He had been promised no ground fire; the British had fired off all of their missiles at the Russian Air Force, apparently getting in more than a few good hits as well. Veselchakov was as patriotic as the next man, but he found the thought of the Russian Air Force getting a bloody nose amusing; the fighter jocks had been so confident of their prowess and their success with the women of France. Their prowess had lasted as long as it had taken to come up against a prepared enemy… and Veselchakov knew that the ‘women of France’ were whores, paid for sleeping with the Russians. It was possible that there were some women who had slept with the Russians without financial inducements, but Veselchakov wouldn’t have bet on it; the fighter jocks ran out of charm very quickly…
And then the penal units had a new slave for a month.
The English city was already burning in places as he came in for his attack run. The location of most of the defenders was already known and he angled the aircraft for maximum exposure. It was the work of a few seconds to prepare the bomb bay… and then the spray of deadly flaming jelly began, raining down on the British below. The Americans had taken the original idea of napalm and improved on it; the Russians had copied the American idea and added a few refinements of their own. Anyone trying to breathe near the flames would be lucky to survive.
Veselchakov winced as a handful of bullets cracked through the aircraft, but breathed a sigh of relief as he escaped safely, heading back out to sea and safety back in France. The fighter jocks would be up there for hours yet; once he landed, unless they wanted him to repeat his stunt again, there were always the French prostitutes.
Behind him, Dover burned…
Langford hadn’t expected to actually hold the Russians, not once the attempt to seal the Russians off and destroy them had failed; all that mattered now was pulling as many units back as possible, and then digging in to the final defence line. The remaining units in Kent had to be pulled back before they were caught and destroyed; the Russians would have problems expanding out of Kent for at least a week. The British had gone over the entire country and destroyed as many bridges, blocked as many roads, and generally worked hard to give the Russians serious problems.
The burning of Dover hadn’t surprised him, but the sense that a city was steadily being literally burned off the face of the Earth worried him; the Russians might do the same to London, or Edinburgh, or any other city that had refused to surrender. They had used napalm before, in Europe, but…
Bad things were meant to happen elsewhere, he thought, laughing bitterly at himself. They weren't meant to happen in Europe…
He dismissed the thought. “Order a general pullback,” he ordered. Special Forces would do what they could to delay and harass the Russians — landing a good punch, then getting out before the Russians could react — but the regular military would be needed elsewhere. He couldn’t help, but thank God that the entire area had been evacuated; how many would have died if Dover had been left with its civilian population? “Tell all units to pull back to the secondary defence line.”
He wanted to go on the offensive, but he knew that that was impossible; he lacked both the mobile firepower and the air cover to mount any offensive. There was one chance, just one… and if he didn’t play his few cards exactly right, Britain would be lost along with the rest of Europe. It would have to work; he would do everything he could to make it work…
…Because the alternative was unthinkable. They had planned for a total defeat, but deep inside, he had never believed that it would be necessary, not until now. When had Britain come so close to defeat before? 1940? The humiliation of Suez had galvanised a stricken country, but that had been a political defeat, not a military one… and hardly fatal. The Falklands had been fought on a shoestring, but victory had come; defeat had seemed impossible. No nation had been able or willing to threaten Britain…
Until now…
Chapter Forty-Nine: Consolidation
Many people who would otherwise object to torture would permit it in the so-called “Ticking Bomb Scenario.” This is, though few seem to realize it, an admission that, given a means of immediate feedback, torture works.
Near Dover, United Kingdom
Dover was burning.
General Aleksandr Borisovich Shalenko stood near the city and watched as the handful of British prisoners were rapidly searched, secured, and inspected by the FSB security detachments. Dover itself had been seriously damaged by the fighting, but the combat engineers were certain that they could repair the damage in a few weeks with enough labour, assuming that it could be found. There were thousands of dockworkers back in Europe who had taken money from the Russians; they could be shipped over as soon as a ship could be spared. For the moment, however, they had recovered enough of Folkestone to use it as a harbour and expand their control rapidly.
Another aircraft flew overhead, carrying supplies for the invasion force, as Shalenko turned to face the FSB commander, FSB Colonel Maliuta Vladimirovich Stepanov. His parents had been extreme Russian nationalists — both of them had worked for the KGB before it had converted itself into the FSB — and it showed in his name; Maliuta was a very rare name in Russia. His position within the FSB had been almost hereditary; he handled matters that were only spoken of in whispers, even by other FSB detachments.
Shalenko spoke first, unwilling to even suggest that they were equals. “Who is the senior surviving British officer?”
Stepanov bowed his head slightly. The FSB might be convinced that it was superior to the Russian Army, but a bad report from General Shalenko would have his career being rapidly reduced to a filing clerk somewhere in the Kremlin, if not being stripped of rank and sent in disgrace to Siberia. Some people had to run the labour camps, after all, and while there were plenty of brutes around, the hard work of administration needed talented — and disgraced — officers.
“That would be a Colonel Harris,” he said, inspecting the terminal he carried in his hand. “We did recover a living General officer, but he died of his wounds soon afterwards; Colonel Harris is the only reasonably intact senior officer.”
“Take me to him,” Shalenko ordered shortly. He would find out if the General had died of his wounds, or if he had been helped; he had given orders that no prisoners were to be killed unless there was no hope at all that they would survive. The intelligence network within Britain had been severely damaged by the war and then by the invasion; even the most blind of the useful fools might see that there was something not quite right going on. The active spies and agents wouldn’t have the type of access they needed to know what the British intended. “What condition is he in?”
“Battered, but unbowed,” Stepanov said. There was a dispassionate note to his voice that chilled even Shalenko, even though he understood the requirement; he would almost have preferred a brute. A lot of brutes ended up in the FSB; a supply of victims and permission to do whatever they liked to them worked wonders for loyalty. “He was unlucky; we managed to knock him out in a bombing run and snatched him up before he recovered.”