' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (42 page)

Trees and the rolling landscape were keeping the two forces hidden from one another but that would not be the case when the US Army vehicles reached the highway.

Pat had to admit that he had not really given any thought to the possibility of captured equipment being used against them, and with no radio communications he could not ascertain if they were under new ownership.

   Pat had no such quandary with the Chinese armour though and on picking up the O.Ps telephone handset he gave it to Big Stef to do the necessary via the Paladin’s fire control centre. Both formations were well beyond the range of his 81mm mortars, but the 155mm battery was another thing.

Before the Paladins could open fire however, the leading Chinese tanks sighted the US Army vehicles and solved that question of ownership. They immediately opened fire.

It was fortunate that the arrival of the 155mm shells went some way towards spoiling the game for the Chinese, but they could not save the US formation from severe casualties. The boxy, high sided M577 Command vehicle was easily recognisable for what it was and targeted, it narrowly missed immediate destruction.

Three Bradleys deployed their infantry loads in an attempt to cover the withdrawal of the remainder of the convoy. With nothing to fight back with it became a dash along the highway

Macquarie Pass 3

to reach the top of the pass. The Chinese however were not going to simply permit that to happen. Harassed by the artillery they overwhelmed and destroyed the rear-guard, but lost an APC and a Type 63 tank in the process to FGM-148 Javelins.

With three burning Bradley IFVs in their wake they set off in pursuit.

The scene of the earlier ambush marked the extreme limit of the 81mm mortars range and those US vehicles which reached

that point all survived to ascend to the top of the Pass. Three more Bradley’s, an M125 Mortar carrier and Lt Col Taylor in his command vehicle were not amongst them.

Heck was sat on top of his Challengers turret watching the enemy armour and waiting for them to enter the engagement areas for his troop which he had worked out days before. Pat Reed, at a very brisk jog, past by and shouted to him a warning.

“I wouldn’t sit there if I were you young Captain.” and pointed up at the heavens as he made his way towards where the battalion CP was being dug. “For what we are about to receive, etc, etc!” he called over his shoulder.

Heck slipped inside and pulled closed the hatch. Four minutes later the first shell landed.

They did not possess anywhere near enough D10 wire to connect the Irish Guards and 902
nd
unit along the Jamberoo mountain road with the Macquarie Pass. As far as communications between both sites were concerned a 19
th
century despatch rider on a horse would have been more use than the field radios, at that point at least. The signals platoon therefore found unaffected frequencies and formulated a local DFC RANTS that got the brigade back on the air, but they still relied on the field telephone network wherever possible. Communications between 1IG and the brigade was thenceforth by radio to a vehicle at each site and these moved between transmissions. The Chinese signals intelligence section was very good at DF’ing their radio communications and their artillery cooperation was fairly impressive, making matchsticks of ten minute old transmission sites.

Artillery brought ashore by landing craft expended all of their current stock of ammunition in an attempt to provide a creeping barrage to ‘shoot-in’ the armoured assault as well as disrupt  communications, but that single, steep and twisting, highway was their undoing. Heck had sited the firing positions well and his troop was able to destroy the slow moving vehicles at long range on that morning.

The elderly Type 63 tanks had served their purpose in making the landings a success, but their reward that of a reconnaissance by fire. The 3
rd
army were able to learn something of the defender’s abilities and positions, but the road was littered with a battalions worth of dead vehicles and men.

Port Kembla, New South Wales.

1343hrs
,
Tuesday 30
th
October.

Shén ēn
moved slowly past the breakwater and into the main harbour of the port. Smoke still rose from the ruins of the fire gutted steelworks and tank farm beyond, destroyed by the retreating Americans. The hospital ship crept forwards, staying in the channel cleared by the naval mine disposal divers. Just inside the entrance to the main harbour the mast, funnel and the top of the superstructure of the destroyer Gémìng protruded from the water. She had been the first vessel to enter and mines had blown out her bottom.

It took a further hour to safely dock and a waiting squad of marines on the quayside came aboard and took custody of the survivors of HMAS
Hooper.

Commander Reg Hollis and Able Seamen Stephanie Priestly and Phil Daly were placed in a captured Australian Army Unimog and driven through the largely empty town until they eventually arrived at a very large barbed wire enclosure. It was pretty much like the prisoner-of-war camps they had seen in
the movies, complete with watch towers. Instead of huts however, there stood row upon row of steel cargo containers. Silent, curious faces stood at the wire watching the new arrivals.

Reg Hollis did not bother to try and estimate their numbers, because there were an awful lot of them.

In a hut that served as the administration block, outside the wire, the details from their identity discs were recorded before each was photographed and fingerprinted. It was a fairly nerve wracking time but at least they had not been simply taken off the ship and executed on the dock. Stephanie was particularly nervous owing to leers and comments from their captors. Commander Hollis and AB Daly placed themselves protectively either side of her.

After an hour they were led into the camp to the first row of containers nearest the gate and shoved
non-too gently inside by their escort. It was Spartan, to say the least, with a single desk and chair upon which sat a Caucasian male in Russian naval uniform. The shoulder boards looked impressive but Reg was no expert on the enemy’s rank titles.

The Russian officer was busy writing in a ledger and did not immediately look up, but when he did so they looked on a face that was intelligent and wore a kindly expression.

In remarkably good English the officer explained where they were and also what their current circumstances were with regard to the Geneva Convention. He then asked them for their names, numbers and what vessel they were off.

Commander Hollis answered first.

“I am sorry sir, but we can give you only our name, rank and serial numbers. As the Camp Commandant I hope you can understand our position?”

There was a pause followed by the appearance of a slightly wry smile by the Russian.

“I am not the Camp Commandant, I am merely the senior ranking prisoner.” explained Vice Admiral Karl Putchev.

Arbuckle Mountains, Oklahoma.

Tuesday 30th October, 0900hrs

The previous week had been very much one of successes followed by reversals. Having found that the NATO membership in Europe was continuing the fight under its various military leaderships it had then become apparent that the previous, democratically elected governments, had been prepared to make their excuses and depart the stage, abandoning the USA now that their borders were again safe. If the President had ever allowed himself to believe that genuine trust and friendship existed between national leaders, then this had been a rude shock. Theodore Kirkland, as it happened, was disappointed on a personal level but as a politician he had harboured no such illusions. The military men had their own code of loyalty but he was saddened and staving off the self-loathing for another time because he knew what would occur shortly after this war was eventually won. The politician’s code would eventually be triumphant and bring about a return of the old status quo.

The first briefing of the day was very much Russia related.

The President was the last to arrive having learned of the death of Jacqueline Shaw and required some privacy and a telephone. Henry Shaw was at the family home with his youngest son, Ryan, who was back from Parris Island on compassionate leave. It had to be a very empty, very lonely house now with three of the Shaw family suddenly gone forever. The President had kept the telephone to his ear for fifty rings, he counted each one of them, but Henry wasn’t picking up.

“My apologies for a tardy start to the day.” the President said as he took his seat and produced a pair of spectacles from a case. “Bear with me please; I have been living underground so long that I’ve turned into a damned mole.”

He knew everyone in the room except the civilian stood patiently before them, and from the notes he held in his hand the President felt safe to assume this was the criminal
psychologist or behavioural whatever, who worked for Terry Jones.

“Dr Ben-got, is that how you pronounce your name?”

“Ben-go, Mr President, but I answer to any number of pronunciations when the audience is senior to me, which is often.”

“My apology once more Doctor, please start in your own time.”

The likeness of Premier Elena Torneski appeared on the plasma screen behind him.

The President had expected a lot of psychologist’s long words and references to syndrome this, or that, with a mention of bed wetting here and there but Austin Bengot had been with the agency as a consultant for a while. He presented a report with mumbo-jumbo at a level that a non-tabloid newspaper reader could understand, balanced with that of an intelligence analyst. If he was by nature a self-opinionated expert, he wisely left that facet at home when he had come to work that day.

Someone somewhere had managed to find information in a very short time in order for Austin Bengot to present to the President. Elena Torneski was a very dangerous individual in situations of conflict. She was a control freak and sociopath with abandonment issues, a sadist with no discernable conscience who was in denial of her own masochistic traits. There were two eye witness accounts of her apparent nervous disposition and fear of firearms and violence, whilst three others described completely the opposite. She would manipulate the opinions of others with apparent ease in order to put them off their guard. Finally, of course, Dr Bengot came to what the President and Terry Jones already knew of the woman they now had to deal with as leader of the Russian Federation. The human character springs from the most basic source and like it or lump it, a person’s sexuality shapes their psyche.

“It always seems to come down to this common denominator doesn't it, Doctor?”

“Depending on whom you read, Carl Jung or Erica Jong.” The psychoanalyst said with a wry smile. “Nature, the psyche and individuality…a gene’s way of taking ground, holding it, and wearing a cool tee shirt no other gene has as it does so.

Up on the screen there appeared a surveillance photo, quite possibly one ordered by Torneski’s predecessors, either KGB or in the office of Premier. Walking away from the camera was apparently Torneski on the beach at a Black Sea resort and behind her, a noticeably subservient one pace behind, were two young ladies in G-strings with identical hair and the tattoo on the right side.

“You will have read or heard previously that her companions all have an identical tattoo, the dog’s paws, on the right buttock.”

This was certainly the case with Svetlana, and two former associates they knew of who, unlike Svetlana, had not managed to avoid the beatings and gang rape when they had abandoned Torneski. The copies of hospital records and photographs of their injuries had been acquired and added to the Torneski file.

“The tattoo is Premier Torneski’s marking of these girls as being her personal property for life.”

“I thought it was just some fashionable kink?” the President questioned.

“No sir, she is branding them.” Dr Bengot explained. “Premier Torneski sees herself as the Alpha Male.”