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Incandescent with rage was a fairly mild description of the Premier’s mood, and he hadn’t calmed down that much when she had been summoned to explain why the KGB had not foreseen the NATO airborne moves or detected the preparatory build-up. Had her agents in the various western governments been asleep at the switch?

Elena Torneski had left the command chamber with orders to find out why no warning had been received and she had no choice but to report back with answers when she had them.

Those politicians that could be contacted had all given her the same reply that SACEUR had cut them out of the loop so completely that not the vaguest hint had reached their ears.

Strangely, this had served in some ways to placate the Premier who reasoned that if a government no longer fully trusted it’s military, and then they would keep a tighter grip on their nuclear weapons, wasting time in unnecessary debate, if and when their Generals asked for them.

The Premier had been toying with the idea of using battlefield nuclear weapons to stop 4 Corps, or smash any last lines of resistance west of the Elbe or possibly even both options. The spectre of a swift NATO reply in kind, which would negate any gains within hours, had of course always made those options too risky, up until now!

The Premier had sent his KGB Chief to wait in the ante room while he considered the possibilities and weighed up the odds, which he would do alone as he held his own General Staff in complete contempt. He did not hold Torneski in the same contempt but he did not ask her opinion on many matters either because she was after all, only a woman.

She knew that the Americans would not launch an ICBM against this facility because the moment a launch was detected the Premier would order a massive counter strike before even learning of where the enemy attack was directed. The Americans would use stealth bombers and for all their high tech wizardry they would still only come during the hours of darkness.

She had memorised when ‘last light’ would be, and for her own safety she should ideally be at least forty miles upwind of this place by then.

Sat in anteroom for hours, the wall clocks audible tick-tock had grown louder as the day had worn on, or so it seemed to her.

Ironically, where it had been General Allain’s plan that had thwarted her escape from the Premier’s secure hideaway in the morning, it was another part of SACEUR’s plan that facilitated her leaving it in the very late afternoon.

The destruction of the ribbon bridges was the deciding factor for the Premier. It wasn’t that he was bored of shooting his own military men, he would just rather kill tens of thousands of NATO’s men and women instead, and he now believed he could do it with impunity. However, Torneski had been summonsed when reports of the French and Canadian action along the river had been received, and she had thought for a moment that it was her turn for a bullet in the spine.

Although the military held the means to deliver the nuclear weapons, it was State Security, the KGB, who retained the warheads. It was to prevent the military using them to overthrow the government, a sensible precaution really, and the head of that state security left the facility in order to supervise the hand-over of six 5-kiloton air launch SS-N-26 warheads for immediate use.

* * *

Seven hundred and fifty-nine kilometres north northwest of the bunker, the last of the camouflage was being cleared from the runway and secured, lest any should be sucked into the F-117Xs air intakes.

Patricia had run diagnostics on the aeroplanes systems hours before, and also on their ordnance, getting a red light on an AMRAAM self-guidance board, meaning that it may fail to guide onto the target without the Nighthawk illuminating its target for it, but otherwise finding they were good to go.

With her job done there she had managed to catch a few hours of sleep, waking in the failing light.

Not finding either Caroline or Svetlana in the command bunker she had been about to make her way through the dark woods, back to the Nighthawk, when she had been stopped by one of the Green Berets and given both the password and a warning to stick to the established paths with an ear open for a challenge by sentries.

She had returned to the command post where an update had been received on the progress of the bomber forces roundabout route. The attacks, although the targets were over four thousand kilometres apart, had to be simultaneous. No one involved at the sharp end of the operations had been told of the mission at sea, but as intelligent, reasoning individuals it would not have surprised any of them that the mission had a briny side to it. Take-off time was advanced by twenty minutes due to a tail wind the bombers were experiencing.

They had time for a leisurely meal of MREs and then a last check was made of the runways surface by troops wearing PNGs before Patricia and Caroline climbed aboard the Nighthawk.

The take-off went without technical hitches of any kind; the aircraft easily cleared the trees at the runways end before turning onto the heading for their first leg, unaware that they had compromised the presence of the landing field for all time.

In order to move more quickly from one area of the cordon to the other the deputy commander of Militia Sub-District 178 had decided to cut the corners, using the tracks through the forest.

The map he was using had not been updated for thirty years so he had taken it cautiously; leaving the mass of metal he was travelling in to frequently check his compass.

He had approached the airstrip from almost the opposite direction to that of painfully shambolic advance his superior was leading, and the engine sounds from the Nighthawk prevented the nearest Green Beret listening post from hearing the fighting vehicle draw close.

The deputy commander was checking his compass when he recognised the sound of a jet aircraft running its engines up prior to its take-off run, and then two minutes later the aircraft passed just a hundred feet above his head, a shadow that briefly eclipsed the backdrop of stars in its passing.

41” 29’ N, 171” 17’ E.

There was a definite sense of tension growing within the confines of the pressure hull that had nothing to do with the barometric scale, thought HMS Hood’s captain. Each of the allied hunter-killer’s had in turn dropped back to a distance where they could safely creep toward the surface unheard by their prey, and deploy floating antennae’s before returning to station, fully briefed in what was required.

The captain had briefed the department heads and they in turn had informed each member of the crew that the long days tiptoeing along ended today, but only a successful conclusion to the stalk could influence the direction of the war in their favour.

The captain had done the rounds, looking into the faces and eyes of teenage ratings that had reached maturity in outlook in the space of weeks rather than years. It was not that long ago that he would have witnessed a disgruntled crew had he announced then that despite their hard work and skill in locating the enemy boomer, another vessel would be carrying out the attack.

The war was not one of point scoring for these young men, they didn’t care who fired the final shot, they just wanted it over with and their homes and loved ones safe again.

The time of the attack had not been widely announced, and yet within a very short space of time it had been common knowledge. The closer the hour drew near, the more palpable the feeling in the air.

The captain had dealt with the pressure in a manner he had discovered years before, and it had never failed. The monotony of clearing the administrative back-log, writing annual personnel assessments and a report on this vessel, which had been launched less than a year before wiped away all tension, drowning it in the necessity of creative and analytical thought. Did he think the standard of her construction met Royal Navy requirements? Absolutely! He had typed.