Platoon was stood midway between the NATO and Russian lines, and ten feet away stood a like number of Russian paratroopers.

  This was the agreed upon site for transport carrying the prisoners from both sides to stop their vehicles and the men would be transferred to their own side’s transport.

  There was no attempt by either group to break the hostile atmosphere that existed out there in no-mans-land; the soldiers eyed each other coldly.

  4-ton trucks waited just out of sight on NATOs side whilst the first civilian ambulances and buses with blacked out windows appeared at the airport’s perimeter, within view of the NATO troops between the lines and stopped.

  Oz looked the vehicles over with binoculars before speaking briefly into the microphone suspended in front of his mouth; a few moments later the first 4-ton truck arrived from NATO lines and the men on board had their plasticuffs and blindfolds removed. A Russian officer checked that the men were indeed Red Army troops and all fit or walking wounded. NATO were keeping the most badly wounded, it defeated the argument to demand their return.

  Alontov’s reasons for the exchange took precedence over the humanitarian concerns, in that of buying time and undoing the damage that the killing of NATO prisoners caused by way of bolstering enemy resistance. To highlight the point, there were few prisoners from the recent to and fro battles on the airport’s perimeter where the 82nd troopers and the Brit squaddies had not been inclined to surrender when that opportunity had arisen, and had not been inclined to give quarter either.

  The Light Infantrymen, Argyll’s, and Coldstreamers had lost too many friends to the no-prisoners policy carried out by the Red Army units at the river, and they had no reason at the time to believe that the Russian Airborne troops at Leipzig were any different.

  In a small cavern created by jumbled rubble, Big Stef was peering through the spotting telescope, whilst ‘Freddie’ Laker set the crosshairs on the chest of a man stood on an aircraft hangar roof, who was watching the proceedings through binoculars.

  A full magazine was attached to Freddie's weapon but the bolt was open, as a more certain preventative against ‘enn dees’, negligent discharges, during the cease-fire. A clean piece of cloth covered the open breach, keeping it free of the brick and cement dust that was kicked up at the slightest movement inside the hide. They had used up t
he contents of one water bottle in damping down the dust, but that left them with just a half bottle between the pair of them and no way of getting a replen without compromising their firing position. The dust had now dried out again and under the present circumstances, that meant that they could fire only once, after which they would have to relocate. Firing the weapon would create a small, yet tell-tale puff of dust that the enemy would be looking for.

  “I bet that bastard’s at least a battalion commander; see how those other tosser’s are stood just behind him, all deferential like?”

  “That’s a thousand metres Fred, bit far for a boss-eyed bastard like you.” Stef commented.

  “Well if he’s still there when the cease-fire ends we’ll see about that…at the very least we’ll get to see a senior officer with brown adrenaline running down the backs of his legs.”

  Nine hundred and eighty-nine metres away, Serge Alontov finished his methodical scanning and placed the binoculars back inside his smock.

  “Well it would seem that NATO is sticking strictly to the terms of the agreement….” Stepping away from the edge, he addressed the brigade commander.

  “See to it that ours do the same Pyotr. Only foolish poets speak of combatants taking a pause in the middle of a hard fight to regard their adversaries with a new found respect and other such romantic mud'a. Our men will be itching to kick them in the balls while they aren’t expecting it, and so will theirs.” He strode away toward the maintenance ladder at the far side of the hangar and his entourage followed on.

  Freddie lowered the weapon and punched the concrete slab beside him in frustration.