ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (21 page)

“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 2
^nd
Canadian
Mechanised Brigade and the French 8
^th
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 8
^th
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 82
^nd
and the British 1
^st
and 2
^nd
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…”

The President cleared his throat loudly, interrupting
the officer in mid flow.

“Commander, er…Donnelly?”

Caught unawares the officer blinked and gaped at the
President before fully turning from the screen to face him.