ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (20 page)

Bao
chugged backwards past the old and abandoned Kourou ferry.

In the distance, highlighted against a
black skyline, the sparks from the plastic augmenting charges that fitted about
a mortar bombs ‘tail’ hung in the air like fireflies before dying. It was of no
use to the gunner though as it is almost impossible to judge the distance to a
light at night with the naked eye. What may appear to be the light from a
farmhouse window on a hillside two miles away may in fact be a glowing
cigarette end six feet off, and vice versa of course.

Coloured flares again reappeared, falling
though the cloud to be followed by another parachute flare. They were trying to
assist the mortar crews and whatever warship was out to sea but instead its
light revealed on shore the tiny figures of the French Foreign Legionnaires
serving the two mortar barrels at Pont Les Roches.   

Bao’s
quick eyed gunner had seen the sparks and now he was
on it, the barrel aiming up at an angle of perhaps as much as forty degrees.

Dai’s
23mm joined in, working the stream of tracer left and
right, wreaking a terrible revenge upon the mortarmen.
Plunging
fire dropped upon them wherever they crawled to seek cover, behind protrusions
in the ground or the crudely crafted logs, laid out as park benches. The
automatic cannons shredded the logs, reduced the protrusions in the earth and
annihilated whatever was hidden behind.

No more mortar rounds came their way.

Bao’s
helm came over as her captain sought to turn bow on
to the ocean again, at long last.

Dai
now motored past the old ferry slipway too and Li put his glasses to
the southeast, looking for the French warship.

The captain of
One Eight
finished his flare run across the estuary without himself or any of the crew
catching sight of any action on the ground.

It was the fast patrol boat,
La Capricieuse,
which informed the Atlantique that the enemy submarines were emerging
from the river into the estuary.

As sophisticated as they were, the
Atlantiques onboard systems were unable to separate the submarines from the
ground clutter while they were on the river. They were built to seek out
targets on the surface or peeking up from below.

The patrol boats greatest asset was her
speed, but this came at the cost of armament and armour. Her plywood hull was
light and tough enough to deal with stormy seas, and her weaponry would be
devastating against drug and gold smugglers vessels, but they had limited value
against other warships.

“’Poseidon One Eight’ this is La Capricieuse…enemy
sighted!” 
Her commander was a
young lieutenant not long out of the Brest naval academy
.
“Attacking!”
was the next message, the young man’s voice not disguising
the underlying excitement.

Five miles beyond them was forging in the
corvette
Premier-
Maitre
L'her
,
the
second corvette still another ten miles further off.

The patrol boat made a magnificent sight,
turning in and racing towards the surfaced Kilo at 25 knots, a great white bow
wave standing out in the darkness. She had two automatic cannon, a 40mm and a
20mm, along with two 12.7mm machine guns, all were firing, and throwing out
arcing lines of tracer, but speed and accuracy are not the same thing.

Crashing through waves
, La Capricieuse
opened fire at eight hundred metres, the
gunners
aim being thrown off by the action of the waves. The slowly moving and steady
Kilo’s
single 23mm cannon remained silent, until the range had closed to three
hundred. The patrol boat was obligingly bow-on and the cannon fire ripped
through her from stem to stern. None of the patrol boats guns were firing as
she tore past the
Bao.

On the horizon there was a flash followed
by a low moan overhead. A shell burst in the sea behind them.

Dai
was
some five hundred yards behind the
Bao
when
she herself finished her turn.

The patrol boat
La Capricieuse
had been deliberately run aground on the shore at La Pont Roches and
was settling low in the water but there was no sign of movement on board.

Bao
fired again, but this time there was a geyser of water erupting from
just forward of her bow as she launched on the fast approaching corvette, first
one and then a second RPK-7 anti-ship missile was launched from her forward
torpedo tubes.

“Full ahead together.” Li ordered.
“Dismount the 23mm and get it below…bow air sentry to the bridge.”

The chugging growl of the big diesels
increased apace.

There was another flash on the horizon
but it was followed by a far larger emission, as the first anti-ship missile
flew into chaff flung out by the corvette.

The first missile detonated in the chaff
cloud and then the corvette exploded. It was initially a very visual, yet
silent event, until the sound of the double explosions reached them.

There was cheering from the
Bao
, and
then
Bao
blew up too.

A flash, smoke and a sound that made Li
cringe, followed by wreckage falling all about and into the sea.

The air sentry was just appearing at the
top of the ladder, he could not have seen the explosion but he did hear it and
his eyes were as wide as saucers
.
“Get below!” shouted Li to the man.

“Lookouts below… clear the bridge…
sound the diving alarm!”

Poseidon One Eight’s
onboard systems had tracked the Exocet all the way
from their bomb bay to its terminal impact.

Wary of surface-to-air missiles the
Atlantique banked hard to port so as not to overfly the second submarine and
instead her captain headed for the now stopped and burning corvette.

“Ready the life rafts!”

Captain Li removed the outer clothing and
the ridiculous gun belt as he reached the control room, holding them out for
his steward.

“He’s gone captain.” His exec said. “He
was one of the landing
party
who were caught by the
mortars.”

Li faltered momentarily, not because he
had any affection for the man, but because it may have a bearing on his future
actions.

The launch pads had not been put out of
action by conventional methods, which had been a
complete failure as far as Li could tell.

His orders in the case of the
special forces
mission being a failure was to stand off and
nuke the ESA site from the sea.

To fail to do that was a certain death
sentence for himself and every member of the crew, including family members.

“Range to the
Soyuz
site?” 

“Thirty point eight miles, captain.”

The French aircrew were currently engaged
in aiding the stricken warships survivors, but that would not last.

They had a small window in which to act
and still be able to clear datum.

“Bring the boat to launch condition one,
please.”

Poseidon One Eight
did not notice the launch of the single weapon. It
burst from the depths with its protective cocoon falling away and its short
stubby wings extending.

The cruise missiles ramjet propelled it
at a respectable 467mph towards it target, the
Soyuz
launch pad, where
the 320 kiloton warheads detonation would obliterate the
Ariane
and
Vega
sites in the same blast.

Such self-sacrifice,
such effort by the inshore raiding flotilla.

Four submarines and three hundred and
sixty one men had set off on this mission. One submarine and seventy four men
remained now.

Far quicker, at 879mph, three Mistral
high velocity surface-to-air missiles left the mobile launchers of the Legions
air defence section and rendered all that effort null and void, obliterating
the
Dai’s
cruise missile before it had even crossed the coast.

CHAPTER
3

Arkansas Valley, Nebraska, USA: 2057hrs, same day.

The return to the subterranean haunts that had become
the homes for the President since the Washington bombing was depressing for
Henry Shaw. Rubbing shoulders again with proper, down to earth troops who said
it as they found it without the addition of spin had been a breath of fresh
air. He already missed being with those who performed their duty as required
and without catering to hidden agendas.

A not quite junior aide had met Henry on his return
and managed to be respectful whilst still giving off a distinct coolness toward
him. It was only to be expected; Henry would not have been surprised had a
posse of MPs brought him back from Europe to face the President’s wrath.

In stark contrast to the civilian, the marine guard
had been more than happy to see him back. In their eyes the Corps top Marine
had gone off to the battlefield instead of staying in a hardened shelter with
the army, navy and air force brass. It was a simplistic and erroneous view of
the situation, which unfairly slighted the other services, but since when did a
Marine ever pass up on the chance to strut that little bit more in front of the
rest of the armed forces? 

The President looked up when the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs entered the Situation Room, giving a perfunctory nod of welcome to Henry
but his eyes held no warmth.

“Has General Carmine fully briefed you on what you
missed while in Europe?”

He nodded.

“Yessir, Mister President.”

Henry took his seat and returned the greetings from
CIA and FBI; apart from the service personnel at the table no one else so much
as met his gaze.  Terry Jones and Ben Dupre did not involve themselves in
the office politics of whichever administration happened to be in power. They
both knew Henry was on the Presidents’ shit list and they both knew why. They
also quietly admired the Marine for the balls he had shown doing what they both
believed to be only right and just.   

Henry thought back to when he had last been in the
presence of the President. It had only been a week ago, just seven days that
had been filled with briefings and hurriedly arranged meetings before moving
on, on to another headquarters or out of the way location.

Looking back on it now it seemed far, far
longer. 

The President cleared his throat, bringing Henry Shaw
back to the present.

“General, will you now present your briefing please?”

ETO, the European Theatre of Operations, appeared on
the screen set against the far wall. Henry centred the picture over the channel
ports

“As you can see, units of the US 4
^th
Corps and Canadian 5
^th
Infantry Division have now begun leaving the forming
up points outside the city ports and begun the drive towards Germany after
delays in offloading due to air attacks, and in some cases sabotage of dockside
facilities.” The view changed to show a map of the parallel routes the Corps
would take across the Continent and into Germany on the same autobahns the
Soviets were trying so hard to reach.

“4th Corps is leading as the Canadians are top heavy
with leg infantry in trucks, but those are being dropped off along the way to
secure bridges and key points against further Soviet airborne drops which would
cut the service support routes.”

“
Again
.”
The President grumbled.

“Precisely, Mr President” Henry said in agreement.

“The Canadians have four such battalions in two
brigades who will retain a small degree of artillery support but the remainder
of their two brigades’ artillery units, an armoured regiment and the two
mechanised battalions, will proceed as part of the 4 Corps reserve.”

“What of their logistics and support units, General.”
The President interrupted. “I do not see any of those?” his hand waved at the
clusters of military symbols on the map.

“Rail priority has been given to ammunition and stores
for units already at the front, and in particular the division straddling the
autobahns to the channel ports, Mr President. The combat units are travelling
by road and every MP, and every civilian cop we can muster is employed in
keeping them moving and keeping refugees clear.”

Henry paused to briefly underline the situation.

“This is a race we are engaged in, and if we win it
the reds will still be engaged in fighting other NATO units when they arrive
and 4
^th
Corps can immediately launch a counter attack. If we
lose then the Corps will take a defensive stance and we will again be reacting
to the enemy instead of taking the fight to them.”

The picture on the screen altered as Henry brought up
the image of the German battlefield, focusing initially on the units either
side of the Saale and Elbe rivers. The symbols depicting the types and size of
units, lined on both banks, coloured blue for NATO units and red for the Red
Army, but there were far more red symbols stacked behind each other to the east
than there were blue ones on the west.

Two red coloured parachute symbols still remained in
place on the western banks, despite NATO’s best efforts to dislodge, and then
annihilate them.

“Mister President, just before dawn this morning the
Red Army began a massive rocket and artillery bombardment of NATO lines from
north of Haldensleben, down to the southern suburbs of Magdeburg.”

He stepped closer to the screen, his back to the wall
and gesturing with his right hand without looking, without needing to look as
he had memorised each screen of the briefing.

“The units being targeted are the US 5
^th
and 12
^th
Mechanised Brigades, the British 1
^st
Armoured Brigade and the German 5
^th
Panzer Grenadier and 4
^th
Panzer Regiments.”
Henry paused to look the men and women present.

“SACEUR informs me that by midnight tonight at the
latest, those units will have ceased to be combat effective and the Red Army
will in all probability begin an assault river crossing against minimal ground
opposition.” 

Grave looks were exchanged around the conference
table, it was not unexpected news but that did not make it any easier of hear.

“General?”

Henry looked to his President, who had lowered his
head to peer at him over the rim of his glasses.

“Yes, Mister President?”

“You have been to that sector have you not?”

Henry nodded in affirmation. “Yes sir, it was my first
stop after meeting with General Allain.”

“Is there anything that could have been done, or was
there anything left undone…anything you feel may have prevented this from
happening?”

General Shaw had been to all the sectors, not just
that one. He had met with the commanders of the units mentioned and also been
to the positions to see for himself the state of the defences, the level of
training evident amongst the troops, and of course to judge the morale of the
men and women in the fighting positions. Henry had squatted in the bottoms of
trenches and shivered with the cold along with humble riflemen, speaking in
English with British, Dutch and their own troops, in passable bier hall German
to Panzer Grenadiers and schoolboy French to Belgian infantrymen and French
Foreign Legionnaires.

It hadn’t been his brief to crawl through a frozen
wasteland at night, to spend three hours just a rifle shot from a fortified
pile of rubble that had once been a factory, but he saw it as his duty as a
commander of troops to share some of the hazards faced by the men and women he
had been ordered to send into harm’s way. The troops in that foxhole hadn’t
known who he was until the next day, hours after he had departed for another
sector of the line. For an hour he had listened to the sounds of a wounded man,
a Soviet paratrooper, crying for his mother in those ruins on the perimeter of
one of the Red Army footholds on the west bank of the Saale.

In all it had reinforced something he and a good friend
had discussed and agreed upon many years before, and that was that the only
person to have the moral right to send men and women to war was someone who had
themselves been in harm’s way in the armed service of their country. If that
simple fact became a matter of law then there would be far more talking around
tables and fewer body bags, but that discussion had taken place in disreputable
bar cum brothel in Southeast Asia, where even the flies had sense to swerve to
avoid the bar girls. They had been young lieutenants then, and he at the end of
a three-month attachment to his friends unit to see why Britain was winning its
jungle war when at the same time America was losing hers.

Over many bottles of Tiger and in increasing degrees
of intoxication the two men had written a new constitution on the backs of beer
mats, built around the foundation of his friends somewhat slurred words

“You shouldn’t be in a position to start a fight
unless you’ve been in one yourself…no high office without first joining the
brown adrenaline club.”

A campaign slogan for their bid for world power had
read ‘Vote for me, I’ve not only shit myself in battle…but look here
I’ve even got the soiled shorts to prove it!
’  

Henry had left the next day to return to Saigon with a
hell of a hangover and little recollection of the previous night’s events, his
friend however had a better memory and over the years whenever they had bumped
into one another and shared a drink or six he would speak whimsically of one
day making ‘The Beer Mat Constitution’ into a reality, and had even worked out
how it could be achieved.

When at last the wounded soldiers cries had faded and
gone forever it had given Henry a greater determination, the co-author of the
beer mat constitution may be dead at the bottom of the Irish Sea, but the idea
was very much alive.       

“Mister President, those men and women are outnumbered
fifty to one, they have fought and held this long despite the inadequate
equipment and war stocks their governments provided them to do the job, and the
fact that they are about to be over run, and where the blame lies for that, is
no fault of theirs.”

A pin could have been heard dropping in the seconds
that followed, and Terry Jones was not alone in realising a line had just been
crossed. The President had been questioning whether there was fault in the
ability of the men and women in uniform at the battlefront, but the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs had laid the blame squarely at the door of government. 

The Joint Chiefs are free to criticise the Chief
Executive, but on a one to one basis behind closed doors, not in front of
onlookers even if they were on the staff.

The President became very still, and his eyes narrowed
a fraction as he looked at his top soldier. Henry met the President’s gaze and
held it calmly in the knowledge that if he were to be relieved now it would
matter not one iota.

The President broke the silence.

“A simple yes or no would have sufficed, General.”

Henry went on to outline what they believed the enemy
would do once they achieved a breakout.

“We expect the Third Shock Army to head for Amsterdam,
Rotterdam, Zeebrugge and Antwerp, with their Sixth Shock Army following on
behind through the breach and to then swing south west for the French ports.
What remains of Second Shock and Tenth Tank army will probably hook left and
right to roll up the rest of our lines. These are their last, first class
outfits and they about used up their second-class units in keeping up the
pressure on us and trying to force the rivers up to this point in time. Which
leaves third class units to assist in the mopping up, whilst the fourth
class…those manned by troops in their forties and early fifties, will in all
probability
be
used to secure the lines of
communication.”

The President had rested his elbows on the table
before him, and his hands were clasped together, the fingers entwined and he
rested his chin on the spire they formed.

“What, may I ask, does General Allain intend to do
about that?” The President followed on before Henry could answer. “There is
just a cobbled together, infantry heavy division sat in the way of god knows
how many tanks so does he honestly believe that will hold them until our new
Corps arrives on the scene?” with that he sat upright and raised a coffee mug
to his lips while he waited for the answer.

Henry responded with four words.

With a snort that sent coffee splashing across the
papers in front of him, the President choked in mid swallow. An aide hurried
over and began mopping up the spilt coffee before him, and the President
coughed whilst fishing out a handkerchief and dabbing at a growing stain on his
shirt. Leaning to one side to see past the charring aide he stared at Henry.