' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (34 page)

Figures clinging to the mattress on a wave tossed sea, far from land. Each was wondering who would be lost next and to what, the sharks or hyperthermia.

There had been plenty of bodies, floating face down in the water, dead submariners from the diesel electric vessel HMAS Hooper, but the sharks dragged those off and still returned for more.

They were oceanic White Tips and the largely lifeless deep water oceans were their highway from one coast to the next.

Blood leaking from Derek Penman’s head wound had probably attracted them in the first place but the petty officer had not been their first victim.

Four hours after Commander Hollis had spotted the first shark, Midshipman Chloe Ennis let out an involuntary squeal when something brushed her leg and a second later Leading Seaman Brown was snatched away. Derek Penman died from hyperthermia two hours later, his body drifting away before sharks found it. The dead are at least silent when sharks consume them.

Dawn had arisen but the day brought no respite, just more horrors. They had seen a fin circling them. As it grew bolder it closed in and the survivors collective splashing had scared it away, but it did not leave. More fins appeared and five more times they splashed and shouted but with each occasion the survivors were a little more tired, the splashing less frightening, and LS Craig Devonshire had died when the sharks were just not frightened anymore.

The captain of the PLAN hospital ship,
Shén ēn
, the Divine Mercy, had witnessed the predator’s boldness for himself. The
Shén ēn
came across the figures in the water as it was looking for survivors from its own ships, lost in the air attacks on the fleet earlier that day. It hove-to and its launch collected the survivors from the water, but even after they were in the ships boat the predators had nudged its sides, unwilling to let the remaining sailors escape.

Commander Hollis, Stephanie Priestly and Phil Daly were led below in a state of shock, the screams of Chloe Ennis still fresh, coming just minutes before the ship had reached them.

They were now prisoners of war but the captain would not report their presence immediately, not until they had at least had a chance to recover from the shock of their ordeal. He had two sons in uniform and he hoped that if they were in danger then an enemy would act mercifully towards them also.

Port Kembla.

1100hrs.

Within ten minutes of the VX chemical attack, following so closely on the heels of the Sydney blast, the combat team had been on the move, off the hill and westwards to the wooded lower slopes of Mt Kembla.

5
th
US Mech’s decontamination unit set up in a field well clear of the population and the Brits were the first through, driving on to just below the escarpment, in the aptly named Windy Gully.

The team’s personnel carried out personal decontamination in pairs, the buddy-buddy system ensuring no square inch missed the puffer bottles of Fullers Earth or the bang-and-rub of the DKP1 pads.

Vehicle by vehicle, and then the vehicle interiors were also subject to the neutralising powder.

It was an hour before dawn before they were done, but there were no complaints. The American master sergeant had been well liked and popular, even winning over the very protective technicians and mechanics of
Rebecca’s light aid detachment.

The entire division had upped sticks and moved location, even those units unaffected by the attacks.

  Heck’s combat team slept in their vehicles, with a crew member on radio watch, and at two in the afternoon Captain Danny King came to collect Heck for an O Group at the 902
nd
Infantry CP, informing him that he had been attached to this unit for two days but word had somehow failed to reach the Brits. Still an oddity and despite the addition of the leftover ammunition from the main gun evaluation tests the combat team had found itself shunted off once more like an unwanted child to stay with distant relatives.

The O Group was not a happy event as the 902
nd
’s CO was bigger on rhetoric than he was on contingency planning.

“After due consultation with the local mayor, and after careful consideration of the input of all parties involved, I have assured him that this unit will meet the enemy on the beach and pin him there, regardless.”

Heck was pretty sure that the Chinese 3
rd
Army fitted the category of the ‘all parties involved’ but they had not been consulted.

The 902
nd
had wonderfully prepared forward positions. On the walk through that it’s CO, Lt Colonel Taylor had conducted, and Heck was half expecting to see hot and cold running water in individual soldier’s holes.

“He’s not very flexible is he?” Heck had remarked to Danny and Briant Foulness, OC of the 902
nd
’s attached tank company.

Fall-back positions existed as marks on a map, not holes in the ground, ready for occupation. There were no forward fighting positions for his team’s tanks and IFVs and Heck was about done with being no more than a potential ‘spent johnnie’.

The news that the war in Europe had ended was welcome but as there was no physical sign that the Russians were calling it a day in the Southern Hemisphere, they, the defenders, were no better off. The Russian ships remained with the approaching invasion fleet.

On the conclusion of O Group, Heck and the American tankers had their own meeting before Heck returned to Windy Gully with a plan of his own. He called in at a local plant hire depot on the way.

Macquarie Pass 1

The combat team’s available manpower was sent down onto the plain behind the town where JCBs from the plant hire depot joined them in creating fighting positions there. Heck and Tony McMarn then travelled west along the Illawarra Highway to the Macquarie Pass. The Pass led the way through the escarpment and on to Canberra a hundred miles beyond, an obvious target for any invader. One other road led through the same gap, the Jamberoo Mountain Road, looping around from the south to join the Highway at the top of the Macquarie. Heck found a good piece of ground to defend, one that dominated both the pass and the mountain road. This was the men’s and the JCB digger’s next task.    

Mao
carrier group, south west of Adelaide, South Australia: 1200hrs, same day:

The attacks on the fleet had clearly been an uncoordinated, knee-jerk reaction by the defenders; coming in the wake of the nuclear strike and chemical weapons attacks. The losses in surface ships had been far lighter than Vice Admiral Putchev had expected they would be. However it seemed that the Australian and allied units had launched their own operations, a piecemeal effort instead of a solid counterpunch. Only in the air had their enemy found any real success. The Chinese pilots were still inferior in training and experience, but that was only to be expected. One cannot win the Le Mans twenty four hour race after just one driving lesson.

He retired to his small cabin at 2am for a few hours’ sleep before returning to the bridge.

There was, he sensed, a distinct coolness displayed towards him by the PLAN sailors he encountered on the way and he stopped by the compartment that his small liaison team worked out of. They too had picked up on an almost hostile vibe from their hosts.

“Is there any news from the fighting in Europe that could account for that?” he asked the petty officer.

“No sir, we have no contact with Moscow as the satellite link is down, apparently.”

The fleet had three dedicated communications satellites serving it, a triple redundancy to ensure uninterrupted contact.

“Get the
Kuznetsov
on the radio, this should not be happening.” They had their own communications setup, It allowed them to contact their own ships as well as their fleet headquarters, without interfering with this ships own essential business.

Heavy jamming was evident, so heavy in fact that it seemed the Australians had a very powerful dish pointed at the fleet, or the source was very close by indeed.

Karl left immediately for the bridge, seeking Captain Hong, who he knew was scheduled to have the watch but armed sentries barred his way. Vice Admiral Putchev waited patiently  until the Mao’s Exec, a man who Karl Putchev had never really taken to, came on to the bridge wing.

“The Captain will see you now, Admiral.”

Karl strode towards the Captain’s chair, stopping short in surprise. A complete stranger sat there.  

Bond Springs Airport, Northern Territories, Australia.

1323hrs.

The No. 47 Squadron Hercules started its let-down earlier than planned, landing on a different airstrip to the intended one too. Squadron Leader Stewart Dunn did not have hands on control of the aircraft, he was the captain but Flt Lt Michelle Braithwaite was more than capable of handling the landing, even on three engines. The port inner had lost oil pressure and so they had feathered it and put down at a small airstrip twenty two miles northwest of Alice Springs Airport.

The three Allison Turboprops kicked up a red dust storm on the dirt runway which increased significantly as the blade angle of the propellers altered to shorten the aircraft’s landing distance.

The airport manager/ ground controller / fuel truck guy was eyeing them curiously from his seat in the shade as it shut down near the largest of the field’s buildings.

The flight engineer explained their problem and sat down to wait for a mechanic and a clutch of customs inspectors from Alice Springs.

Thirteen in all, the five aircrew and the eight troops laid out their Bergans and equipment, which brought a few grins from excise men and bush pilots alike, the latter having wandered over to watch.

"You’re not from around here, are you?"

The snow skis and arctic whites were inspected along with their other kit.

"Is this all of you?" an inspector asked the last man. "Big aeroplane for just a handful of you, it'll take forever to fill in that eco footprint."

"We set out with more." said a tired voice, by way of explanation.

"Is this your bag and did you pack it yourself?" he said to the last man."

"No, it is not mine and I did not pack it" said the man presenting it for inspection. "Sorry."

"Who is the bags owner and where is he?"

"Corporal Rory Alladay. He won't be needing it anymore."

It was a bergan like any other, showing signs of hard use and its padded carrying side stained dark with its owners sweat from many locales, from Dartmoor to Gansu Province, ultimately. Rory's blood also left its mark on the arctic white cover, the specks and splashes now turned dark. The customs man opened a side pouch, which happened to be the one holding ID discs from those who had died during Operation Equaliser, those that they had managed to recover the tags from. The customs officer went rather quiet and zipped the pouch back up.

"Sorry mate, I thought you'd just come along to get into the war."

“That’s okay officer.”

The M&AWC had been 'in' since the beginning, although Major Dewar could not recall any official declaration of war by the New Soviet Union or by the People’s Republic of China.

On their eventual extraction and recovery to India they had all learned that the European aspect of the war had ended with a defeat for the Soviets and that several European governments had largely been ousted by the military, beginning with the UK. SACEUR had arrived in newly liberated Berlin two days later and had been arrested by German Federal Police, only to be released within the hour by German Panzer Grenadiers after a short exchange of gunfire. The German government’s action had been the deciding factor for its military and by midnight the same day it too had been replaced.

India had seen new orders for Garfield Brooks and his Green Berets, ones that took them to the Philippines. They had shared a beer once the parting of the ways had come, as the SAS Mountain Troops specialists and the remains of the M&AWC were bound for the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.