ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (7 page)

The Russians were fairly certain that had the launch
facility been on UK or US soil no tit for tat nuclear response would follow as
they were holding back from escalating the use of nuclear weapons beyond that
of depth charges, a situation China and Russia were capitalising on, but the
French were the atomic wild card in NATO’s pack.

The original plan called for thirty eight SF
operatives to sink the freighter
Fliterland
beside the purpose built dock at
Kourou where the
Ariane
and
Vega
components were delivered by sea, thus severely
delaying further launches as the satellites arrived by sea from France and
Germany. They were also to drop the nearby bridge into the Kourou River to
prevent the components being brought overland from more distant port near Cayenne.

At the launch pads, the approach ramps were to be
wrecked with cratering charges because the rockets were transported erect from
the final assembly building on roads that could not be more than
10° out of true.

Any rockets already on the pad could not be damaged
without the risk of a catastrophic explosion but the same was not true of the
sensitive payload sat on top and costing tens of millions of Euros. These could
be rendered useless with a hundred Yuan’s worth of machine gun rounds.

The key to the operation was that of speed and
surprise as the opposition were jungle warfare specialist units, the 3
^rd
Marine Regiment and the Foreign Legions
3e
Régiment étranger d'infanterie.
The
Legion guarded the space centre and ran France’s jungle warfare school at
Regina, 80 miles from the space centre and close to the border with Brazil. The
marines themselves were all based along the borders with Brazil and Suriname.

The simplest of deception plans had ensured that the
French regiments
were being kept busy in
the interior and along the border with Brazil two hundred miles from the Space
Centre.

In time of war the price of gold goes up and an
article planted in the popular Portuguese tabloid newspaper
Correio da Manhã
that told of a massive gold strike in French Guiana had been picked up
by the Brazilian media and ensured that the always troublesome
Garimpeiros
,
the illegal Brazilian miners, were considerably more numerous and more blatant
in their trespassing than normal. This led to the Guiana Gendarmeries calling
on the Legion and Marines for support as the miners were aggressive and often
better armed than the policemen.

3e REI
was
effectively split in two by the Kourou River with its regimental headquarters near
Cayenne airport and one of its two infantry companies at Regina, a few miles
inland and in easy reach of the Brazilian border. These retained the regiment’s
small air detachment of a Puma troop carrying helicopter and a small Gazelle
for reconnaissance and communications (the Colonel’s taxi).

North of the Kourou, the legionnaires’ assault
engineers and anti-aircraft detachments guarded the space centre with the
remaining infantry company, although a militia-like reserve company made up of
former Legionnaires had a platoon in Kourou and two more in Cayenne.

The marines were even more divided, working out of
company and sometimes just platoon locations that were dotted along the border.
They were completely independent and self-contained sub units though; they
walked into the jungle and survived on what they carried on their backs and
caches dropped by their own river patrol’s rigid raiders.

However, despite their abilities as jungle fighters,
they were severely limited in their mobility having no air support and also a
rivalry with the Legion that precluded their ever asking for assistance or
support from that quarter.

The marines numbered five infantry companies, a
Riverine Squadron and a heavy weapons company but they were not set up to
quickly react to situations occurring outside their individual companies
immediate areas of operations.

Between the small Chinese force and the shore were of
course at least one suspected minefield and four surface threats in the form of
a pair of
D’Estienne D'Orves
class ASW corvettes and two
L'audacieuse
offshore patrol boats which could make life interesting.

A flight of two Breguet
Atlantique IIs had been stationed at Cayenne airport which would
likewise serve to keep boredom at bay.

“My task of getting you close enough to launch your
submersibles has changed little in real terms, but you are now light one third
of the manpower and equipment required to complete your mission.” He looked at
the soldier and smoothed out the map.

“You are the resident expert on anything that causes
blistered feet Captain and I am but a humble squid, as the Americans say.” He
tapped the map. “As I see it we have more targets than troops now, and for your
information we have precisely three hundred miles worth of diesel fuel
remaining so I am open to any suggestions you have on our completing the
mission as well as a safe withdrawal that precludes walking as a means of
escape and evasion.” He ended with a grin.

Captain Huaiqing smiled a little smugly.

“We foot sloggers think on our feet even when we are
sitting on our arses…it is already done.” he removed from inside his shirts
breast pocket a sheet of A4 sized paper with the brief outline of an
alternative plan.

“It will, I promise you, require only that your
delicate navy feet carry you up to your conning tower, and should you choose to
stretch your legs on shore then that is up to you.”

Li’s eyebrows rose, intrigued, but he let the soldier
continue.

“You will still
endeavor
to
penetrate the minefields between the old French penal colony islands?”

Li nodded. “The ironically named Islands of Salvation;
Royale, St Joseph and of course Devils Island…yes, it is impossible to mine the
waters there. The tidal race would unseat mere weighted anchors even if it were
deep enough to mine. But at high tide your submersibles have an hour’s window
to get on the landward side of the islands where it is also unfriendly waters
for mining operations.”

Li paused, glancing at the SF commander-by-default.

“Can you split your remaining forces and still complete
all three primary goals?”

Jie Huaiqing shook his head.

“That would be highly unlikely, if not impossible.” He
said emphatically.

“
But,
if
Bao
’s detachment attacks the
Soyuz
pad
as planned and I take ten men to attack the
Ariane
and
Vega
pads and that leaves eight soldiers that the navy can
carry into the mouth of the Kourou to the dock. They blow the bridge as planned
and you torpedo the
Fliterland
and burgle the Paris Fire Brigade so we can all go
home.”

Li coughed in surprise. “Paris
?…
what
?”

“Health and Safety laws in the EEC decree that certain
facilities be served by
firefighting
equipment and
personnel of a very exacting standard. Those facilities are Class A
international airports, fuel storage sites holding more than a quarter million
cubic square feet of storage space for flammable gases and liquids, and…space
ports.”
    Li still had a blank
expression on his face, clearly not getting the connection and wondering what
in the hell Jie was jabbering about EEC regulations for?

“The Paris Fire Brigade was geographically the closest
French
firefighting
unit to meet the strict
requirements so they have a fire station at Kourou Space Port
and
a
storage tank of high grade diesel fuel for their appliances at the docks
because the local stuff cannot be relied upon.” He looked very smug as he
continued.

“You really can’t have rockets blowing up because the
fire engine broke down on the way because of dodgy diesel.”

Li shook his head. “I bet you were bullied at school
for being a swat, weren’t you?”
     “It was in the
intelligence briefing we had back in April.” said Huaiqing waving a
well-thumbed notebook.

“That doesn’t mean you had to write it down.”

“I had to…the snoring from all the naval officers was
making it too hard to memorise.”

All armies have to have a structured method of passing
on orders in a way that gets the information across in a logical fashion.
Everyone has to know the ‘What’, ‘When’, ‘Where’ and ‘How’, and who does what,
and when, and how.

‘Why’ does feature, but far less than a career
civilian would expect.

Jie had written headings in his notebook, the Chinese
military’s equivalent of ‘Ground’, ‘Situation’, ‘Mission’, ‘Execution’,
‘Service Support’ and ‘Command & Signals’ with sub-headings to those
headings along with sub-headings to the sub-headings. The British call this ‘a
set of orders’ and the process of briefing troops from them
is
known as an ‘O’ Group.
  China
trains its leaders to brief troops along fairly similar lines.

‘Execution’ is all about who does what, and when, and
this is a fairly comprehensive section. It includes a sub heading entitled
‘Actions on:-
‘ which
 is meant to cover all eventualities, all possible scenarios that
may occur and endanger the successful execution of the mission.

A
further hour
put finer detail onto the plan and they both agreed that
fueling
the two submarines before withdrawing to a safe distance and putting a pair of
shallow set torpedoes into the 
Fliterland
 was a long shot, but 
Dai
 had
a good chance of getting the bridge demolition team ashore and sinking the
freighter at its moorings.

Li pursed his lips, frowning and looking at the map,
folded to show the coastline from Kourou to the border with Suriname. It had
been far easier being second-in-command, he decided as he tried to think of
alternatives.

Jie reached across and unfolded the map fully.
“I find that looking at the big picture helps me
put the little picture into focus, and the only truly accurate way to do that
is for you to put yourself in the enemy commander’s shoes.” A big green mass
with few roads once you got ten miles from the coast was what the map
represented.

“As the French commander I have nearly one thousand
two hundred
kilometers
of border to guard, including
four hundred and fifty
kilometers
of beaches that are
nearly all suitable for amphibious operations of one form or another, and I have
 
two
 regiments, who don’t play well together, with
which to do it... 
aussi facile
que la peinture sur l'eau…
‘easy as
painting on water’, as the French say.” Jie explained. “The beach will be the
easier part of my mission. I won’t have to deal with mines, wire and a whole
regiment shooting at me…,” he grinned broadly and added, “…unless I’m really,
really unlucky!” 

He would of course proceed with caution as it would be
a great shame to have come all this way just to be rumbled at the last by an
OP, a sentry or a roving foot patrol.

There was of course the element of the bizarre which
had a way of throwing spanners in the works too.

He knew all about the Israeli arrest operation of an
Arab militant that had been compromised by five hundred novices and nuns at a
convent’s beach barbecue.

Some things just aren’t catered for in the ‘Actions
on:-’ section of an ‘O’ Group.

There was another knock on the door of the captain’s
cabin and this time it was a
signaler
handing over a
slip of message pad.

It was the response to his query to fleet headquarters.

Li read it twice and then with a regretful shake of
the head he dismissed the
signaler
and handed the
slip to Captain Huaiqing.

Al Jazeera News report: Argentina claims to have
attacked two surfaced submarines south of Falkland Islands. Both vessels
allegedly sunk. Salvaged items of wreckage displayed to media appear to be of
Russian manufacture along with items of Chinese and Russian uniforms.

Proceed on assumption
Tuan
and
Admiral Potemkin
lost.

On conclusion, scuttle vessels and evade.

“
Bao
needs to be informed of the changes immediately.” Jie
Huaiqing said

Li nodded in agreement.