Authors: Christopher Nuttall
Gudrun had been one of the lucky ones; she had been knocked to the ground as soon as the shooting started, unhurt apart from bruised knees and bloody scratches on her legs. She tried to crawl away, only to be caught, secured, and thrown towards a group of her fellow female protesters, all forced to sit on the ground with their hands brutally tied behind their backs. The male protesters were rounded up as well; she caught sight of her boyfriend’s broken face as the Russians escorted the male protesters into trucks driven by German drivers, all handcuffed to the wheel. She met his eyes, one final time; they were torn with horror and despair.
She didn’t want to look at the bodies, or the blood; there were hundreds of bodies waiting for disposal as the Russian soldiers moved through them, inspecting them all, unconcerned about the blood. A handful of mortally wounded protesters were quickly shot in the head, their cries fading away as they were sent into merciful oblivion; a handful of protesters who had been playing dead were found and tossed in with the other trapped protesters. The Russians finally completed their grizzly task and barked orders; Gudrun, despite herself, wasn’t blind to the implications of separating the men from the women. Somehow, she didn’t think that their fate would be pleasant.
For the next hour, their hands were freed and their legs were shackled together, before they were given their orders; clear up the mess. Some of the girls became hysterical at the sight before them and refused; the Russians simply shot them in the head, leaving only a few hundred girls to clear up the dead bodies. Gudrun forced herself to work, picking up the remains of her friends and fellows; she forced herself not to look as the remains were dumped in the back of several garbage trucks and carted out of the city. Gudrun wasn’t religious, but she didn’t like the thought of the remains of her friends being dumped in a mass grave; she didn’t dare protest. The slightest hint of defiance was met with death. Broken, sobbing, Gudrun worked until the Russians finally pulled them out of the hellish scene, loaded them onto trucks, and sent them back out of the city.
She exchanged glances with the other girls. What was going to happen to them? They all wondered; were they going to ever see their homes again? Some of them had small injuries, others had nasty-looking wounds; some of them weren’t even properly dressed any longer. All of them were covered in blood, staining everything; she felt dirty, disgusting…helpless. Unable almost to breathe, because of the smell, Gudrun was forced out of the van by the Russians, still shackled to the others, and forced into a shower. The cold water was a shock, but it was a relief; the girls tried as best as they could to clean themselves before the Russians escorted them into the next room, and stopped.
“No,” Gudrun said, or thought; it hardly mattered now. Their fate had become all too clear; she wondered, suddenly, if the same had happened to the boys, or if they had merely been dumped into a work gang. “No…”
They were facing a horde of Russian soldiers, looking at the girls with expressions that could not be described with mere words. Some of the girls tried to protest, knowing that it would get them killed…but they weren't killed, as the Russians started to undo their trousers and consider the helpless girls. They advanced towards the young girls…
And then the screaming really started.
It was happening all over Europe.
The Russians had known, of course, about the depth of leftist sentiment in Europe, the feeling that protesters had the right to protest about whatever they liked, without any thought as to the consequences of their actions, or even possible punishment in the future. They had counted on it, flattered it, encouraged it…and ensured that many of the leaders of the ‘left’ were either brought under their control or disappeared before they could organise pacifist resistance. Many of them were realists and accepted the new world order; many more believed what they said, and had to be removed before they could cause trouble.
The Russians also knew the key to a successful campaign of civil disobedience.
It could be summed up as ‘choose your opponent carefully;’ the theorists of the left had never grasped that point. Looking for overall examples of people power – India, Mexico, even the Moscow Coup Attempt of 1991 – they had missed the specifics; the people had moved against opponents who had consciences. The British had not mown down the Great Salt March, nor had the Russian soldiers in Moscow fired on Yeltsin and his people; they had cared about their people, or about public opinion. The Russians did not care about either, particularly people who were useless; the students and young adults who thronged the streets of Europe were useless to them.
The wave of violence started and ended quickly. In Warsaw, a sit-down protest ended with the tanks ignoring the bodies in their path and driving onwards over them; seventy died and twelve more were injured and died soon afterwards. In Berlin, students who tried to retake the remains of the centre of government found themselves fired upon, clubbed, and hauled off to detention camps. In France, protesters who had found their way to one of the Arab detention camps and protested at the detention found themselves shoved into the camp; for the young women, they had been tossed into hell. Resistance was futile…
As the weeks passed, the Russians worked hard to bring Europe back to a state of normality, offering incentives to civil servants and engineers to return to work. Aided by vast numbers of Russians, the civil servants found themselves serving as Russian agents, registering each and every member of the European population from the Ukraine to the Spanish border, excepting only the neutral Swiss. Trained workers found themselves working on rebuilding the shattered transportation infrastructure; farmers found themselves ordered to forget EU regulations and produce as much as they could, paid in Russian money. The Eurobank had been seized; Russian money had become the only legitimate form of tender and only the Russians used it, paying those who worked for them, who in turn used it to pay their own people.
Other factories were reopened and offered contacts with Russian firms. Europe had a high-tech infrastructure second only to America’s…and on a fair level of equality with Japan, and a vast amount of technical workers. They found themselves working for the Russians, paid well to improve the Russian technical base and rearm the Russians for a future war. As more and more factories came back online, stripped of the red tape and European regulations, business even began to pick up; the Russians only had small taxes on business. All over Europe, workers were asking the same question; was it really so bad under the Russians?
The unfortunates in the various detention camps might have given them an answer. The Russians had put nearly two million people in the camps, from soldiers and policemen to insurgents and protesters. They now worked through them again, ensuring that they had the prisoners all registered, before organising their final disposition. The protesters were informed that for their crimes against the new authority, they would be sentenced to a year of hard labour, helping to clear up the wreckage from the fighting. With new ID cards and uniforms, they found themselves attached to labour gangs and forced to work for a living in their home cities. They were the lucky ones; the remains of the male insurgents, beaten and cowed, were shackled and put to work clearing up the damage they had caused, including burying bodies and removing explosives; the death rate rose rapidly. The female insurgents were sent to Russian brothels; their fate would be worse than that of their menfolk. As a final slap in the face, their food rations included pork; many starved, others broke Islamic Law and ate it to survive.
But they were not the most unfortunate. The soldiers and policemen, those who had survived, had remained shackled in their camps under heavy guard. Day after day, the helpless captives would see new faces as the soldiers who had returned to their families instead of fighting were rounded up and added to the camps; night after night, bursts of gunfire split the air as attempted escape attempts were foiled with deadly force. Fed only on gruel and water, the prisoners lost their strength rapidly; they wondered if the Russians intended to simply kill them all without shooting them. One day, however, everything changed; bound and secured, the prisoners found themselves loaded onboard trains that headed east, directly to Siberia. As the weather grew colder, they wondered if they would ever see their homelands again…
Time passed. In the west, Russian forces gathered and a massive logistical effort began, focusing on the final stage in Operation Stalin. Europeans living nearby were removed from their homes and sent elsewhere, clearing the ports for Russian use alone; forced labour was used to clear up the damage from the fighting, preparing the ports to support the largest amphibious invasion in the 21
st
Century…
The Invasion of Britain…
Chapter Forty-Three: Mr Luong Goes to Washington
I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours... They are nations of eternal war
.
Thomas Jefferson
The paranoia of the Secret Service had only increased a thousand-fold, Ambassador Andrew Luong realised, as he entered the Security Zone around Washington DC. These days, there were only a few regular air flights to Washington directly; only the highest ranking military officers and congressmen were permitted to enter the area of airspace surrounding the centre of America. Twenty-three years of seemingly endless conflict against a determined and multi-faceted enemy had left the American people all-too-aware of their own vulnerability; while Europe soul-searched over the creation of a European Identity Card, Americans not only had cards, but other tricks as well; no one could be allowed near the world’s number one terrorist target without their identity being checked and rechecked. Luong, once one of America’s most important Ambassadors, was no exception; they treated him like a suspect right from the start.
Some elements of the paranoia seemed ridiculous, Luong knew; there was a reason for everything. They checked his blood, the implants hidden under his neck, and his eye-patterns, before escorting him into a secure room and ordering him to undress, inspecting each and every body cavity before presenting him with a White House issue suit – ill-fitting and very uncomfortable – and escorting him through a line of heavy weapons into the heart of the American Government. One enterprising terrorist had literally managed to make a vest that had exploded when it reached a certain temperature; the attack had come far too close to success and it would never be allowed to happen again. The White House, the Senate, and the Pentagon were all secured; the workers either lived in them, or they went through the security precautions every time they entered or left the compound.
He smiled as they reached the White House; it was no surprise that the vast majority of Americans chose to telecommute these days, assuming that they weren’t one of the unlucky ones drafted into the army. America had full conscription for the war, but not all of the males could be taken for the army; a third of the male population served in one of the armed services, volunteers first, then those who would benefit from a term in the services. It had had an effect; public health was up and crime figures were down. The problem was that America was vastly overstretched and, as he had said to Langford, not well disposed towards Europe.
CNN, which had become more right-wing than Fox following the horrific murder of several of its journalists, had reported on some of the demonstrations. Spanish, Irish and German Americans had demonstrated for helping their countries, but there had been counter-marches of Americans who remembered two long wars to save Europe from itself, only to be rewarded with scorn, disdain, and droll comments about empires. Luong knew that America had made mistakes, including allying itself with Saudi Arabia, but they had meant well; wasn’t that enough?
It wasn't. European media had looked for the worst and found it; even some American media had followed the same path of endlessly nitpicking and ignoring all the good that had been done. He was sure that the Shias in Saudi Arabia had welcomed the Americans who had protected them from the mobs that had set out to kill them all, but no, the media had focused on protests at the American presence, because the Shias didn’t trust the Americans. Luong didn’t blame them, but he blamed the media; the Shias had thought they were going to be abandoned like so many other allies of America. And then Iran, and then Mike Collins, and then…
“The President will see you now,” the President’s personal assistant said. She was young, Japanese-American, and pretty enough to send heads turning everywhere. If it had been any other President, there would have been suspicions that she did more than just type, but they couldn’t say that about President Kirkpatrick. “Please will you come with me?”
The White House had been refurbished after a terrorist missile had destroyed the original Oval Office. The new one was a strange mixture of comfortable, authoritarian, and high-tech, all concentrated in the figure of the slight woman who rose from behind her desk to greet Luong. Her presence was almost overwhelming; it was easy to see why she had a seventy percent approval rating, few would dare vote against her. Luong himself had voted for her.
President Joan Kirkpatrick was slight, but carried herself with immense dignity and
gravitas
; her long red hair was curled up neatly into a teacher’s bun and perched on her head, her eyes were both smiling and thoughtful at the same time. She looked like everyone’s favourite teacher; she was around forty years old, and looked around fifty. It had been six months since Luong had seen her in the flesh and the change worried him; she had grown older, with grey hairs appearing in her bun.
“Welcome back to the United States,” the President said, without further ado. She was a Republican, but that meant less these days; she had also expected to sail comfortably into her second term in office before the Russians had launched their war. “I’m very relieved to see that you made it out safely when so many others didn’t have a chance.”
“Thank you, Madam President,” Luong said. The President had been married and then had become a widow; her husband had died on the
Kennedy
when it had gone down near Iran. There was no questioning her determination to fight the war to the bitter end. “I’m glad to be here.”
The President briefly introduced the other men in the room, and then motioned for Luong to begin his story, which he did as quickly as he could. He outlined the warnings, such as they were, the chaos that had enveloped London, and the news that the Russians had invaded Poland and then Denmark. He explained what had happened to Colonel Seth Fanaroff, who was being debriefed at the Pentagon, and how badly EUROFOR had been hurt by the Russians.
“I don’t understand how they’re moving so quickly,” General McDowell said. The President’s Chief of Staff was a former tank driver himself. “We had problems in Iraq and Iran because we ran out of fuel.”
“They captured stocks, apparently, and pressed drivers into service,” Luong said. “There will be places that have hardly felt the touch of the Russian boot yet, but…it’s amazing how far you can move if no one is trying to slow you down.”
McDowell scowled. “What I want to know is how the hell they – and we – missed it?” He snapped. “They had a massive build up and no one even fucking – begging your pardon, madam – noticed!”
CIA looked uncomfortable. “We did notice,” he admitted. “We didn’t realise that the Russians had their eye on all of Europe; we thought, from the information that we were getting from Russia, that they were posturing to ensure that they had a favourable deal from the Ukraine when the country finally managed to solve its problems. They did it before, and at least three other times; the Poles just ended up being treated as the nation of boys who called wolf.”
McDowell looked unconvinced. “And our spy satellites?”
“The Russians don’t have satellites as good as ours, but they do have a very good idea of what works and what doesn’t,” CIA said. “They hid the sheer scale of the build up from us; by the time we had a handle on it, it was too late. Our human intelligence sources were either lied to or have been turned; there is no other explanation.”
“Morons,” McDowell muttered. “You couldn’t anticipate my fist if it was right in front of your face.”
Luong shook his head slowly. They both had good points; Intelligence was often about guessing from incomplete information, rather than knowing every last detail before it was too late. Dictator-led regimes were very good at security; it was quite possible that the spies had been sending information they believed to be true, rather than simply being Russian double-agents. There was no way to know; heads would be rolling back at Langley for that failure.
“These points can be addressed later,” the President said, tapping the table for quiet. It fell very quickly. “The important question is simple; what do we do about it?”
Luong took a long breath. “The British have formally asked for our help, along with the Irish,” he said. He spoke rapidly and well, covering all of the issues; the British needed help now. “They’re short on everything,” he said, finally. “If they don’t get help soon, they will almost certainly fall when the Russians come over the Channel.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that,” McDowell said. “We looked at the problem back during the bad old days of the Cold War. It’s not like crossing a river.”
“The British are certain that the Russians have the capability,” Luong said sharply. “In a week, or however long it takes the Russians to get organised, they will launch the Second Battle of Britain; the difference being that they will almost certainly succeed in forcing the RAF to expend its remaining aircraft and units, while grinding away at the Royal Navy with bombers and missiles. There will be nowhere for the British to hide; they don’t have the SHORAD assets needed to cover all of their bases, or indeed their cities. It will take time, but time is on the side of the Russians…
“Once they have air cover, they will move in using the transports we have tracked them moving down the coast,” he continued. “Unless the British get very lucky, they will gain a foothold on British soil and expand their foothold towards London. Once that happens, it’s just a matter of time before Britain falls.”
There was a long pause.
The President broke it. “Opinions?”
“I have never pretended to be a politician,” McDowell said. “I understand that civilian control of the military is supposed to be absolute. However, it is my duty to bring certain points to the President’s attention.”
“Go on,” the President said.
“At the moment, we have heavily committed in Korea, and in fact we have two additional divisions heading there to reinforce III Corps after the losses they took in the battle for Seoul,” McDowell said. “If we can hold on, we can break the North Korean Army once and for all, and this time, we won’t have to worry about Chinese intervention in the north. Kang may go nuts and try to use his nukes, but with the FIELD GREEN system in place, that is no longer the threat it once was… I must stress, however, that the forces in Korea have been in a war zone for a month and they are faltering; they need reinforcements, not the removal of more of their units.
“At the same time, we have a number of units heavily committed across the Middle East, fighting a low-intensity war against various rag-headed factions,” McDowell continued. The President scowled; as a woman, she was regarded with scorn and outright hatred by the more lunatic of the factions, some of whom had pronounced her a transvestite because they couldn’t understand how she wielded the power of a man. “The game-play is basically simple; where we are strong, there is peace, where we are weak…
“Oh, we’re making progress,” he admitted, “we’re helping our allies to build up their own forces and in around ten more years, we might even win the war in the Middle East. The sad thing is that the Russians may have done us a favour; their invasion and how they treat known terrorists means that they have done what the European Union refused to do, cut off the funding for the terror factions. The end of the war is finally in sight…”
“At the cost of thousands of European lives,” Luong said softly. “Democratic states; democracy, the political movement that we are trying to encourage…lost forever in Europe under the Russians.”
McDowell held up a hand. “If I may finish?” Luong scowled, but nodded grimly, privately promising himself that he would fight tooth and nail. “The main rapid reaction force here in the States was the Airborne unit, which we dispatched post-haste to Iceland at their request. We have a handful of National Guard units that are assisting the border patrols and units in Cuba that are holding the island down while the Cuban exiles make good little Americans of them. The long and short of the matter, Madam President, is that the most we can spare is a handful of units, none of which can be moved over to Britain in time to be useful.”
He sighed. “We had plans drawn up for a rapid reinforcing of American soldiers in Europe during the Cold War,” he concluded. “They included supplies that were pre-positioned in Britain and Germany; these days, we don’t have anything in Britain that can be used beyond a handful of isolated airfields the British kept in mothballs and have reactivated for their current predicament. It would take weeks to move a serious force into Britain, months, if not years, if you want to reverse the conquest of Europe. It can’t be done.”
The President looked up at him. “There’s nothing that we can do?”
“We can send the British some of our supplies – I understand that Canada is doing that already; problem is they don’t have a serious army or serious stockpiles – and we can take in refugees if the British want to try to evacuate some of their population,” McDowell said. “We have the
Clinton
sailing near Peru; we can move her down to the Falklands and cover the islands, ensuring that the British don’t get knifed in the back by Argentina, therefore allowing the British to withdraw their task force quicker. We can continue to supply them with intelligence and perhaps even transfer a handful of aircraft to them, but…I think that that would be scraping the barrel.”