The Fall of Night (51 page)

***

Robinson saw the Captain, a young studious officer who had handled his unit well, if without inspiration, go down on top of a Russian officer and screamed in outrage.  The Russian broke the Captain’s neck with a single quick moment and slipped out; Robinson knew that he was too dangerous a fighter to risk a hand-to-hand fight, no matter how much he wanted one; he lifted his assault rifle and fired in one quick motion.

“Oh, you son of a bitch,” he said, as he saw what the Russian had done.  Instincts took over and he threw himself backwards as the grenades detonated; screaming red hot pain cascaded through him as the fragments of shrapnel burned through his legs and chest.  He couldn’t feel his legs; the pain was too great to allow him even to think; the sense that someone was talking to him, someone very close, was confusing his mind.  He couldn’t even focus enough to rally and kill Russians…

“Hazel,” he said, or thought he said, and blacked out.

***

Inglehart saw Robinson fall and cursed the Russians as he wounded one with a gut-shot, blowing the Russian’s head off with a second shot.  He had liked Robinson; he had known him since he was a nervous common soldier, to becoming a commissioned officer, to becoming a competent Captain…and then the man who had saved all of their lives.  He threw a grenade at a nearby group of Russians and knelt by his Captain – he could never think of him as a Colonel – examining the wounds; they were bad.  The ruined legs alone would cripple him for the rest of his life…

The choice wasn't hard to make.  The Russians had fallen back; Inglehart knew what that meant, a bombardment.  He shouted orders to two of the medics, ordering them to carry the Captain out of the battlezone, and turned back to face the advancing Russians.  He owed Robinson his life; he could have fled, but in the end…he had accepted the price of duty a long time ago, when he had first taken service in the army, a long time before Robinson had ever joined himself.

Inglehart was proud of Robinson; he was proud to be a Sergeant in the greatest army in the world.  It had been a long career, watching the army rise and fall, seeing newer officers prove themselves or fail under the supreme test of combat.  It had been a good life, all in all; wine – or rather beer – women and song, all spent with the finest bunch of bastards on the face of the planet.  He wouldn’t have changed a thing.

Inglehart kept fighting until they overwhelmed him.  He died surrounded by the bodies of his foes.

***

“They’re punching through the main defence line,” the aide reported.  Langford could hear a hint of panic in her voice; they were on the verge of being trapped in the HQ if the Russian advance was not checked.  “They’re moving to outflank Dorking itself.”

Langford scowled.  The Russians had managed the penetration quicker than he had expected; he had anticipated the bombardment of Dorking, but not the almost suicidal tactics the Russians had used to break through.  Time was on their side; was there some reason why they had forced the issue as much as they had, apart from sheer bloody-mindedness?

It didn’t matter.  “Contact Major Ryan,” he ordered.  The time had come to play the last card in his hand, the only card he had held back for the final battle.  There had been no other choice, not until now; the last card had to be played, or abandoned along with the war.  “The tanks will advance and engage the enemy.”

Yet we had plenty of warnings, if we had only made use of them. The danger did not come on us unawares. It burst on us suddenly, 'tis true; but it’s coming was foreshadowed plainly enough to open our eyes, if we had not been wilfully blind.  We English have only ourselves to blame for the humiliation which has been brought on the land
.

George Chesney

Near Dorking, United Kingdom

“Advance!”

Major John Patrick David Ryan settled himself firmly in his command tank as the Eurotank – perhaps the last Eurotank left in existence – began to move forward.  The command Eurotank had been designed as a larger version of the original, with space for the officer in command of the regiment to direct his tanks as he saw fit; the British Challengers that moved forward were older and slower, although tougher.  The design was more than thirty years old – some of the tanks were older still – but they could still hold their own.

He held his breath as the final tank lunged forward.  Hiding the tanks had been a nightmare; it had been hard enough moving them around without the heavy vehicles smashing up roads and motorways, although that, at least, was a positive bonus when slowing the enemy down was part of the mission objectives.  The tanks had normally been moved around the country on trains and tank transporters, but there had been fewer exercises for coordinating such activity before the war began, and now it was almost too late.  Had they been kept in Scotland, he wasn't sure that they would have managed to get them down to England in time to fight; the devastation the Russians had caused to the British infrastructure had been serious.  They had been competing with various companies and government-run commissions, always hard men to beat, but the Russians had aimed to destroy, rather than milking a crumbling edifice of every last pound before it was too late.

It wouldn’t be long before the Russians saw them and responded; it was all-too-possible that the Russians had seen them hiding the tanks, despite their best precautions.  He had kept his men away from the vehicles right up until the final moment, just in case the Russians caught sight of them, but it seemed as if the American data had proven itself and the Russians were completely unaware that they still existed.  The Russians had destroyed enough tank parks and storage silos; he hoped that, perhaps, they were starting to wonder if they had destroyed all of Britain’s tanks.  They had certainly given it the old college try.

The Americans had supplied them with microburst communications equipment and they used them exclusively; the Yanks were pretty certain that the Russians would be unable to track them through their microburst emissions.  He
would have preferred more tanks, even outdated early-model Abrams tanks, but it had been impossible to have those shipped over for the war. –   A handful of American EW gear had also been sent over; the Russians would be finding all manner of problems with some of their systems, problems that would make them wonder if they were having glitches, or if something was definitely out there, hunting them.  The sensor ghosts would make tracking the second part of the plan difficult; a lot of men were about to die.  Ryan could only hope that their deaths would be worth something.

The Russians had been forcing armoured columns up the British roads, springing ambushes and bringing up vast firepower to confront the British defenders, before trying to crush the entire British Army.  The line had broken up ahead and, as Russian doctrine ordered, the Russians had thrown the better part of one of their armoured units into the gap, trying to push it open wider.  They had to distrust the strange mixture of patchwork fields and houses on the outskirts of Dorking; scouts reported that the Russians had blasted a number of houses with heavy tank shells for no apparent reason.

The latest microburst update flickered onto his screen; the Russians had launched their main push into the region, breaking into vacuum.  His force was ambling onwards, picking up speed; they would be in a perfect position to ambush the Russians in moments.  All they had to do was remain quiet…and hope that the Russians neither saw them, nor heard the rumble of the tank’s diesel engines.  It wouldn’t be long now.

***

Colonel Bogdan Aleksandrovich Onishenko glared around him as the T-100 rumbled past yet another perfect ambush site, one hand on the holster he wore at his hip.  He didn’t like Britain; it went from strange countryside to patchwork fields to quite large habitations, all within the space of a few miles.  Onishenko had been in tanks since he passed through basic training; he knew enough to know that the British were sneaky and very good at improvising.  So far, there had been no real resistance once the main defence line had been breached, but the British would be scrambling to establish a second line as soon as possible, perhaps even before his unit could really put the boot in.

He muttered a curse under his breath, directed equally at the British and his superiors alike.  They had insisted on limiting the amount of damage the Russian forces did – a tall order under any circumstances, and rather at odds with the ruin that Russian forces had reduced Dover to, before the fighting there had mercifully come to a halt.  Several of his tankers had fired on buildings which had looked suspicious; he found it hard to reprimand them, although he had no choice, but to tell them off.  They wouldn’t face the penal units for such actions, but it wouldn’t be good for winning hearts and minds…not that there were any civilians around to impress with Russian restraint.

Coming to think of it, the only British civilians he had seen had been a set of looters, who had been forced to face the jeers of the Russian soldiers before being set to work moving equipment for the Russians as part of a long sentence for looting.  Their protests hadn’t bothered the Russians at all; it was better than being dumped into a penal unit, assuming that the FSB didn’t just shoot them on sight.  One of them had refused, unable to believe what was happening to them; he had been shot down like a dog.  Onishenko hadn’t cared; discipline had to be maintained, whatever the price…

“Colonel, we may have aircraft in your general area,” a controller called, from one of the Mainstays orbiting far behind the lines.  Onishenko cursed again; the Mainstays had been having problems all day with sensor ghosts, sending out air raid warnings at the drop of several hats and ordering armed fighters to intercept phantom targets.  It would be much easier if a handful of fighters were on permanent CAP, but some bureaucrat in the Russian Air Force had insisted on fighters maintaining a distance to avoid them being shot down by ground-fire; the losses in the first day of the invasion had stunned them.  “Please be alert for air traffic…”

Onishenko cursed again.  The Russians had hundreds of bombers, criss-crossing the sky and waiting for targets; his men, spooked, would be likely to fire on them or call for fighter support for cover against their own people, let alone the dangers of Russian aircraft seeing what they thought was hostile units and opening fire at ‘danger close.’  All he had to do was cut through the British lines and sow panic in their rear; at the moment, he was wondering if they even
had
a rear.  They could have been halfway to London by now if the higher-ups hadn’t insisted on playing it carefully…

He heard the noise of an aircraft, then several aircraft, and then plenty of aircraft.  He turned his head to the north, wondering why the noise sounded funny, and saw them making their way towards him.  The sight made his mouth drop open for a long moment; he had expected to see combat jets and assault helicopters, not…he wasn’t sure what they were, but he was sure that they were British.  Many of them looked older than anything he’d seen in the Russian Army, others looked as if they could barely fly; he wondered if somehow they had blundered into an air show…

And then they started to drop bombs…

***

There were over three hundred older aircraft in Britain, some of them lovingly protected at various museums and air shows, others pushed into service by pilots who had volunteered for their dangerous mission, many of them without any means of hurting the enemy.  Other aircraft belonged to display teams; the entire Red Arrow reserve squadron – the main pilots had been recalled to the RAF during the Second Battle of Britain – had volunteered to a man to fly their Hawks in one final glorious mission.  A Spitfire, a Lightning, dozens of civilian aircraft…all flew towards a Russian force that could not believe its eyes.  The American EW tech had provided just enough of a break; for a moment, the Russians couldn’t hope to react in time…

Even as ZSU units swung around to fire missiles and CIWS shells at the incredible force, the Hawks of the Red Arrows swooped in low, just above the ground.  They flew in formation every week of every year; they performed the craziest of manoeuvres, just for the benefit of gawking spectators.  Now, they dropped makeshift bombs on the Russian forces, catching them before they could reprioritise their targeting and separate the dangerous aircraft out from the diversion.  It would be bare minutes before Russian fighters emerged to challenge them and knock them from the sky; in that time, a single pass could do a lot of damage…

***

Onishenko found his voice as the first Hawk screamed overhead, dropping precision bombs on the Russian tanks, homing in on their turrets.  “Open fire,” he screamed, shouting for the ZSU units and the tanks armed with antiaircraft weapons to put them to use.  A hail of fire, not all of it coordinated or radar-guided, shot up into the sky; priceless aircraft fell out of the sky, or in some cases were guided by their pilots down onto Russian tanks and vehicles just before they crashed.  “Take them down!”

It was impossible!  He ducked as a biplane, a vehicle he could have outrun in his tank on open ground, passed overhead, low enough for his hair to feel its presence.  A Hawk made a second pass, only to be blown out of the air and crash onto the road; the British houses nearby started to burn as more aircraft crashed into them, or started to make their escape.  The sonic booms from Russian fighters echoed across the land…and then one of his tanks blew up.  Onishenko whirled, to see a sight he had never expected to see; a British tank was moving directly towards his position.

He opened his mouth to shout orders and the British tank slammed an armour-penetrating shell into his tank, blowing it apart before he could react.

***

The aircraft had worked better than Major Ryan had dared hope; the Russians had been caught in a state of almost-complete shock.  His force advanced carefully, moving as quickly as they dared and firing at every half-intact Russian tank they saw; there was no time to work out which were dangerous, and which could be safely ignored.  There would be Russian aircraft overhead within moments if the news got out; the American jamming equipment might be better than the Russian equipment, but it could hardly fail to alert the Russians that
something
was going on…

A Russian BMP was moving slightly, turning as if it intended to escape; he barked orders and one of his tanks hit it with a high-explosive shell, sending it up in a shower of sparks…which rapidly became a huge explosion.  Russian infantry scattered, some of them firing desperately at the Challengers with their rifles, others engaged in the more practical act of running away from their tormentors.  Just for a moment, Ryan could allow himself to hope that they would have a chance, before the Russians counter-attacked.  More tanks appeared and a brief exchange of fire left tanks on both sides flaming wrecks…

“Fall back,” he ordered, as the American data revealed that there were no more Russian tanks close enough to be used as cover.  He had soldiers with handheld SAM missiles scattered around, but he knew better than to think that they could provide the perfect air cover he needed; the Russians would be on them soon with heavy bombers, perhaps even MLRS launchers if they had any brought up in time.  “We don’t want them hitting us while there are no Russians left to use for cover…”

It had been an Iraqi trick, then an Iranian one, and finally the Palestinians had adopted it, although after the disaster that Israel had suffered, the Israelis had given up caring about such things as global public opinion.  They had been close enough to the Russian positions to make any attempt to bomb the crap out of them an exercise in fratricide; the Russians were unlikely to condone any attempts to kill their own people when it was so much more sporting to let the British do it.  Now, the Russians were gone; it was possible that the Russians would strike them as hard as they could.

The tanks moved back desperately, leaving three of their number burning in the streets, and a fourth disabled beyond the point where it could move.  The crew of the damaged tank refused to leave; given one chance, they could still hurt the others.  Ryan saluted them as the tanks pulled back; he knew he would never see them again.

***

“They’re attacking with
what
?”