The Fall of Night (39 page)

“Understood,” the controller said.  The French commander of the aircraft was cute; Cindy had been hoping to make his acquaintance at a later date.  He wasn’t
technically
a squadron-mate, after all.  “Flight vector is…
fuck
!”

Cindy saw it all on the download.  Five missiles had been launched, from
Britain
; aimed at the tanker and its three escorts.  The tanker had been over British soil, it had been believed to be safe; surprised, the escorts took too long to react, or to drop flares.  Two missiles found their target and impacted directly with the tanker, sending it crashing to the ground in flames.  The explosion would have been heard for miles!

“No,” she said, unable to face the cold knowledge of what had happened.  It might have been a disastrous case of blue-on-blue, friendly fire, but she doubted it; the day that the Russians started flying tankers over British soil was the day that the war was lost.  It had to have been a deliberate act; someone down on Britain was working for the Russians…and had just pulled off the most successful strike of the war.  “Control…?”

There was no choice, she knew; the RAF would have no choice.  “All aircraft, retreat,” Air Marshall Bentley said, before the AWACS could say anything.  His priority would be to save as many aircraft as he could before they started to run out of fuel.  The Eurofighters, whatever their other virtues, were fuel-guzzlers.  “Return to the nearest airbase and await further orders.”

“Bastards,” Cindy hissed, as she swung the Tempest around.  The RAF had ceded control over the battlezone to the Russian Air Force…and that meant that the people on the ground were fucked.  “Real bastards!”

***

“I just had an update from the headquarters,” Captain Bellamy said, grimly.  “The RAF has been driven out of the battlezone.”

“We knew that it would happen,” Marine Colonel Patrick Trombly said, as calmly as he could.  They’d pulled out over a thousand soldiers from several different countries, including six hundred British soldiers; the thought of just how many had died in the fighting, or remained trapped behind enemy lines, made him wince.  The RAF had held its own in the fighting, but everyone had known that it was just a matter of time.  He’d pulled out most of his vehicles hours ago, just to ensure that they got home.  “What’s the latest from the SAS?”

“The Russians are closing in,” Captain Bellamy
said.  “Captain Grey was requesting permission to engage them directly…”

Trombly shook his head.  The Royal Marines had had a busy couple of days, setting up as many ambushes and booby-traps for the Russians as they could, unloading all of their considerable bad feeling on the hapless Russian soldiers.  The Russians outnumbered the marines and had artillery support; the bombing was bad enough, but once they brought up their heavy guns, the Marines would be ground down and wiped out.  They had won all the time they could…

“Send the recall signal,” he said.  The SAS soldiers would melt into the countryside; hiding and reporting in using satellite transmitters locked into American satellites.  They would report on what the Russians were doing until they were pulled out or the Russians caught them.  “Remind everyone that if they miss the boat, they will have to follow the emergency procedures…or swim to England if they are really desperate.”

He scowled.  His Marines had swum the English Channel more than once, certainly more than they had ever admitted to publicly, but that had been under ideal circumstances.  Would tired and battered Marines be able to make the same swim at a far longer distance from friendly shores?  He felt bitter; a handful of his men had volunteered to remain behind as a rearguard, fighting until the end, but there had been no choice.  They had all had to be pulled out; they were going to be needed.

“And set all of the CADS on auto-engage,” he said, as the Marines came running back to their transports.  Many of them had seen to it that the Russians would get a few unpleasant surprises as they tried to recover British equipment; others were silent, contemplating not only defeat, but also the possible future for their own country.  “We may as well give the Russians something to worry about as they close in.”

He clenched his teeth.  “It’s not as if they have had anything else to worry about…”

France is invaded; I am leaving to take command of my troops, and, with God's help and their valour, I hope soon to drive the enemy beyond the frontier.

“They’re on their way,
Mon General
,” the young officer said.  He seemed painfully young for his role.  “They’re sending in aircraft and helicopters.”

Lieutenant-General Vincent Pelletier nodded once; his command post had been carefully hidden with all the professionalism that the remains of the French Army could mount, hidden from Russian bombers.  France had gone for seventy years without hostile bombers dropping bombs on French territory; now, it was as if seventy years had been swept away and Hitler’s legions had returned to terrorise the population.  Pelletier knew that the fight was probably futile, but if…if he could give the Russians a bloody nose, if a provisional government could assume the reins of power, if…if…there might be room to save something from the wreckage of France.  If…

Pelletier had been on an exercise when the Russians had launched their first attack, and then the streets of Paris and several other cities had dissolved into chaos, forcing him to try to bring together the remains of several French units to try to put an end to the chaos.  He had done well, he knew he had, but it hadn’t been enough; his manpower had been so sharply reduced by the combined pressure of missile attacks and the insurgency – which had been specifically targeted on military and police personnel – that he had barely been able to save Paris.  By the time he had battered a multi-sided insurgency into submission, or at least quiescence, the German line had broken and hundreds of refugees had started to stream into France, finally providing him with some intelligence of what was happening to the east.  Two weeks of fighting an insurgency had taken a bitter toll; his forces had been drained of most of their ammunition and supplies…and what stores they'd had had been hit or looted by the rioters.  The air force was non-existent…and, as for the Navy…well, most of the ships had either gone to try to cut the Algerian supply line, or had been destroyed in the opening attacks.

“Order our forces to deploy,” he said.  “Tell every man that…France expects every man to do his duty.”

He had done the best he could, hoping that the Russians would outrun their supply lines, or the Germans would pull off a miracle, but it was not to be.  His forces had been shattered and rebuilt; there hadn’t been anything like the time he had needed to create a proper army.  He had even thought about offering the insurgents amnesty if they agreed to join up, but he knew that the Russians would just have brushed them aside, even if they could be trusted.  The French reserves had been allowed to slip too far; his force would do what it could, but it wouldn’t be enough.  He had dug in near Nancy…and all it would take to shatter his defence line was the Russians coming in from Belgium, even if French soldiers had done what they could to smash up the approach routes. 

It was a British quote, but he couldn’t think of one that was more appropriate.  There was nothing to do now, but wait.  It would only take the Russians a few hours at most to reach the defence line; he hoped that he understood their strategy properly.  His army was the last major obstacle that they would face before Spain; they had no choice, but to attempt to engage him.  He had prepared as best as he could for the worst…and he had a sneaking suspicion that the ‘worst’ was about to happen…

How had it all happened?  Pelletier turned it over and over again in his mind; how had it happened?  There were parts of France only just beginning to wake up to the fact they were at war, other parts torn apart by one insurgent faction or another, from four different Islamic factions to students, nationalists and even socialists.  The President was dead, the Prime Minister was dead; Pelletier couldn’t even use the nukes without the codes that had been lost when the emergency command centre had been bombed.  France had failed to grasp a nettle, she had failed to either repair her damaged society, or to take precautions against an insurgency.  They had believed themselves safe, invulnerable; they had been proven spectacularly wrong.  They had concluded, rightly, that no insurgency could long succeed…but it hadn’t mattered; the Russians had used the Islamic groups as cannon fodder.  They had soaked up French bullets that would otherwise have been fired at Russian soldiers.

Pelletier forced himself to sit back calmly.  It would all be over soon.

***

“Fire,” General Shalenko said.

The Russians had moved up twenty-five MLRS units and hundreds of heavy guns, all transported through a largely undamaged German rail network, most of which hadn’t even been damaged by the fighting.  Unlike in Britain, the German transport network had been left more or less alone – although the weight of thousands of heavy tanks was taking its toll – and it had been rapidly pressed into service, with the unwilling help of thousands of Germans who had been told that it was a choice between working or starving. 
The guns fired…

Russian satellites had pinpointed the location of most of the French defenders near Nancy, a large French city; the French had done a fairly good job of getting their forces into position to stand their ground.  Shalenko knew better than to think that the French would simply run at the first shot; the Russians might well have done the French a favour by wiping out the higher command of the French Army.  Political skills had been rewarded; military skills had been considered of secondary importance, at best.  General Éclair had been that rarity, a competent general who was also a more-than-competent politician; had he survived Sudan, EUROFOR might have been able to recover in the opening days of the war and fight back successfully.  The French armoured units would be almost immobile now, their fuel and weapons supplies limited; he had to remind himself not to assume anything.  They could have used civilian fuel in their tanks…not that it would have mattered.

He covered his ears as the weapons fired, launching thousands of missiles and shells into the air, firing in long rippling salvos.  The Russians had taken the original design and run with it, improving on the idea and adding some refinements of their own.  Every minute, the Russians would launch thirty rockets towards the French position, reloading and attacking again as quickly as they could, while the heavy guns would aim for more specific targeting, using satellites to watch the battlezone.  The return fire was limited and badly coordinated; only one MLRS was struck by a French shell and blown to kingdom come by the blast.  Counter-battery radars zeroed in on the location of the French batteries and pounded them, blasting their operators and their guns to dust.  It had been a French General – Shalenko couldn’t remember who – who had said that ‘fire kills;’ the French were learning, once again, the truth of that maxim.

He tapped a command into the terminal that Anna held.  Neither of them could hear each other under the noise of the guns.  The command was simple enough; the battle had been planned beforehand, and so far was all going to plan.  That wouldn’t survive for long, but Shalenko intended to push his advantage as much as possible.  The command echoed through the network; ADVANCE!

***

Lieutenant
Jean-Paul Foch felt his bones rattling as the Russian attack shook their line of makeshift bunkers; the pounding seemed never-ending.  His unit had been shattered by the first Russian attacks and had been pulled back together with several other units, a company that held only fifty men, now assigned to holding a section of the line.  Foch, who had only joined the Army because it offered more excitement than most jobs in France, was trembling; no one had ever expected that they would be fighting through France again…and he had now fought two different sets of enemies.

The bombardment was slowing; some of his men were twitching masses on the ground, despite the kicks from their comrades and the burly sergeant who had taken Foch under his wing.  Foch’s ears were ringing; he could barely hear the shout of alarm as the first soldier crawled to their vision tube and peered out, seeing the advancing Russians closing in on their trench.  Foch had prepared as best as he could – the sergeant had been a mass of good ideas and some discipline for the soldiers – but it was still terrifying as the soldiers rushed to their firing positions; the Russian bombardment had devastated the landscape.  Foch had been born in Nancy; he didn’t want to think about what might have happened if some of the Russian shells had landed in the city.  His three sisters lived there; one of them had never come home after the chaos began, the others had only been able to talk to him once before the Russians had started to move towards France.  They had told him to run, to save himself; only the thought of failing the sergeant had kept him at his post.  He would not run while he could hold himself in place.

He caught the sergeant’s eye and held up three fingers.  He could still barely hear and knew that the others would have been deafened; the sergeant passed him a flare gun that they had liberated from a naval store as they had completed the task of suppressing the insurgency in Paris.  They had planned for being temporarily deaf – at least he hoped it was temporary – and the green flash would be the sign to open fire.  He watched the Russians as they moved forward, carefully watching for mines; Foch just wished that they had had any to emplace.  France had only a few mines stockpiled and all of them had been designed for use against tanks; the various treaties against mines had robbed France of a desperately needed defence system.  They had tried to rig up some mines, but they had all been primitive; they had probably been disabled by the bombardment. 

“Fire,” he shouted, at the top of his voice, firing the flare into the air.  It burst in a green flash of light; his soldiers opened fire, catching the Russians almost completely by surprise.  A dozen Russians fell to the ground with lethal wounds, others threw themselves down and scrambled back as quickly as they could; mercilessly, the French defenders mowed them down before they could escape.  A handful tried to throw grenades, but they all fell short, blasting holes in the barbed wire.  He muttered a curse under his breath, wishing that he could hear himself; the Russians would be back at any moment.

“Sir,” a voice whispered, right in his ear.  The sergeant had to have bellowed at the top of his own voice to be heard through the damage; Foch had heard tales of veterans from various wars who had never been able to hear again.  The sergeant was pointing towards rising plumes of dust; for a long moment, Foch didn’t understand what he was looking at, and then he understood…just as the first armoured monster appeared, heading right towards the trench.  The Russian tank was massive and seemingly unstoppable; the soldiers wavered as bursts of machine gun fire tore into the trench.  “Here!”

Foch grinned as the sergeant passed him one of the Knife missile launchers, rapidly activating the missile launcher and putting it to his shoulder, taking a bearing on the tank.  The Knife had been another joint European project, but unlike most of them, it was loved by all of the soldiers – not least because it had escaped being tagged with the irritating ‘euro’ prefix.  The missile was reputed to be able to burn through the frontal armour of an American tank; he hoped that it would make short work of the Russian monster that was closing in on them.  The Russian tank was painted green, he noticed; the driver was swinging the machine guns around…

He fired; the force of the rocket launcher pushing him backwards as the rocket screeched out of the launcher and directly into the Russian tank, which glowed red and exploded as its ammunition detonated.  The soldiers whooped and concentrated on mowing down the Russian soldiers who had revealed themselves following the tank; the sergeant was carrying another Knife instead of a heavy machine gun, watching for more Russian tanks appearing to try to attack them.  A second tank appeared, and then a third; Foch reached for the second flare gun and prepared to use it…

The sergeant caught onto his arm.  The red flare gun was the signal to retreat.  The first enemy tank was grinding up towards them as the sergeant passed Foch the Knife and picked up a bag of explosives they had been using to set booby-traps and makeshift mines everywhere, hefting it in one strong hand.  Foch stared at him for a moment, and then a burst of fire brought him back to reality; he fired the second Knife on one quick motion, even as the sergeant threw the bag of explosives and detonators under the third Russian tank.  There was a savage explosion; the Russian tank was blown over by the blast, rolling over and over until it caught fire and burned merrily away.  More Russian soldiers had appeared, this time with mortars and other light weapons; the Frenchmen kept their heads down as the rounds started to fall near their trench.

Something at the corner of his eye caught his attention.  Foch swung around to see a black aircraft, flying very close to the ground, closing in rapidly from the west.  The black cross of the aircraft seemed to be hanging in the sky as it closed in…and started to open fire, shredding his men like paper dolls.  Foch opened his mouth to call a retreat…and then hot bursts of pain tore through his body, and then darkness swept him away in its comforting embrace.

***

“We are breaking through the main defence line,” Anna said.  Shalenko nodded; the casualties had been heavier than he had expected, but the French had almost no reserves at all.  Their only armoured units had moved out to engage the Russian armour and had been picked off from the air by Russian bombers; far too many Frenchmen had retreated into the nearest town, where they were engaging the Russian soldiers in house-to-house combat.  Russian bombers were roaming the skies unchallenged after the first hail of SAM missiles; everything that even looked suspicious was targeted for destruction.  “The commander of 2
nd
Shock is requesting permission to exploit the breakthrough.”