ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (34 page)

“Oh my word…” The President found himself on his feet
without consciously rising from his seat.

“How are we seeing this, how is this possible…can we
look at all area’s their forces are engaged in?”

“Each operation is password protected but they can be
cracked, as we have in fact already begun to do.” Terry pointed out.

“The late and probably very little lamented Comrade
Peridenko, was no fool Mister President. I have already said that I think he
was planning a coup, and I now think he was planning on dissolving the
partnership with China once he had attained the Premiership. This disc could
give a wise man one hell of an advantage.”

The President’s response to his CIA
chief’s observation was one of unsubtle sarcasm.

“Oh really, you think!”

Terry had been in the business far too long to let
something as minor as a President’s sarcastic retorts faze him.

“Yes sir, I do.” Terry responded. “Just as I know that
he could just as easily have blown the whole deal by being too obvious, because
if the PRC get the slightest suspicion that someone is reading their mail,
they’ll change their access codes and encryption in a New York minute.”

The President was quiet for a moment as he thought
about that and Terry allowed him the time to let it sink in before gesturing
toward the screen.

“All we are doing at the moment is looking at the data
feed from the Peoples Liberation Army’s, Sixth Army headquarters on Leyte, to
the Central Committee headquarters.” Terry explained.

“That doesn’t
effect
the outcome of the war by one iota, because we’re merely spectators, we are not
doing anything with the data. However, once we act on what we see, or even
start to feed disinformation to them on the basis of what we can see here, then
from that moment on in we are running the risk of them changing the locks on
us, or god forbid
,
they feed
us
what
they want us to see.”

The President was silent as he looked at the board.

“So what exactly have we got here, what does it give
us?”

“We know where every single satellite of theirs is,
what each one does and we see and hear everything that they do. We can read all
the data passing through them, we know where every single PRC military unit is,
what its equipment and supply state is and where it’s heading to.” Terry had
asked these exact same questions of his experts only an hour before.

“We know what hardware they have scheduled to go up
and we can see precisely what they know about our own satellites, for instance,
I now see that we need to start producing more communications satellites,
because they will start prioritising their destruction in the next forty-eight
hours.”

“Won’t that affect our RORSAT and photo reconnaissance
satellite replacement program?”

“Of course it will, but we don’t need them as
desperately as we did before Mister President, because we can utilise the PRC’s
own satellites now, but of course we will still need to put some up for them to
shoot down, otherwise they may get suspicious. All we do is keep sending up
something that emits radar waves, I’m sure there must be a warehouse full of
1960s and 70s satellite technology gathering dust somewhere?”

“We are also working on the possibilities of a hack,
perhaps to shut down their communications totally, or even write a
disinformation program similar to the one they stiffed us with.” Terry had
already ordered the writing of several programs, but although they may never be
used, it always helped to have something available if the opportunity came up.

“We couldn’t just do that now?”

“No sir, we are peeping over their shoulder, that’s
all.” Terry said.

“Our safest bet is to continue to do so, too.” He
added with feeling.

While the President and the CIA boss were speaking,
Henry was studying the screen. It was all being downloaded elsewhere by NSA and
Henry could look at it again anytime he wanted, so he wasn’t too vexed when
someone in China pushed a button to bring up the Indian Ocean and Australia. He
nodded to himself after taking a moment to see where the PRC thought the allies
ships, aircraft and land forces were in that region, and he conceded the PRC
had a pretty accurate picture of their deployment, they even had his kids’
ships up there but something else caught his eye and made him feel cold all
over.

The President saw Henry stood close to the screen and
apparently taking a professional interest in the PLAN and Red Fleet ships
heading south across the Indian Ocean. He didn’t know the names of the ships
although they were right there on screen, right next to the icon representing
the vessel in question, but it was all in Chinese characters of course.

From where the President was stood he could make out a
solitary icon trailing along at the rear of the invasion fleet.

“What ship is that Henry has it got engine trouble do
you think?” he moved from his seat to stand beside the big marine.

“Looks kinda lonely all by
itself
back there.” The President removed his glasses from a pocket and polished the
lenses before putting them on and leaning forward, peering at the solitary
vessel.

It was a small submarine icon and lacked any I.D
beside it accept a tiny Australian flag.

“Oh my god, Henry…”

Henry’s expression was grim.

“Yes Mister President, apparently they have discovered
that the
Hooper
is shadowing them.” The exact course, speed and depth
were displayed beside the icon.

“It must be difficult to move about without being
heard if you’re half deaf, yourself?”

Terry Jones took a look at the screen and then at his
boss, he knew exactly what the President was thinking, and as soon as he opened
his mouth Terry cut him off.

“We can’t warn them Mister President.”

“But they’ll sink her if we don’t, the Chinese will
kill them all!” The President looked from one man to the other, but neither
showed anything except grim acceptance. He tried anyway though.

“Those men and women probably won’t hear them coming
in time to escape!”

“We can do nothing to help them Mister President, not
whilst there is the slightest chance that the enemy may guess how we knew that
they had discovered the presence of HMAS
Hooper.
”

“But….”

“We have here a tool that could help us defeat the
Chinese,
IF
we use it right Mister President. We
will
take
direct action as a result of what we discover, but only if the stakes are high
enough sir, because the more often we do so increases the chance of the enemy
guessing how and why we did what we did.”

The President looked from CIA chief to top soldier,
but Henry shook his head sadly.

“He’s right sir, the only reason the enemy hasn’t sunk
her yet is because they are waiting for the right opportunity, probably when
the time comes to change course for their intended destination. Until that time
arrives they will try and use her to deceive us as to their real intentions,
and we also have to let them think we are buying it. If they change course for
New Zealand we are going to have to do something there, just to make them think
we don’t know any better …I’m sorry Mister President, but we can’t do anything
to save them.”

The President took a last look at the tiny icon that
was far from home and forcing himself to ignore the men and women it
represented, he strode from the room.

Vormundberg, Germany.

The commencement of a massive artillery bombardment
announced the arrival of the Red Army at the last line of organised defence
that NATO had. Shells and rocket artillery began pounding the Royal Marines of
40 Commando in their fighting holes to the front of the wooded feature, and
also isolating them from help by laying a wall of exploding steel to their
rear.

On the marine’s flank the Foreign Legionnaires were
also receiving some serious attention.

In his battalion CP, Pat Reed could feel the
detonation of the nearer high explosives through the soles of his boots, and
despite, or maybe even because of having endured the attentions of the Red
Army’s guns at Magdeburg, he felt a sense of apprehension growing. The marines
to their front were the buffer, the thing on which the Soviet’s would expend
valuable munitions, and of course time upon, whilst the lightly armed and
equipped British troops picked away at the Soviet fighting vehicles as best
they could.

Pat was aware that the new men, the US Paratroopers
and British Guardsmen who had arrived in the last couple of days would be
listening to the sound of the guns and wondering how they would fare once 40
Commando gave ground and fell back through their lines. He would have liked to
be able to tour the positions once more but his place was in the CP now.

Jim Popham was having the same thoughts at the
battalion’s alternate CP set 500m to the rear of Pat Reed’s location. Ptarmigan
showed the latest sitrep from brigade, 40 Commando was reporting the return to
their lines of sub units of their ATGW Troop, anti-tank guided weapons. 40
Commando didn’t expect any more of their anti-tank element would be re-joining
owing to the losses they had sustained. The forward screen of the leading MRR
had reached the edge of the first obstacle; a deep ditch dug part way across
their frontage by the Royal Engineers in the apparent hope of channelling the
Soviet’s into a prepared killing ground.  An update by the brigades’ intelligence
cell identified the leading unit and Jim Popham wondered why that particular
unit should ring bells with him. A field telephone near him buzzed for
attention, Lt Col Reed was on the other end of the line.

“James dear boy, have you by any chance seen the
latest on the opposition?”

“Yes sir, the point unit is Czech, their 23
^rd
MRR according to the brigade G3.”

“You may or may not know all the ins and outs of this
battalion’s first battle of the war, but it was against a Czech division that
consisted of three regiments. The 21
^st
MRR, which were annihilated whilst a second, the 22
^nd
MRR, took heavy losses from this battalion before it, and the 23
^rd
MRR, overran the battalions’ positions.”

“Ah, these are the guys who killed your wounded and
the prisoners, aren’t they sir?”

“No
Major
, these are the guys
who
butchered
our wounded, and the men they captured.”

There was a moment’s silence from his CO and Jim
wondered exactly what was going to be asked of him.

“I want someone to go around the positions one last time
before we come under direct attack. Talk to the new boys and give them a little
reassurance, and spread the word that we play rough but we play by the
rules…even with these bastards!”

If
word hadn’t
already got out,
well there’s a first
time for everything
, Jim thought, he
was going to have the impossible task of stopping this turning into a grudge
match.

Arnie Moore had been looking for an excuse all morning
to get out of this bunker and mix with the men on the firing line, and so he
didn’t have to be asked twice. The RSM even managed to look sincere when Jim
extracted a promise from him that he would be back before the Soviet’s reached
the forward slopes of the location.

Arnie Moore took a tri of Guardsmen with him, and
ignoring the FV-432 assigned for his use, he took Jim Popham’s Warrior and its
three-man crew instead. He wasn’t planning on returning to the bunker any time
soon, and if he were going to take part in the fighting he would require
something more substantial than a bulletproof taxi.

There was a brief lull in the artillery falling upon
the RM positions, and a Wimik broke from cover close by to a Soviet O.P to dash
back into friendly lines, chased by small arms fire and mortars that fell wide.
No sooner had the vehicle made it to safety the artillery fell once more,
keeping the marines pinned in their holes.

Fifteen minutes later, brigade informed 2REP and 1CG,
the units closest to the Royal Marines, that 40 Commando’s CP had gone off the
air and the RM’s senior surviving officer, the O.C. Bravo Company, had taken
command but his company CP was not set up to run the whole unit, so there could
be command and control shortfalls. It was not an unheard of occurrence to lose
a CP; 1CG had lost its own during its first defensive action of the war, so on
the face of it the marines had hit an unlucky streak. Major Venables was passed
the same message by the CP with an update by the C.O, and he in turn warned his
troop commanders that they might possibly be leaving their hide positions for
the forward fighting positions earlier than expected.