ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (22 page)

“It’s Donkley, sir.”

“Did Admiral Gee leave you any notes before he left?”

The commander looked confused

“Erm… like his itinerary, sir?”

The President smiled tightly.

“I was thinking more along the lines of a piece of
paper with the heading, ‘What pisses the President off most’. It would be a
short list, I’m sure. However, somewhere near the top would have been Facts,
Figures, Statistics and Graphs…just keep to the good stuff and I’m sure we will
get along fine, Commander.”

For a long second the briefer was motionless

“The good stuff?”

“Anything that doesn’t make me feel that I am being
forced to watch an Open University math and chemistry
programme.”      

The briefer didn’t watch British TV, but he got the
message anyway and after somewhat regretfully turning over half a dozen pages of
notes, the graph was replaced by the Pacific once more.

“USS
John C
Stennis
and the USS
Constellation
battle groups have left the Hawaiian Islands along with the USS
Essex,
USS
Boxer
and the amphibious assault vessels of 2
^nd
Marine Expeditionary Brigade, but it is likely that
any landings may already have taken place by the time they arrive. USS
Saratoga
and USS
Kitty Hawk
are in the final stages of reactivation from the
reserve fleet and will be ready to accompany the 1
^st
and 4
^th
MEB’s, which are forming up at San Diego. All three
MEB’s will constitute the 1
^st
Marine Landing Division for any future offensive
moves in PTO.  Units of the Royal Australian, Royal New Zealand and allied
navies are
proceeding
at best speed from their former
positions covering the Pacific approaches to Australia, however it is doubtful
that they will be in a position to intercept before the invasion fleet nears
land.”

The President interrupted once more. “Any intelligence
as to which part of the coast they are aiming for?”

“No sir, their course is still due south, as of last
reports at noon today.” Commander Donkley moved back to his prepared text.

“We have detached the USS
San Sebastian
from the battle group and she is also making best speed to intercept
and assist HMAS
Hooper
. The
Hooper
is currently experiencing difficulties with her sonar
suite and as such at risk of detection, or losing contact.”

“How long before
Nimitz
can get underway?”

“She will not clear port for several more days Mister
President”

An hour later the room had cleared of all those
without the need to know the rest of the briefings topics, leaving Terry Jones
with the floor.

His first
item
was not one of great secrecy, but it was not of sufficient import for the
previous session, however it was of personal interest to the President, Henry
Shaw and of course himself.

“I received news several hours ago that the cell that
carried out the killings of Scott Tafler, Major Bedonavich and the two British
police officers, has been arrested after a raid by the Special Air Service.
They are all Russian, all are KGB Spetznaz forces officers………”

The President cut him off mid-sentence.

“Do they know that we want them?”

“Mister President, they do know and they also point
out that the killings took place on British soil.”

“Those bastards not only killed an American
intelligence agent, but they also killed two of the people responsible for
ensuring we did not lose the war before it had even started. I hope their Home
Secretary realises that?” He was determined that the United States was going to
have its pound of flesh, and he wasn’t prepared to standby whilst the
individuals concerned sat in a warm cell for the next twenty years. Terry Jones
did not give a direct reply, but continued with what he had been in the process
of saying.

“After the raid the building was thoroughly searched,
and the police found pretty conclusive evidence that the same cell were
responsible for the missile attacks on London, Portsmouth and the oil refinery
at Canvey Island.” Terry paused for a moment.

“Over a thousand people alone died when Canary Wharf
collapsed, so when the Met Commissioner promised me they would hang for it once
they’d been tried, I believed him, sir.”

The President was not as convinced as Terry Jones, but
that was something he would take up with the prime minister himself, always
providing of course that the United Kingdom wasn’t a newly conquered Soviet
state, in a month or so. There was nothing further to be said on the subject
and Terry Jones had inserted a USB into the drive running the plasma screen, he
was now waiting for a signal to begin his briefing proper.

“Okay, Mister Jones…what else do you have for me?”

In the entire time that the war had been in progress
these were the first images the President had really looked at. He was either
far too tired or occupied with the business of running a country at war to have
much inclination to watch the tube.

The news agencies war correspondents footage appeared
several times a day on TV, and it was almost constantly on cable, but such was
the agreement his government had forced upon the networks there was nothing
truly graphic. Americans could no longer watch news from virtually any source
they chose, since the Internet had been locked down as it, and all forms of
communications, had come under tight Federal control.
Early in the war the news agencies had of course
screamed blue murder when the emergency powers had come into play and they had
taken their argument before a Supreme Court judge. As an ex–serviceman, and the
father of two sons and a daughter who were in war zones, the judge had listened
to their hackneyed argument that ‘the people have a right to know’, and after
due consideration, which lasted all of thirty seconds, he had announced his
decision.

“A wife has the right
not
to know she is a widow
because you first showed her kids their Father’s body ‘live and as it happens’
on national television…case dismissed!”

As the battalion of lawyers had stood to leave,
confident that their employers would find certain ways to circumvent the
ruling, the judge had banged his gavel once more to get their attention.

“And before you go people, that gentleman at the back
of the court tells me that selling uncensored footage to an agency in a neutral
country would be a very
bad
idea.” Having filed past the figure in air force blue
wearing the rank and insignia of a colonel in the USAF Space Command, they had
duly conveyed the judge’s comments to the network chiefs.

Twenty-four hours later a two billion dollar satellite
owned by a Brazilian network had been broadcasting a live report from a
well-known US network correspondent of the fighting at Leipzig airport when the
satellite went off the air permanently.

After that incident the US networks couldn’t even give
away uncensored footage.

Pressing the key, the plasma screen had filled with
the image of combats aftermath. Idly noting that the picture taker had not been
a professional photographer, the President took in the scene.

British infantrymen and Soviet paratroopers lay in
those postures that only the dead can achieve whilst American troops either
stood about either watching the cameraman work, or were in the background
gently lifting the bodies of the dead Brits they had soldiered alongside of
into body bags.  The angle changed with the next half dozen shots, and the
President got the feeling he was watching a crime scene being recorded. The
last four photographs were of a Soviet paratrooper; two were of him lying on a
forest floor, quite obviously dead. An American paratrooper was knelt behind in
the last two, propping up the body. The young American was looking into the
camera as he held the corpses head steady for the picture, and the President
found himself staring at the living man rather than the subject of the
photograph.

“How old is he?” he asked quietly, almost in a whisper.

“Forty nine, Mr President.”
Terry answered.

“No Terry, I mean the 82
^nd
trooper.”

Terry paused, taken back momentarily before consulting
photocopied sheets of information. Everything connected with the
incident had been recorded in long hand, and even a
list of all the allied troops involved, the dead and the living, was available.

“I believe that is Specialist First Class Tony
Beckett, US Army Reserve and a New York cop. He is twenty four, and he was responsible
for evidencing the incident.”

“His eyes look older.” Said the President, looking
hard at the tired face, streaked with dirt and camouflage cream.

“He looks a little like your son, Henry,” but General
Shaw didn’t reply, he also was looking at the screen but his mind was far away
with the USS
Nimitz
battle group in Australia, where both his son and
daughter were right now.

“Is that young man still alive, Terry?”

He got a nod in reply.

“He is in New York having accompanied the body and the
evidence stateside. I believe he is currently on a twenty four hour pass before
returning to his unit.”

The President looked again at the young American
before turning his attention is the dead Russian paratrooper.

“So if this guy is Colonel General Alontov, where are
the rank badges, and what proof do we have that this is him and not a set up?”

The next two pictures were of the same dead Russian,
but this time he was laid out naked on a slab.
Without a beating heart to circulate the blood
about the body it had settled, drawn downwards by gravity to give his back a
purple, mottled look, whilst the rest of him wore the pallor of death.

“The finger prints taken from the corpse in the
forest, and again in New York match the several sets we had already acquired
from his time in London and the States.”

Terry elected to skip the rest of the photos of the
post mortem that had been a necessary part of the investigation.

“That was the easy bit, Mister President.”

Scanned images of the first of the pages recovered
from the forest appeared on the screen alongside the English translation.

“The hard part is deciding if this is disinformation…”
The screen changed again to another page, where several well-known names
appeared along with their code names and contact details.

“…or if at least one of these names has been feeding
the enemy details of what he has been privy to on senate oversight committees
for the past decade?”

A light on the top of the telephone receiver in front
of Henry Shaw began to blink and he picked it up, identifying himself in a low
voice before covering the mouthpiece so he could listen to the caller without
any of the briefing being overheard at the other end of the line.

Scrolling through all but the last two pages bearing
Peridenko’s writing, Terry revealed eighty-three names of men and women of many
nationalities, and resident in neutral countries as well as the warring ones.

The President recognised more than a few of the names
and others he had actually met at one time or another. Before he had gained the
presidency two of those individuals had been on first names terms with him,
although in the business sense rather than social.

“So what are we going to do about this, arrest the
ones in this country and inform the other governments?”

“Neither, Mr President.”
In the world of espionage there was very little that
was black and white, in fact the best they could really manage was various
shades of grey.

“This list, if genuine, is by no means every agent
they have in the world, if indeed they are agents, and we may never know why it
was written or why a soldier had it hidden in his clothing.” Terry went on to
explain.

“Handwriting analysis proves that this was written by
Anatoly Peridenko, but is it his list of his best agents, his worst agents or
is this the membership list for an online dungeons and dragons web ring?” The
President was pondering over Terry’s words, listening to his spymaster.

“The bottom line is, we arrest no one today and we tell
no other government today. It would only take one slip up, one mistake, for
this knowledge to be compromised. As it is we can watch these people and assess
this list’s value, and if they are working for the enemy camp then we can use
that knowledge to control them, the information they have access to, or we can
even feed them what we want them to see. Either way, it is of no immediate use
to us knowing if…” Terry looked up the screen.