ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (36 page)

No amount of digging could have reduced the casualties
amongst the Royal Marines in their trenches; the Red Army had built its
armoured warfare tactics around the use of massed artillery and used it without
compassion, the Royal Marines were being thinned out and NATO artillery’s
counter battery fire was wholly inadequate.

The frequency of calls from the battalion CP was
evidence enough that they were concerned about events in the marines sector.

“We could do with an answering machine.” Big Stef
replaced the handset again and checked the progress of the brew he was
preparing. The water in a mess tin was boiling away nicely and he took it from
small stove to transfer to a mug but the ground bucked beneath him and half the
water was lost.

“What…!”

The ground heaved again and he dropped the mess tin,
holding on to the walls of the hide for balance.

“It’s the gun line.” Bill had been taken by surprise
with the first explosion and had swung his weapon from the crest by the sunken
lane, around to the dead ground by the copse. He watched the effects of a
second round scoring a direct hit on a gun's ammunition supply; it obliterated
the howitzer, its tractor unit and its crew.

Stef crawled back into place beside Bill, peering
through his scope. A third round landed, and it also struck the stacked rounds
to the rear of one of the howitzers.

“Three rounds and three hits.”
Bill observed.

“Bloody good shooting!”

“Good shooting, my arse!” Stef swung around the Swift
Scope, looking for likely spots.

“Start looking for spotters mate, you can bet yer left
bollock those rounds were laser guided!”

Stef informed the CP and the information was passed to
the forward positions, where the Guardsmen and Paratroopers watched their
fronts for the spotters and their laser designators. One by one the howitzers
were destroyed but no one got the faintest sniff as to the spotter’s
whereabouts despite dividing up the ground between them and scrutinising all
possible hide sites. There was nothing to suggest the enemy spotter could be
anywhere except to the front of the battalion lines, and why would you look
over your shoulder to check if the designator was being used from within your
own lines, anyway?

Philippines.

The invasion of the Philippines by the armed forces of
the People’s Republic of China was proving to be a slow business. Thus far
Cebu, Bohol, Negros, Siquijor and Palawan were the only islands of any size to
have been taken. The largest islands of the archipelago, Luzon, Leyte and
Mindanao where still being fiercely contested by the regular forces and Chinese
losses were far and above those expected during the planning stage.

The PRC had amassed a huge army since the Second World
War and had spent the previous decade modernising it, to the extent that they
could drive their armoured forces like a vast steel encased carpet over any of
their neighbour’s borders, swamping all resistance with ease. The problem they
had with the Philippines was that it was not a single landmass, but rather a
cluster of over a thousand islands, mostly hilly or mountainous and covered in
forest or jungle over a high percentage of their area, and they did not lend
themselves favourably to armoured warfare. There were no freeways, motorways or
autobahns, there were just roads that were generally inadequate for normal
peacetime use and easily put out of action. The Chinese needed leg infantry who
knew how to fight in the jungle clad peaks that the home team found so easy to
defend, and although China did have such troops, they did not have anywhere
near enough of them.  They had tried using armoured tactics on Luzon and
for their troubles were now stopped dead in their tracks halfway across, and a
similar situation existed on Leyte where the commander of the invasion forces
had unwisely asked Beijing for permission to delay the landings on Mindanao,
and instead use the troops earmarked for there to complete the job on Luzon and
Leyte first.  

The new commander of the Sixth Army had been briefed
to keep moving forwards always, and had moved his headquarters, rather than his
units, a half kilometre nearer the front within hours of taking over. The
Political Commissar believed this was a sound tactical move for some odd
reason, and reported it as such to his superiors. The real reason for the new
commander’s decision was simply that his predecessor had been buried in too
shallow a hole, upwind of the headquarters. 

Guerrilla forces on all of the islands were sapping
Sixth Army of manpower and equipment, as ‘conquered’ islands demonstrated that
they were far from pacified. Forces that were sorely needed on Leyte, Luzon and
Mindanao were instead being tied down patrolling or guarding against guerrilla
attacks.

Air power was one area where the PRC should have had
the upper hand, especially as their opponents had a tiny air force with which
to challenge them for air superiority. U.S made Stinger missiles in the hands
of both the Regular Filipino troops, and the Guerrilla’s, were having the same
effect on the morale of the Chinese aviators as they had wrought on Warsaw Pact
pilots in Afghanistan two decades before. 

The fixed wing assets of the tiny but professional
Philippines Air Force existed only upon Mindanao, where its two squadrons of
F-5Es, a half dozen ancient and only recently reactivated F-8H Crusaders,
Agusta S-211s and piston engined T-28D Trojans were backed up by a trio of
Taiwanese F-16Cs. The Filipino’s had these precious assets spread about the
islands fourteen suitable fields and the United States had provided enough
Patriot systems to make a serious attempt at destroying the Filipino air force,
a very costly business. As it was though, the PAF rarely sent these aircraft
into harm’s way, and the Chinese assumption was that logistical problems were
the cause of this. The PAF’s helicopter fleet on the other hand, was not
restricted to Mindanao, and was supporting both regular and irregular forces on
the islands. The machines use of small clearings as bases and the pilot’s
intimate knowledge of the ground made them singularly difficult to deal with.
The AGM-114C Hellfire missiles carried by the Filipino aircraft had originally
been bought to deal with an invader who used armour in
support
of infantry operations, the aircrews had never dreamt of having such a target
rich environment, and between them and the terrain they had managed to halt the
Chinese ground forces for the time being.

Considering the sizes of the forces involved such a
situation could only be temporary. In terms of numbers, the strength of the
regular forces defending the islands was 160,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen,
whereas the invading PLA Sixth Army had twice that number in infantry alone. It
was only a matter of time before the commanders returned the infantry to their roots
by getting them out of the vehicles in order to continue the invasion on foot.
In the meantime the Chinese controlled the waters around the Philippines as
well as the air approaches and this prevented any resupply in quantity of any
of the staples of a fighting forces life. The general staff of the Philippines
armed forces knew that with current ammunition expenditure rates, within a
month the Chinese would quite literally have more troops than the Filipinos had
bullets to shoot them with. Patrolling warships and combat air patrols enjoyed
a free-fire zone around the islands, and frequently attacked without warning
any vessel larger than a rowing boat. The islands were under siege and only
once had that been quite obviously breached, the previous week, and probably by
aircraft that had destroyed the CAP south of the Zamboanga peninsula. The
commander Sixth Army was not concerned by such occasional breaches, after all,
how much could an aircraft carry? Certainly not enough to make a difference,
but he had directed the navy to place an air defence frigate off the peninsular
anyway in order to strengthen the picket there.

Today the PLAN Jiangwei class frigate
Anqing
was receiving radar data from a pair of FC-1s providing the CAP, and two fast
gunboats, which accompanied her. A Haiqing class patrol boat held station five
miles ahead and a second vessel, a smaller Haizhu class, kept pace five miles
aft, allowing the frigate to engage without bring its radar out of standby and
therefore revealing its own position.    

The
Anqing
was cruising at an economic ten knots, twelve miles
off the peninsular and in relatively calm seas when the data link failed. Her
communications officer tried to raise both patrol boats first and then the
aircraft, but when his hails received no response her captain ordered the radar
to go active. In addition to the sea search and Eyeshield 2D air search radars
the 6 cell HQ-61 SAM was put in active mode, the gun crews of the dual 100mm
and all four dual 37mm mounts closed up and swung out to seaward. They heard
their attacker and they saw it with the naked eye but the radar screens
remained clear. The bat shaped aircraft was on the
landward
side and only a mile distant when it was seen, climbing to 1600 feet before
rolling inverted and diving back toward the island. It had disappeared into the
sea haze before the quickest 37mm crew could get a round off, and by then of
course it was too late anyway to avoid the pair of laser guided 1000 pounder’s
the aircraft had toss-lobbed there way.

At Edwin Andrew Airbase the American bomber force took
to the air first, leaving the Philippines for the foreseeable future as they
made full use of the gap in the picket. They were followed by four transports,
two USAF C-5s and a pair of Royal Air Force C-130s which flew just a couple of
hundred feet above the waves until well clear of the land and well beyond the
radar coverage of the remaining Chinese pickets before the C-5s set course for
Guam. The C-5s carried
away the
technicians, ground crews and essential stores that were needed to keep the
B-1Bs, B-2s and the F-117A force in running order, the fuelling stop at the
tiny atoll was just the first step on the journey home. The two Hercules from
47 Squadron took a different route, and headed for the nearest tanker serving
the silo strike. Squadron Leader Dunn and Flight Lieutenant Braithwaite’s C-130
led the way, and they settled down to share the flying between them. They had a
long way to go and at an average speed of 460mph it was going to take them a while
to get there, so the ‘Loadies’, and the Royal Marines aboard for security,
settled down too.

Russia.

There had been neither sight nor sound of a helicopter
all day, and yet the runway was to remain covered until the last possible moment,
and the troopers at stand-to in their fighting holes.  The commander of
the small unit was not about to let standards drop just because the job was
nearly done. The militia were miles away and floundering, but in his experience
it could take just one piece of bad luck to have the tables turn on them, so
until the F-117X was away for the last time, he was keeping everything locked
down tight. In his original thinking the airstrip would be abandoned within an
hour of take-off, but Major Nunro had come to him with a request and an
apologetic expression.

“The problem I have is that I’m not flying a USAF
Nighthawk, and this aircraft doesn’t have the legs.”

“If it’s not a Nighthawk then what is it?” he had
asked. “Looks like one to me.”

“It’s experimental and it still belongs to
Lockheed-Martin, not the air force.”

He’d seen the humour.

“It’s a loaner?”

“Nighthawks are single crewed if you didn’t know, this
one can do more than a pilot on his or her own can deal with, so a back seater
was required but to accomplish that they had to lose an internal fuel tank.”
The pilot had looked very apologetic.

“The short version is, we can reach the target and do
the job, but flame out inside enemy territory. Or we can return here, and
refuel before trying to get out.”

He had acquiesced of course, because they were too
deep within the forest for the militia to hear an aircraft take off, and it was
only for a few extra hours after all.

To the south west, the two men he had shadowing the
militia reported that the current rate of advance was less than half a
kilometre per hour, and the radio traffic they were intercepting didn’t
indicate any surprises, but he wouldn’t let the men relax.

In its well camouflaged niche the aircraft sat like a
dark, brooding thing awaiting the dark whilst its crew and Svetlana, dressed in
flight suit purely for environmental practicality, sat about talking and
waiting for the night to fall.

41” 28’ N, 171” 29’ E.

There was little to break the monotony of the endless
routine that had been drilled into each and every crewman from the first day
they had stepped foot across the threshold of submarine school. The only way
was the Navy way, and there was a logical reason for that, the Navy way was
quieter, quicker and safer, never mind that it turned the hands into
automatons. No one aboard had felt fresh air on their face since before the
start of the war, and although the captain had seen daylight it had only been
through a periscope and the last occasion that had been raised was over two weeks
before. There wasn’t a man aboard who did not miss their families and the
outside world as much as they loathed the steel shell that they were forced to
exist in. The enemy was out there and their submarine required only their chief
executives order to attack and destroy them, but what was taking so long, they
had been here for days now?