The Fall of Night (9 page)

Aliyev studied the map for a long moment.  “That’s quite close to Berlin,” he observed.  “Will we be advancing on the city?”

“Perhaps,” Shalenko said.  He met Aliyev’s eyes.  “I have been in your shoes, Colonel; your main concern here is to secure the airport for us to fly in supplies and equipment to you.  Unless you get very lucky and capture a lot of Polish tanks, we don’t expect you to do more than hold the airport until relieved.”

He held up a hand.  “It’s not an insult, Colonel,” he said.  “Russia needs your young men too much to simply throw them away.”

“I know, sir,” Aliyev said.  He felt real excitement spinning through him…and a desire to even the score a little.  Some of Russia’s worst enemies would never have taken up arms against them, were it not for Europe; some of the Chechen leaders whose forces he had fought and defeated had taken up residence in Paris, well out of Russia’s reach…or were they?  “I won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t,” Shalenko said.  He tapped the map thoughtfully.  “I don’t expect you to secure the city either, but I do expect you to behave yourselves; we don’t need to make either the Poles or the Germans think that they’re doomed under our rule, understand?”

Aliyev smiled.  “Sir, my men are not…Kazakhs,” he protested, referring to the soldiers from Kazakhstan who had taken up service with Russia after Kazakhstan had hastily rejoined the Russian Federation.  The Kazakhs had a reputation for being mad, bad, and dangerous to be anywhere near, although Aliyev also considered them vastly overrated as soldiers.  “They can behave themselves.”

“See to it,” Shalenko said.  He tapped the CD-ROM.  “Get them all briefed up and confined to barracks; I want you to have all of the bases covered before the attack is launched.  Friendly forces, known hostile forces, the reinforcement plans, best case, worst case…you know the drill.  If there are problems, I expect to hear about them before we launch the operation;
Glasnost
, remember?”

Aliyev nodded.  President Nekrasov’s policy of ‘openness’ was different from the original; in the new Russia, the bearer of bad news didn’t get the blame.  He knew enough to know that he could rely on it, if there was something wrong with his force, but he knew that there would be nothing wrong with his men.  There was only one slight problem, but he was sure that it could be handled…

“We may need to do a handful more combat jumps,” he said.  “I want everyone right at the peak of fitness when we launch the operation.”

Shalenko looked at him for a second, and then nodded.  “Requisition whatever you need from stores,” he said.  “Failure is not an option.”

Aliyev saluted.  “We won’t fail the President, sir,” he said.  “We will take the airport or die trying.”

Shalenko returned the salute and left the room, leaving Aliyev alone with the CD-ROM.  For a long moment, he just stared at it, feeling his thoughts whirling around his mind; he had wanted to be part of a massive combat operation…and now, it seemed that he would have his chance.  The last major war the Russian Army had engaged in had been Afghanistan; Chechnya had been a miserable task, butcher’s work…and Aliyev had hated it.  The FSB security battalions, mainly the dregs of Russian jails and barbaric recruits from Central Asia, had loved every last minute of it.  Fighting in Europe would be different…

He remembered his younger brother.  Pavel had wanted to be in the Spetsnaz too; he had had to spend a year in the infantry first, and had been blown up in an ambush by rebels in Belarus.  They had to have known that Russia was prepared to be merciful, but instead they had fought…and taken Aliyev’s younger brother from him.  His mother’s heart had broken because of it; she had died blaming Aliyev, who blamed Europe.  Hadn’t they known what they were doing?

He pocketed the CD-ROM and left the room.  The commandos were finishing up the clean-up, ensuring that nothing was left behind for the cleaners to remove.  There was no such thing as a spare moment in the Spetsnaz; a handful of commandos who had nothing to do were running laps around the runway, just to keep fit. 

“I want our lorries back here as soon as possible,” he said, to Captain Alexander Vatutin.  They had known that they would be returning to the barracks, but again, they hadn’t expected to be doing it for hours; some drills were known to last for weeks.  He had expected to spend a week defending the airport against whatever forces had been assigned to the defending force.  “It seems that they have finally found something for us to do.”

He allowed a smile to break through his cold face.  “We’re going west…”

I wonder whether any other generation has seen such astounding revolutions of data and values as those through which we have lived. Scarcely anything material or established which I was brought up to believe was permanent and vital, has lasted. Everything I was sure or taught to be sure was impossible, has happened.

It was the 30
th
of May.

“This is the point of no return,” Margarita Sergeyevna Pushkina said.  The FSB officer sipped her drink carefully.  She was never one to get drunk, something that was wise for a woman in Russia.  “Everything is in place; the chaos will begin in two days and…well, we would be committed.”

President Nekrasov smiled to himself.  “How certain are you of success?”

Margarita flushed slightly.  “The people we ourselves emplaced will carry out their missions or die trying,” she said.  “Some of them may be detected by the local authorities – too late.  There is nothing perfect in any of these plans; we could lose half of the operations and still win, particularly the random terror part of the operations.  We built so much redundancy into the plan just in case we lost half of our people; frankly, I expected to lose more than we have.”

Shalenko leaned forwards angrily.  “We have lost people?”

“Four of our people were picked up by the German police within Berlin, following a major riot against Turkish immigrant workers,” Margarita said.  “None of them knew much; even in the worst case, they couldn’t have told the Germans anything about the overall plan.  A handful of Algerian illegal immigrants were picked up in France, but the French Government contented itself with dropping them into the refugee camps, rather than shooting them in the head or a rigorous interrogation.”

She grinned.  “Frankly, I expected that the Algerians would have lost control over their own people well before we reached the point of no return,” she said.  “We didn’t plan for that nincompoop in France calling for them all to be sterilised; idiot should have just waited a couple of months and he would have gotten much more than his wish.  There were a handful of other nasty incidents, but the main body of the cells remained underground…and in any case, we can handle the important part of the mission without their help.”

“But I would be happy to have it,” Shalenko said, thinking cold thoughts about the dangers of an alert Europe facing his forces.  He had expected to see sudden bursts of activity, expected to see the Germans, French and British suddenly realising their danger and dispatching their forces to the Polish border, as well as wiping out the sleeper agents and revising their rules of engagement to make survival a much more likely prospect for EUROFOR.   “You know that we cannot rely on the enemy simply folding at the first blow.”

He closed his eyes for a moment.  Russian military doctrine called for making the first blow of any offensive as hard as possible, to try to make the first blow the last blow…but it wouldn’t work in Europe.  The enemy would have time to withdraw to more defensible lines if they had time to realise what was happening and the authority to order a general retreat.  If they had a war going on in their own backyard, their commanding generals would have too many problems to handle and EUROFOR would disintegrate.

He hoped.

“I know,” Nekrasov said.  “What are we facing?”

“In theory, we’re facing two divisions of European soldiers and the Polish Army,” Margarita said.  “In practice, the Europeans are not working as an integrated group and two-thirds of the Polish forces remain un-mobilised.  Even if they give the order now, they would have real problems getting them into position to actually oppose us before it was too late.  The targeting plan will knock out most of their reserve forces and hopefully make it impossible for them to muster any of their home forces before it’s too late.  For the French and Spanish, they will also be looking in the wrong direction, rather than towards us.”

Nekrasov nodded slowly.  “The time is so slow,” he said, wryly.  Shalenko recognised it as nerves and said nothing.  “General, what about our own forces?”

Shalenko glanced down at his notes.  “We have over forty divisions in the region or ready to move in as soon as we kick the offensive off,” he said.  “Furthermore, we have five thousand dedicated Special Forces units operating behind the lines, all slipped into Poland and Germany and lying low for the offensive.  Several other units will knock out the EUROFOR units in the Ukraine, while one division apiece has been dedicated to each of the Baltic States.  None of them are particularly strong and have placed their faith in EUROFOR to defend them; we do not expect much trouble in overwhelming their defences.

“On the naval front, Admiral Volkov and Admiral Sulkin have their forces prepared for action,” he continued.  “The Turks have turned a blind eye to our submarines as they move though the choke point there; officially, of course, they’re being moved to the bases in the north.  The Northern and Baltic fleets are ready for operations in support of the army; we will move the Black Sea fleet through the choke point as soon as war is declared, unless the Turks decide to get involved.  They shouldn’t – they’re not keen on the Europeans since they were told they couldn’t play in the European club – but it doesn’t matter.   Our main priority in the Mediterranean is clearing the European Standing Force out of the way and assisting the Algerians, until the day that we knife them in the back.  Again, there is no sign that the Europeans have any idea that anything is untoward; the only point of concern for them is the
Gazprom
strike.”

Nekrasov laughed shortly.  The
Gazprom
Company handled almost all of Russia’s exports of energy supplies, including LNG; it wasn’t likely that its workers would want to strike.  Now, however, there were over a dozen fully-loaded
Gazprom
tankers in a variety of harbours across Europe, all apparently held there by a strike.  The Europeans had laughed and believed the claim that they were striking in Europe because strikers in Russia would be shot; the Russian Government had paid for the docking slips and negotiations were dragging on.

Or, at least, that was the official story.

“Finally, we will have over three thousand aircraft dedicated to the operation, from bombers and fighters to heavy transports that will support the paratroopers and the other forces behind enemy lines,” Shalenko concluded.  “The doctrine has been revised countless times and prepared; we should be able to destroy most of the opposing air forces within the first week or force them to expand their supplies faster than they can replace them.  At the worst case, the Americans will ship missiles and spare parts from America to the British, but they cannot replace pilots or airframes.”

Nekrasov smiled.  “It was nice of the North Koreans to finally launch their offensive,” he agreed.  “That should give the Americans something to worry about.”

Shalenko nodded.  The North Koreans had pushed back the South Koreans and the Americans through sheer weight of firepower…and through some advanced weapons they had purchased from China before China had made its desperate grab for Taiwan, lost, and plunged into civil war.  The Americans were rushing in more air power and soldiers from all over the world; insurgents in the Middle East were not slow to take advantage of it.  The Americans would have their hands full.

Nekrasov looked up at him.  “Alex, how good would you say our chances actually are?”

Shalenko had thought about it, time and time again, attempting to cut as many variables out of the equation as possible.  The plan had been years in the making, but he knew, as well as anyone, that anything could go wrong.  Friction had been built into the plan, but the urgent need to knock as much of EUROFOR out of the fighting within the first few hours had meant that there had been compromises made…some of them truly nerve-wracking.  What would happen if…?

He owed Nekrasov a honest answer.  “If everything goes to plan,” he said, “we should win the main body of the fighting within a month at most.  We will then have to consolidate, ensure that the Algerians don’t get a chance to make their own gains permanent, and ensure that we secure most of what we need from Europe.  Consolidation could take months, but our victory would be certain.

“If everything does not go to plan, we still have a good chance of winning, but at a much higher cost,” he continued.  “We might also have to concede some gains to the Algerians, something that we don’t want and they will be working to force us to accept.  If they trust us, I would be very surprised; they have to know that we intend to take most of the gains from Operation Stalin.”

“If worst comes to worst, we can block their shipping lanes and ship their people off to Siberia,” Nekrasov said.  Shalenko nodded; the fate of the thousands of people in Europe who were considered either dangerous or worthless had already been decided.  The FSB would handle that part and do so with gusto.  “There’s no need to permit their dangerous cancer to spread into our new lands.”

“The most dangerous prospect is that of a nuclear release,” Shalenko said.  “The ABM system is good, but if there is one failure…disaster.  Whatever it takes, we have to ensure that there is no permission for nuclear release.”

“That has been taken care of,” Margarita said coldly.  “Whatever happens, no politician in a position of power will survive the opening rounds of the war.”

Shalenko nodded.  “I have been speaking to the commanding officers and the soldiers,” he said.  “Most of them are certain that they can handle the missions, many of them are looking forward to it, seeing that Europe was behind many of their woes in Belarus.  The important thing is to keep moving; cities can be reduced later, but mobile forces must be destroyed as rapidly as possible.  A pause could prove fatal.”

“I know,” Nekrasov said.  He looked up towards the portrait of Stalin on the wall.  Russians had both feared and loved Stalin; Shalenko knew that no one, apart from Nekrasov himself, had come close to the ideal of the Russian leader.  “Are you going to be taking up your command in Belarus?”

Shalenko nodded.  “I have a flight back tonight,” he said.  “Time enough to ensure that everything goes to plan and that the Poles remain quiet long enough for us to take over quickly.  Civilian resistance could put an unexpected spanner in the works.”

“If that happens,” Nekrasov said, “deal with it.  No scruples.”

Shalenko bowed his head.  “No scruples,” he agreed.