“So you’re Obi-Wan, huh?”
“It is but a nickname, sir.” Heck replied without looking at the general.
“Okay young Captain… make like a sloppy civilian and shuffle on over here without wrecking the joint again.”
Heck relaxed and walked over to the chair that General Thackery was indicating.
Duke refilled his coffee cup.
“I would offer you coffee,” the General said. “But someone just broke the second cup.”
Heck smiled apologetically but remained silent.
“Do you know, The Honourable Winston Smithers, Captain?”
“No sir, I do not.”
“Well, he sure as shit knows you!”
Withdrawing a fax from a stack of papers on a desk to his left, the General continued.
“The Honourable Smithers is the British Consul in San Francisco; he states that he sent a messenger with a letter for you two hours before we began boarding. He says here that he was unable to get a definitive response from London, so his letter ordered you to remain in San Francisco with your people and equipment. He states that he also advised you in that letter, that he envisioned you would probably remain in San Francisco for some time until low priority transport could be arranged for your return to the U.K. He adds, ‘without your vehicles and equipment due to excessive cost of shipping’.” The General looked up from the page speculatively, but the Englishman said nothing so he continued.
“The letter was apparently resealed in the same envelope, the consulate’s address scrawled on the bottom, and on the back the words ‘Return to sender, address not known, no such number… ”
“No such zone.” Heck finished the sentence for him and added. “Elvis had such a way with lyrics, don’t you think sir?”
“You might at least have put a godammed stamp on the thing when you posted it; he sounds pissed at having to cough up the postage."
“Sir,” Heck began. “Small as it is, my detachment is a combat unit of the British Army… my people are soldiers, not troublesome tourists who lost their passports. Our vehicles go where we go; they don't get left on the dock to rust away.”
The General waved the fax.
“If you had been a candy-ass, young captain, I’d have thrown your ass in the brig for this… .but you’ve got fighting spirit. But I have to be honest with you, if the Australians haven’t got ammunition that your tanks can use, then I’ve little use for your Challengers … you’ve got sixty rounds per tank, two engagements worth if you’re lucky… after that you’re battlefield replacements for my people.” He looked hard at the troop commander. “What do you suggest I say to the Honourable Gentleman in reply, Captain? He wants your nuts on a stick.”
“With all due respect sir, tell him to stuff himself because we are off to play with our mates.”
Duke Thackery laughed and screwed up the fax. “That’s not a very diplomatic way of putting it… get the hell out of here and leave it to me.”
Heck stood and saluted before striding to the cabin door.
“Oh, Captain!”
Heck removed his hand from the door handle and turned back.
“Sir?”
The General stood and returned a quick salute.
“If you get booted out of the army for this, may I suggest that you do not go into politics?”
“Politics sir… good lord, no. One couldn’t possibly stand the strain of being so insufferably right all the time!”
At 45,000’ above Germany this night, eighteen Tu-160 stealth bombers carried eight Spetznaz troopers apiece in their bomb bays rather than explosive ordnance. The troopers’ individual heated cocoons had been jury rigged along with the oxygen supply. Team Five’s leader had her knees drawn up to her chest, in an effort to keep warm.
Far below them, the NATO army’s withdrawal to a line that ran from Wismar on the Baltic coast, along the Elbe and Saale rivers to the Danube, had displaced over a million people who were fleeing west.
The unadvertised and sudden pulling back beyond Berlin had taken most unawares and unprepared, those citizens of Berlin who had been too slow or disbelieving to act, now had new masters.
Autobahns and roads that were banned to all civilian traffic had seen riots at some intersections. In one ugly incident, an American Military Policeman had been shot to death by a handgun wielding investment banker in a Porsche. The banker had been alone in the car, having left his wife asleep and driven in early for work. On seeing the troops pulling out he’d chosen to carry right on driving west. When bribery failed to get him onto the autobahn he’d resorted to murder which got him 10km further westward, driving at 120mph along the hard shoulder as he’d torn past NATO vehicles. At the next intersection was another Military Police TP (Traffic Post) where the colleagues of the murdered policeman had been alerted by radio. The Porsche was travelling too fast to stop if they had waved it down, perhaps the MPs tried, and then again perhaps they didn’t. Crews of the vehicles heading west to the new defence line turned their heads to look at the debris trail and mangled wreckage that had resulted from a single short burst from an M-60 machine gun.
Team Five’s leader acknowledged an intercom message and switched on her own oxygen supply contained in a chest rig, before disconnecting from the Tupelov’s. As the aircraft began to circle she activated her suit's heating system and waited until she felt it take effect, the battery supply for it would only last thirty minutes at these temperatures so she hurried. Struggling from her cocoon into the limited space of the bomb bay she opened the cocoons occupied by her subordinates. The cold was a bitter, bone penetrating thing that sought to switch off the human body from the extremities inwards, despite their thermal clothing.
The fourth and fifth cocoons she opened revealed dead troopers, one male and one female, the oxygen supply to the first had failed, whilst the woman had frozen to death somewhere over the Baltic when her cocoon’s heating system had failed, the cold had sent her into a sleep from which she had never awoken.
The six surviving Spetznaz troopers attached their equipment, parachute harnesses and weapons rolls before securing the cocoons. Explosive and other equipment from the dead trooper’s loads were divided up amongst the living.
There was nowhere to secure the bodies of their comrades and equipment so they were placed on the aft end of the bomb bay doors. At a command from the team leader the Tupelov’s pilot throttled back and pulled back the nose to +10’.
At 60 knots above stall, the bay doors opened briefly before closing again and the pilot lowered the nose to –10’, opening the throttles once more to gain airspeed before turning for home.
As rehearsed, the team immediately diverged when dropped into space, putting distance between themselves and comrades with whom a mid-air collision would likely be fatal in the pitch dark.
Tumbling away toward the earth, the bodies and equipment of their dead colleagues would fall into a wood and open farmland a half kilometre apart.
Solid cloud cover prevented them seeing anything of the ground below them; the blackout meant that there was no glow through the cloud that might indicate the street lighting of urban areas.
In a clearing within the Teutoburg Forest, a radio beacon switched rapidly between frequencies as it transmitted, preventing counter-intelligence efforts from recognising it as such and obtaining a fix on its location, or that of the seventeen others that were transmitting.
The team stayed in free-fall until the first wing shaped canopy opened at 11,000’, the remaining canopies opened at 500’ intervals after that.
Steering in ever decreasing circles, guided by their instruments they entered the cloud one by one.
The only lights visible anywhere were those of a few scattered refugees’ campfires as the leader emerged through the cloud’s base. She aligned her canopy in the direction her receiver told her the beacon was and turned a switch on the receiver’s side. A strobing light appeared far below and slightly to her right but she raised her goggles to check and she could no longer see it with the naked eye. Satisfied, she lowered the goggles back into place and the light reappeared.