Colonel Harris was a massive black man; he was so black that Shalenko had trouble looking him in the face, his face scarred by the force of the impact that had knocked him out. Stepanov’s men had already gone to work; he sat naked in a chair, various instruments of torture already attached to different places on his body, although they hadn’t started serious work yet. There was the hope that he would be reasonable; an American-designed lie detector electrode had been attached to the side of his shaven skull. He would have been a terror as a Drill Sergeant, Shalenko realised; it was a pity that he was on the wrong side.
He looked up as they entered. “Who… the hell are you?”
“I am General Shalenko, Commanding Officer of this Invasion Force,” Shalenko said, without bothering with preamble, or justifications. They were both soldiers; only politicians would bother coming up with justifications for whatever they wanted to do anyway. “I require some information from you.”
He made a mental bet as to what Harris would say first and won it. “This treatment is illegal under the Geneva Convention,” he said, through gasps. There had to be some damage somewhere, even if Stepanov had thought he was unharmed; he looked as if he was going to be stubborn. “I am a legal combatant and…
“Well, perhaps,” Shalenko said. “But you and I… we are both soldiers. We both know that sometimes you have to do things that you don’t want to do, or that you know you will face the opinion of international talkers, or… things that your political leaders will disown you for, if they find it convenient to do so. Neither of us chose this war” — a half-truth at best — “and we do not want to fight it, but we have no choice. Having no choice… I will do whatever I can to ensure that my soldiers come through the fighting safe.”
He paused. “Will you answer my questions?”
“Fuck you,” Harris said. “I know the drill; it’s only name, rank and serial…”
One of the FSB goons punched him in the chest. “We have to remain confined to reality,” Shalenko said shortly, as Harris gasped for breath. “The blunt truth is that your countrymen are in no position to avenge whatever happens to you… and institutions like the International Criminal Court have been shut down permanently now that we have occupied Brussels. There is no power on Earth that will punish us for carrying out our duty.”
Harris glared up at him, sweat forming on his black face. “Don’t blame me when Russian soldiers start turning up with their balls cut off and stuffed in their mouths,” he sneered. “Bring on your hired goons and let’s see how far they can go.”
Shalenko had to smile. “Do you know,” he asked, “who these men are? Some of them are people who learned suffering from the Chechens, or others from Central Asia; some of them are actually Kazakhs who were more than willing to lend their services to the FSB. I think they were sick of western hypocrisy, myself; some of them even brushed into British forces in Afghanistan. Now, you can be as stubborn, and heroic, and storoic and many more words ending in oic that I can’t be bothered to think of right now, but… eventually you will break and tell me everything you know.”
He leaned closer. “Talk now and I promise you that I will spare you and your men,” he said. “I have the authority to let them live, and even to spare them Siberia; all you have to do is talk now and spare yourself some pain.”
“You’ll have to get it out of me,” Harris hissed. “Bring it on.”
Shalenko stepped out of the tent as Stepanov’s men started their grizzly work, some of them enjoying it, some of them as dispassionate as Stepanov himself about their task. He would have preferred to have dumped them all into a penal unit and sent them clearing minefields until they died, but that wasn't an option; they were unfortunate, but necessary. Torture worked, given enough time; it had saved too many lives to allow it to be thrown away.
“General,” Anna said. Shalenko lit the cigarette she offered him and watched the smoke gusting away into the night air. They were in enemy territory, the one country in Europe that had had the time to get into position to give them a fight, and the loss rate showed that; thousands of Russians had died in a day of hard fighting. “I have the final figures.”
Shalenko listened as she went through them, detailing deaths, units lost, some of them lost on transports before they had ever had the chance to get into battle, others scattered along the shoreline and slaughtered by British soldiers before they had a chance to collect themselves. The Russian Air Force had been hurt badly; over a hundred fighters had been lost, along with seventy bombers and transports. Civilian airliners would have to be pressed into service again to speed the process of consolidation; they had to build up again before the British gathered themselves and counterattacked.
He held up a hand at one point. “Colonel Aliyev ordered his men to serve as light infantry?”
“Yes, General,” Anna said. “They did good work, too, in rooting out a British nest. They’re going to slow us up for at least a week, sir; they’re using the German tactic of jeeps and antitank rockets, or sometimes a machine gun. The scouts have pressed forward as far as Hastings to Tunbridge Wells; intelligence believes that we will begin to encounter major enemy civilian populations once we reach Brighton.”
Shalenko scowled. “Have we found any civilians here?”
“A handful, mainly a handful of looters,” Anna said. “We interrogated them all; they were ordered to head for refugee camps in the south-west, decided that there would be good pickings in the abandoned houses, and ran into us instead.”
“Good,” Shalenko said. “And the enemy military?”
“The Air Force believes that it has wiped out the RAF, although seeing that they have said that several times before, I think we should be careful about accepting it on trust,” Anna said. “The enemy has been digging in to small towns surrounding London, with a large force gathered up near Dorking, and smaller units gathering in London’s suburbs.”
Shalenko asked for a map and examined it. “Interesting,” he said finally. “I wonder why Dorking; what do they have there?”
“Intelligence believes that they are massing there for a counter-attack,” Anna said. “Our standard tactic is to surround cities before going into one and attacking London directly would be a nightmare; they may even be hoping that we would do so, which would allow their remaining forces to hit our flanks and pocket us. There are smaller British formations near Portsmouth, including Royal Marines; they may intend to keep building defences and inviting us to attack them.”
“Then we have to move on Dorking,” Shalenko said. It wasn’t a hard choice at all; modern warfare was all about destroying the enemy’s army… particularly if you didn’t care about the civilians caught up in the meat-grinder. Inform the planners that I want operational plans within the hour, and we move as soon as possible; the air force can have a slight rest and prepare itself for the final battle. Once the British Army is destroyed, London is finished.”
Stepanov appeared silently behind him; Shalenko sensed his presence and turned to face him. “Well?”
“He broke, finally,” Stepanov informed him. A bloody carcass was being dragged out of the tent; Harris would be lucky to survive for another hour. “As far as he knew, all mobile units and ones that could get out of our clutches were to retire on Dorking and the other places along the London Defence Line; past that, he has no idea what the British command is planning.”