It irked Nikoli that Colin had bested him, not once but twice now. The village had been taken far quicker than he would ever have expected, and then at the copse, his plan to embroil the enemy battalion in at least a two company, and time consuming action, had failed because the Guards warrant officer had seen through it. Well, the decision had now been taken to withdraw to brigade lines, so they would not be locking horns with each other again.
Dawn was approaching, and now was the time to pack everything away and be ready to face a dawn attack, if one were to come. The paratrooper captain did up his flies and went back toward his own shell scrape, once there he tugged rapidly on the communications cords.
Conrad Mann’s flagship, the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford, sat on the south side of a warship screen around forty-eight merchant ships.
A sizeable chunk of his command, twice the size in numerical terms than in peacetime and now spread over twenty-five square miles of ocean, came from the USN Reserve fleet. He had relatively few ‘modern’ warships that were purpose built for dedicated tasks such as ASW or air defence. Financial restraints placed on the armed forces had led to a breed of ‘multi-role’ hulls that the politicians thought sounded sexy. The difference between an air defence destroyer, and a multi role destroyer, was that the multi role could only carry half the munitions and half the trained personnel for either role. In the Pacific the multi-role ships that had met the Chinese head on were either on the bottom, or only existed now as highly irradiated dust. Off the North Cape the dedicated anti-aircraft ships that had survived the mass attacks had only done so by carrying far more munitions than they were designed to do. So the admiral had confidence that although the Reserve Fleet ships may lack the latest upgrades, they were in no way ‘second best’. Conrad Mann was personally very concerned that before the war the United States had no plans to replace its present frigates, once decommissioning of individual ships took place at the end of their planned lives. With luck and a little common sense, that decision would undergo some serious reconsideration.
The previous evening his battle group had joined with the merchant ships, come about and carried out a RAS, replenishment at sea, of all the usual items. Taking a leaf from the North Cape task force, they had taken on additional air defence stocks and the Health and Safety officer had taken a Valium, there was so much explosive ordnance lining the passageways of the warships.
As the ships sailed east once more Admiral Mann cast his eyes over the list of supplies they had taken onboard the Gerald Ford. Although budgetary concerns were no longer something he had to fret over, he was still seriously pissed after looking at the figures in the right hand column, and put in a call to Henry Shaw on the generals mobile phone.
Since her Sea Harriers had flown off to join the North Cape Task Force, the flight deck of the Royal Navy warship had seen steady but not excessive flying activity.
The Type 42 destroyer, HMS Edinburgh was a mile to the north, whilst the Type 22 ASW frigates HMS Sheffield, HMS Cumberland and HMS Campbeltown held a triangular formation seven miles out with the carrier at the centre. The base of the triangle faced the direction the threat would come from, the north. The nearest neighbours to the carrier were the fleet replenishment ship and the oiler, Fort George and Oakleaf, the groups supermarket and filling station.
Four elderly Sea Kings had arrived three days ago from Scotland via the Faeroes to supplement her compliment of Merlins, and the technicians had immediately had to ground them. The private contractors charged with their storage and upkeep in the UK had apparently been claiming a lot of money from the taxpayers whilst failing to meet the maintenance requirements.
The Captain of Illustrious had been planning on keeping his men rested until they came within range of the soviet submarine force, but his engine, airframe and electronics technicians had been working around the clock to get the aircraft in a fit state to do the job expected of them. When he had fired off his report on the matter to the MOD, he couldn’t help wondering which Minister and official’s had shares in the maintenance company, under assumed names of course, taking advantage of the legal loophole in British law that permitted the practice, and one that successive governments had refused to close. He had to wonder about the integrity of such people who would not only fight to retain such a thing, but also remove the independence of the only department set up to tackle corruption within government, because it was doing its job too well.
Flurries of snow were gusting across the flight deck as he watched two Merlins and a Sea King spool up. The frigates each carried a pair of Sea Lynx helicopters, and the destroyer carried one. They were putting up half of their sub hunting aircraft now, and a four hours on, four off rota was commencing now that the enemy was confirmed as having got past the NATO hunter killer submarines. It was still pitch dark and the ships were steaming west, but once the dawn came they would turn north with the aim of bringing the enemy force to battle.
The Russian paratroopers of Nikoli’s small command lay quietly in their shell scrapes; all kit packed away and ready to move. They watched their assigned arcs, waiting for the dawn and watching for movement. Last light and first light are the times when human eyes are at their least efficient, they don’t recognise shapes as well and are most likely to miss movement in the half-light.
It had been the first night without more snow since they had jumped into Germany, for the second time. Nikoli rolled over onto his back and looked up through the skeletal branches at the sky, and to his surprise saw stars through breaks in the cloud cover. For days now the clouds had blocked out the heavens, drenching the landscape with almost constant rainfall before the temperature had dropped further, and rain turned to snow.
Against backdrop of stars, a cluster of fast moving objects with fiery tails caught his attention briefly before the cloud barred his view.
Sgt Osgood raised his head to check that all his men had their own heads tucked below the level of the ditch they’d hunkered down in, four hundred metres from the woods edge.
Guardsman Robertson and his oppo Aldridge, the would-be sex machines of Tyne and Weir, were peering over the top, hoping to see a fireworks display when the MLRS sub munitions arrived.
“I’m going to come over there and mallet you two if you don’t get yer swedes down, right now!” Like tortoises under threat, their heads vanished from sight. Oz took another moment to reassure himself that there were no other defaulters in his platoon, before settling down next to Colin Probert.
“How accurate are these things they’re lobbing over anyway?”
“The Gunners think they’re hot stuff, dead accurate, surgically precise examples of modern military technology… our lords and masters have full confidence in their abilities.” Colin murmured.
“Is that why we’re a half mile from the target, and hiding in a ditch?”