“Good afternoon, General. I hope things are progressing well on your end,” Foss replied.
“Things are good on this end, Mr. President. As you’ll note from the slides we sent over, we have finally achieved a breakthrough in several sectors.” There was a slight pause as the group thumbed through their printed handouts. Cotton allowed a moment for review, but he was not one to waste time, so he cut to the point. “However, Mr. President, as you’ll see on slide fifteen, I’d like to know if we’re going to be able to include the British in our coming operations.”
The President smiled. He exulted in being the bearer of good news for once. “As a matter of fact, yes,” he answered. “We just spoke with the new British Prime Minister right before this call. She has assured us that Britain will return to the war. They have several of their senior officers on the way to your location to begin coordination of whatever forces you need for the coming offensive.”
It was clear General Cotton was breathing a sigh of relief, even over the grainy video feed. He replied, “Excellent news, Mr. President. Once I’ve conferred with them, do I have your permission, then, to proceed with the proposed operation we presented on slide twenty-eight, the use of the British Airborne and V Corps to slice deep behind enemy lines?”
Despite only working with General Cotton for a short bit, President Foss had really taken a liking to him. He was proving to be a real tactician. He’d been making do with little in the way of support and reinforcements for the past year, and somehow, he’d still managed to help train a massive Allied army to fill in the gaps in his own forces.
“Gates was right, this guy will win the war in Europe for us,” Foss thought.
“General, we’ve been going over the details since you sent them over. I believe the Joint Staff have some additional questions, which I’ll let them ask offline. However, I’d like to move forward with the plan. They just want to sort a few items out, but otherwise, this looks like a sound strategy. If it works, you might be able to force a very large portion of the Russian and Indian forces into surrendering before the end of the year.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” General Cotton responded. “We’ll get things sorted out then with the Joint Staff and proceed. When I meet with the British LNOs, we’ll have a better idea of how soon we can start our offensive. We’d planned to start the naval action in a couple of days, but we’ll postpone a little longer so we can integrate the British fleet into our own. If you don’t have any further questions, then we’ll take the rest of this offline and keep you apprised of any significant changes,”
Seeing no obvious questions, the President indicated that they were good, and the call was ended.
President Foss smiled. His day had just gotten exponentially better. With the British back in the war, the operational tempo was about to increase tremendously going into the final two months of 2018.
Operation Nordic Fury
Commodore Robert Cornell, the captain of the HMS Queen Elizabeth, had just poured himself a fresh cup of tea when the storm suddenly opened up on them. He sighed. He didn’t want this winter storm to derail the start of this very important operation.
The wind had been howling for a while, but now the windshield wipers on the bridge were in full swing, batting back and forth against the rain, which was coming down so quickly that it still made it nearly impossible for them to see. Looking to the right of the bridge, Cornell could see one of the destroyers rising as it crested a solid ten-meter wave before racing down the back of it into the trough and subsequently being hammered by another large wave.
“The troops in the transports are probably retching their guts out right now. Land lubbers,” he thought with a smirk.
Commodore Cornell turned to look for his weather officer. “How long is this new storm supposed to stick around?” he asked.
Lieutenant Commander Jonathon Band replied, “It should clear up in about twenty-four-hours, though we are still going to experience some rough seas for at least two or three days. The latest satellite report shows we should have about five days of clear, good weather before the next storm hits the Barents Sea and moves down into the White Sea.”
Cornell thought about that for a moment. At their current pace, they’d be in range of Russian air and missile defenses in three days, but they’d need at least two or three days to clear themselves a path for the troop ships to round the Kola Peninsula into the White Sea. That left them roughly twenty-four to forty-eight hours to land the troops and secure the area before the next storm hit and put an end to both air and sea support operations.
“This next storm — can you give me your best estimate of how long you think it’ll last? Are we talking a couple of days, or maybe a week in length?” he pressed.
The weatherman paused. “Sir, weather prediction is tricky, especially when you’re talking about a week or more in advance. I can give you a better estimate in four or five days. However, right now, if I had to estimate, I would guess it should last around three, maybe four days. But that’s a guess right now. It could be shorter or longer. What I can assure you of is, when it does hit, we’ll be hard-pressed to carry out any air operations and certainly wouldn’t be able to support any amphibious operations unless the ships were already in the White Sea.”
This was about as close to a definitive answer as he was going to get. “OK, Band. Thank you for the insight,” Cornell responded. “If you can, please make sure you’re coordinating your assessments with the French and Americans in the fleet. Let’s hope the weather gods will smile on us long enough to accomplish our mission.”
Seeing that he wasn’t really needed on the bridge, Commodore Cornell made his way to the air operations tower to see how his air operation planners were progressing with the next phase of the operation. They still needed to hunt down and destroy the Russians’ remaining aircraft carrier and what was left of the Russian northern fleet.
The storm had been battering the HMS Albion, which had been carrying three commando brigades of the Royal Marines, for more than a day. While many of the men were used to being holed up on an amphibious assault ship, they were not as used to having twice as many Marines crammed into the same space. It made for some uncomfortable living conditions, and all the men were eager to get ashore and fight the Russians.
Sergeant Philip Jones was one such Marine. He was far more at home in the woods or mountains, stalking an enemy that could kill him, than being cooped up on a ship in the middle of the ocean with no way to defend himself. The constant battle drills the ship captain kept running the crew through only reinforced his belief that he was safer on land than stuck on the transport. The thought of a Russian submarine torpedoing their ship was unnerving and terrifying. With the frigid temperatures of the waters they were sailing through, there was little chance of survival for very long if their ship was sunk.
As the waves kept rolling up and down, he drifted back to thoughts of how he’d gotten to be in this situation in the first place. This was Sergeant Jones’s seventh year in the Marines. He’d joined at the age of just eighteen, shortly after his mother had passed away from breast cancer. Jones was an only child, and his mother was the only real family he had ever known. His father, an abusive drunkard, had left him and his mother when he was just nine, abandoning them to fend for themselves. As a young boy he’d grown up in government housing, with a mother who loved him dearly but spent most of her time working, trying to make sure her only son had a chance at life. His mother had sacrificed so much to ensure he was able to attend a good primary and secondary school, knowing that education was going to be his way out of the low-income ghetto they’d found themselves living in.