While the battalion had occupied the ground, a story had circulated amongst the riflemen of a beautiful blonde soviet sniper, whom it was alleged could sometimes be seen walking naked through the pre-dawn mist on the opposite bank. A popular explanation for this went along the lines of her returning to her own position after a night of passion in the soviet generals bunker, despite its fanciful nature it fired the imagination of many a young guardsman and paratrooper. The older and more cynical troops scoffed at the notion. “Poor girl will catch her death of cold, it must be forty miles from the bunker to the river… if their generals are anything like ours!” was Bill’s opinion of the story.
Bill was peering through his night scope at one a.m., it was raining hard outside their position and it was their ‘semi-downtime’ so he did not intend shooting at anything from here. He was on watch and it was another pair’s job to be in a firing position, he and Big Stef were in O.P mode.
Stef was curled up fast asleep in his maggot and Bill would not wake him for another ninety minutes, all he needed to do was stay alert and stay awake. Of all the different times zones (with seasonal daylight saving variants) in the world, BST, GMT, EST to name but a few, SST, Squaddie Sangar Time was a phenomena in that you could check your watch, resume observing for another half hour before checking it again, and find that only five minutes has actually elapsed. Bill was gazing out at the wet depressing vista and consciously avoiding checking his watch when the barely audible clicking of the field telephone caused him to block the aperture he had been looking through, in case the call should involve him looking at the map, which required light. He lifted the phone, gave their call sign and listened for a few moments. Big Stef grumbled as he came to wakefulness. “Ok, ok… stop squeezing my sodding earlobe; I’m in the land of the living!”
“It’s a general stand-to… something soviet this way comes, mate.”
Stef climbed from his sleeping bag and started to cram it into its compression bag, shivering with the transition from warm and snug to cold and damp, muttering to himself as he did so.
“Ugly and grumpy… ” Bill said with satisfaction. “… my work here is done!”
“Shut yer hole… bleedin’ Monkey.”
Everything not in immediate use was already packed away of course, so it took less than five minutes before they were leaving on their bellies, crawling forward to one of the firing points.
Colin put down the receiver from the company CP and reached for the communications cords connecting them to the section commanders trenches, and began tugging away on them. When he received answering tugs he knew the two lance sergeants and one lance corporal commanding each section was alerted.
CSM Probert had packed all their kit away and folded the stretchers in readiness for normal use, before swapping the filter on his respirator for a new one.
“Do you know something I don’t Col?”
“No Oz, it’s just a feeling. The Reds are running out of time and I think they’ll be tempted to use that shit on us again, if they have any left.”
“Cheerful sod, ain’t yer!” Oz replied, but swapped his over too.
Although chemical weapons hadn’t been used again since the first major clash of the land armies, they still wore their NBC clothing as a matter of course, despite the discomfort.
Major Venables, the Hussar squadrons’ new commander keyed the alert into his Ptarmigan system and flashed the stand-to to all his vehicles, including the troop of Chieftains that had arrived with the system hurriedly installed. His own command tank had a direct patch to the MSTARS feed, the mobile battlefield radar which had sounded the alarm when it detected armour approaching from twenty miles distant.
The airborne JSTARS platform had watched them come on, of course, but they were busy up there. In the last twenty-four hours the soviets had created dozens of dummy radar and thermal targets, whilst moving their real units around.
It was the shell game but on a grand scale.
The army of the West had enjoyed a couple of days respite to resupply and improve their positions, but the same was true for the other guy too.
The green display from the MSTARS feed changed colour, flashing red twice, a visual alarm indicating shells were in the air and coming their way. The rest they had enjoyed was over; someone had just rung the bell for the next round.
“Sandman this is Pointer!”
The TAO aboard the Charles de Gaulle depressed his send button to reply to the American operator in the E-3 Sentry aircraft.
“Sandman… go ahead Pointer.”
“Tripwire reports multiple submerged traffic inbound your posit… you may want to think about doubling up your helo’s.”
“Thank you Pointer… Sandman out.” He gestured to a junior officer and handed him a message form.
“Wake the Admiral and ASWO.” he ordered “HMS Temeraire has signalled the AWACs that the submarines are coming, and I am scrambling more choppers as well as having the P3s and Nimrods double up on-station. I am also asking Norway to do the same with its shore based helicopters, but they are probably already doing so.” The young officer nodded and hurried from the CIC.
Fifteen minutes later, Bernard was in CIC and taking a seat next to the Tactical Action officer, he beat the Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer by seconds.
“What’s happening… anything more?” asked the breathless ASWO.
“Not so far.”
The big screen showed the current P3 Orion begin a run that would lay a line of sonar buoys across the expected path of the submarine flotillas, and six helicopters head east of that line and slow to a halt to begin dipping their sonars.
“I want a CAP for those helicopters.” Bernard announced, pointing at the exposed ASW, NH-90 NFH and Sea Kings.
“Sir, the only aircraft left on the Pechenga airfields are not airworthy, the rest went back to Germany,” the TAO said.
“Have you been there and examined them yourself Henri?”
The TAO was silent for a second as he considered his superior’s words.
“Sorry sir, I will get one up,” and picked up a telephone.
Five minutes later though, the AWAC raised the alarm.
“Sandman! Sandman! This is Pointer… Air raid warning! air raid warning! we show multiple contacts lifting off in the Pechenga region… classify as Mike India Golf, Three One’s… copy my last Sandman?”
“Send our own CAP to intercept, Henri!”
“Sandman this is Pointer… do you copy?”
“Answer him someone… get the alert five up as replacement for our CAP, and for God’s sake warn the choppers!”
From their orbit southeast of the ships the two pairs of delta wing Rafale Ms on top CAP went to burner and a tanker was ordered aloft as they would need it to get home again afterwards.
The screen was relaying to CIC aboard the carrier what the AWAC was seeing. A dozen enemy aircraft, streaking northwest towards the half dozen helicopters that had received the warning from the AWAC and were running for home. Two of the enemy tracks split away from the rest and while one made a beeline for the maritime patrol Orion, the second headed for the two RAF Nimrods that had launched in answer to the carriers earlier request, but were now heading back to Norway as fast as they could. It was no contest really, the Rafales had too much ground to cover in order to get into missile range of the attackers. One by one the helicopters disappeared from the screen, swiftly followed by the P-3 Orion and a Nimrod. The French admirals fingers were digging into the armrests of his swivel chair as he willed the last RAF Nimrod on. It was almost kissing the wave tops in its efforts to evade the fighter. The pilot of the Mig-31 Foxhound had passed up countless possible missile shots and appeared to be playing with his unarmed prey, leaving an opening for the Nimrod to turn toward the shoreline and its associated radar clutter, before heading it off with cannon fire that flew across the British Nimrods nose. Eventually the approaching Rafales were too close for comfort, and the Mig raked the patrol aircrafts cabin, killing its mainly female operators, before putting a burst into the cockpit on its next pass. With a dead hand on the controls, the Nimrods left wing dropped, it hit the water and the aircraft cartwheeled over the surface, its tail and wings snapping off, before it disappeared below the waves.