“Here they come,” Grant said. Five Hawks, the new-old jet bombers, swooped overhead, dodging anti-aircraft fire with ease, before unloading their dumb bombs onto the Russian position. Flames leapt up when the FAE detonated, spreading rapidly to their ammunition supplies.
“Boom,” Yates commented, watching the series of explosions. He frowned; there was a… strangeness to the flames.
“Do you see…?” Grant asked. Yates nodded. “That’s a chemical fire,” she said. “What did they have there?”
A thunderous explosion shattered the Russian position. For a crazy moment, Yates thought that it had been a nuclear explosion, so devastating had it been, before realising that that was foolish. Whatever was in the bunker, it had been dangerous.
“Advance, slowly,” he ordered, and muttered more orders. Half of the force of tanks spread out carefully, while he and three of his comrades advanced on the Russian position. A Russian soldier lay on the ground, half-burned, but he was trying to fire at them anyway. Grant shot him with a burst of machine gun fire, just to put him out of his misery.
“Uh-oh,” Benton said. The tank had been sealed, of course, but the alarms went off anyway. “Sir, there was gas here.”
Yates swore. “Control, we have a confirmed Alpha-Red situation,” he said. “Confirmed; gas supplies in Russian positions, apparently meant for use against us.” He looked sharply at Benton. “Is there enough of it to analyse?”
Benton shook his head as the dispatcher replied. “Understood, Romeo-Alpha,” he said. “Is there enough of it to analyse?”
Benton sighed and shook his head again. “No, control,” he said. “The gas supplies were ignited and the equipment is very basic on the tank.”
“Understood,” the dispatcher said. If he was annoyed at dealing with a lowly driver, he didn’t show it. “Please stand by.”
“He’ll be calling the general,” Yates said dryly. “The general will tell us what to do.”
“This is General Flynn,” a new voice said. “Captain Yates; please secure the region. A team will be along in a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” Yates said.
General Flynn put down the radio and scowled. “Now we know the Russians have nerve gas too,” he said.
General Stillwell, who’d been very unhappy at being pulled away from his men for a quick conference, scowled. “The bastards must have been given it by the Germans,” he said. “What type was it?”
“Something unpronounceable,” Flynn said grimly. “The analysis team had much more sensitive equipment, and they were able to identify it. Fortunately, we do have an antidote for it, provided that it can be used in time.”
“And that does give us other responsibilities,” Stillwell said. “The Russians might start using it like the Japanese did; against our potential allies.”
Flynn nodded. On the second day of the offensive, they’d blasted the remaining territory that had been held by the Germans – which had been taken over by the Russians – and they were closing in on Warsaw. The few Poles that remained had been more than happy to aid the Allied forces, but they were scattered and terrified of the Axis powers.
“I’m more worried about our people,” he said. “We have certain… orders of what to do in the event of Russian use of weapons of mass destruction.”
“I know,” Stillwell said. The rules had been made clear; any Axis use of weapons of mass destruction would draw a nuclear retaliation. Flynn glared at the map; the British and Americans were closing in on Warsaw; the Bundeswehr was nearly at what would have been the Kaliningrad salient in 2015. Any Russian use of gas could be inconvenient.
His radio buzzed. “General, this is Colonel Dickens,” a voice said. “Sir, German trenches towards Kaliningrad have been gassed.”
Flynn cursed. “Understood,” he said. “Have them sent what aid we can spare.”
“They’ve trained for gas attacks,” Colonel Dickens said. “Those that weren’t killed or blinded at once and then killed have injected themselves with the antidote. We still have a couple of thousand men in urgent need of medical attention.”
Flynn spoke as if someone else was speaking through his mouth. “Have medical aid sent to pick them up and transport them back to Britain,” he said. “Move it!”
The field hospital wasn’t a nice place, certainly nothing like the comfortable hospital that Kristy Stewart had come to accept as her due, before the NHS funding crisis had driven her to private health care. It stank; the smell of disinfectant was everywhere. Blood and something she didn’t want to think about lay on the ground, signs of countless bleeding patients being moved quickly into the hospital.
A harassed male nurse had told her to stay out of the way, so she did, filming constantly with the camera on her shoulder. Some of the British soldiers had snapped at her, recognising her from the movies of her and Roth, calling her a collaborator or other – worse – names. She ignored them, pressed down by the darkness within her soul.
“This is the price for defeating the enemy,” she muttered, as she entered the room that served as a ward. German soldiers, bleeding and screaming in pain, lay scattered around the room, some of them paralysed by the gas. Her heart wasn’t in it; she looked into a sealed bed and vomited on the floor. Her vomit merely joined more on the floor, mixing with blood and urine and other by-products of men in a truly dreadful state.
“They used gas,” a voice said. She dimly recognised Rommel. “Look what they’ve done to my people!”
Stewart hung back as Rommel passed through the ward. The man who was the leader of the provisional German government seemed all too human as he walked, looking down at the men who’d followed him to the dismal fate. Some of them he spoke to, offering what comfort he could, others cursed him and brought tears to his eyes. Not all of them had been keen on fighting to save Poland; what was Poland to them?
“The Russians will pay for this,” Rommel vowed. Stewart shivered at the tone in his voice. “They will pay, in blood and fire and suffering…”
The German camp was well hidden and very well patrolled. Captain Dwynn expected that that made sense; with a British force swinging out around Warsaw, perhaps preparing for a lunge at the camp, and Russian NKVD units nearby, Himmler could be forgiven for being a little paranoid. He snorted; even the SAS hadn’t been able to get close to the camp.
“It’s a good thing our binoculars don’t flash in the sunlight,” Chang commented. Their tiny hideout was nearly a mile from the German position, mounted on a hill. “What are they doing?”
Dwynn wasn’t listening. “Fetch Vash,” he snapped. “That’s Himmler himself, I’m sure of it!”
His mouth fell into a hunter’s grin as Himmler shook the hands of three men, standing next to a lorry. Vash, the team’s sniper, came running up, but it was too late; Himmler had moved back into one of the armoured buildings.
“Shit,” Dwynn muttered. He turned his gaze back to the lorry. There was something about it that set all of his combat senses off, warning him of… what?
“Shit,” he said again, louder this time. He ignored Vash, staring at the lorry. It was carrying something heavy; he would have staked his life on it. It was moving west, towards Warsaw… and the Anglo-American force that was surrounding it.
“That’s the nuke,” he snapped. “I’ll stake my oath on it.”
Vash lifted his sniper’s rifle, but the vehicle was moving rapidly out of range. “I could hit the tires…”