Only the wakes of the nearest ships were able to tell Admiral Mann’s eyes that his great vessel was not alone in the night. He stood on the bridge wing staring off into the distance with his arms wrapped around himself, in an attempt to ward off the bitter cold.
He had earlier received a call from the president and had taken it in his office, with the door closed and his staff sat outside for the duration. It had not been the easiest of moments in his life, knowing the fate of Europe, if not the free world, would stand or fall on his decision of how to proceed, now that they knew how the enemy intended to deal with his command.
He was very aware that the president was not alone during the call, and that his military advisors would have been scribbling comments down on paper, and showing them to the president. Whether or not those comments had been critical or supportive, the president had heard him out without interruption, listening to the reasons for his intended course of action, ending the call with a sombre
“Admiral, you are the man on the spot and know the risks better than I. The next forty-eight hours will show whether or not you are right… and our prayers go with you all.”
Admiral Conrad did not know what the presidents’ reaction would have been, had he once more requested permission to employ nuclear depth charges. When the skies had shrouded 90 % of the planet, and the snow had come again after their first use, Conrad had felt a sick panic in his gut, like someone playing with a match who starts a major conflagration they have no hope of stopping. He shook his head now as he thought about it; no he couldn’t, not again. He had opened Pandora’s Box once and maybe they could survive the consequences, but he dare not lift that lid a second time.
The rain started without any preliminary spitting, the heavens opening and reducing visibility even further, as it poured down upon the solitary figure, adding its weight to an already crushing burden.
There was a great deal of activity on the runways and taxiways, all taking place with the very minimum of illumination. B2 Spirit bombers were lined up along the taxiways awaiting the word to launch, but they weren’t the fore runners of this operation, the first of those had taken off hours before.
An impressive number of tankers from the 909th Air Refuelling Squadron, late of Yokota AFB but now based at Hickam AFB in Hawaii, and the 161st Air Refuelling Wing from Sky Harbor in Phoenix, were out ahead of them in a long stream of KC-135Es, a long line that initially ran south from Mindanao before curving in a loop to India. The Air National Guardsmen and women were carrying out the complex refuelling plan along the route that gave Singapore and Chinese dominated or occupied areas a wide birth. With a range of over 11,000 miles, the 120,000lbs of transferable fuel each carried would see the bombers with their human loads into China and from there to Hickam AFB where they would revert back to their primary role, ready for the next stage. C5s were enroute to Hickam from Whiteman AFB with the bombers launching gear and ordnance, the ground crews would be on their way to Hawaii within two hours of the last B2 leaving the ground.
The first pair of bombers were still configured for the role they had been designed for, they would precede the way into China, and as a last resort would wild weasel the hell out of any air defences that detected their charges. In the third bomber in line for take-off, Major Dewar had his fingers triple crossed that no defensive action by the bombers would be necessary, because their mission was as good as doomed if it was.
Special Forces soldiers are trained to rely on their own abilities, and those of their teammates, but the two-dozen troops were now locked away in the dark, reliant on other people’s skills and the vagaries of chance.
Further east, quite a long way closer to the US West Coast, the sole surviving warship of Britain’s flag waving mission to the Far East, crept along 900 fathoms below the surface.
The turn-around time in a Pearl Harbor almost devoid of its warships and fleet auxiliaries had been eerie, conducted amidst row upon row of empty berths those occupants were now at sea, either on active operations or stood out of sight of land for security reasons. Aside from the dangers of missile attacks on the facilities, HMS Hood had seen evidence of other threats as she passed a birth where the superstructures of two destroyers protruded above the waves, their hulls breached by saboteurs’ limpet mines on the first day of the war. The only other warship they’d seen had been whilst the replenishment was in full swing, the crew and base personnel working like a huge pit-stop crew. A frigate had steamed slowly past with her bilge pumps straining, the vessel listing slightly to starboard and seawater pouring from additional hose nozzles. Her upper works bearing the scars of modern warfare at sea, its bridge reduced to buckled and jagged steel, scarred by fire.
Hood had entered harbour just before sunset and tied up in the dark, with little in the way of fanfare. On the quayside to meet them had been a USN staff officer with ‘eyes only’ orders and despatches for the captain, two armed SPs for the Chinese aviator, and a female captain accompanying a priest, who had another pair of SPs in tow, which had seemed quite bizarre at the time.
HMS Hood’s captain had debriefed the service personnel, and both civilian’s rescued from the attack by the Chinese Han class submarine, the two sole survivors of the USN/RN battle group that had been centred on the USS John F Kennedy, and two tourists who had stumbled in on the aftermath.
After signing for, and then locking away the orders, the captain had learnt the purpose of the odd foursome, and then sent for Lt Nikki Pelham, leaving her with the USN captain and priest in his cabin whilst they carried out their difficult task.
The young female aviator had been ashen faced as she’d left the vessel, there were no tears but they would come later, in the meantime the SPs assured that no press parasite got anywhere near her enroute to Hickam and a military flight stateside.
The Brits had departed for the embassy in their wake, and in all, the captain had time only for the briefest of farewells to each of his passengers before getting on with readying his command for war again.
A pre-dawn departure followed by a high-speed run of almost fifteen hundred miles had brought them to within sixty miles of the edge of their patrol area, but now they were back in the stealth business.
Following the onset of war a great number of people had left the capital, but they amounted to less than one percent of the total population. Not everyone had a second home to escape to, and most Londoners had to work for a living, global nuclear conflict or not.
The Right Honourable Matthew St Reever’s Esq had spent the previous weeks in the Cotswolds, there was little for a former shadow cabinet minister to do with a coalition government in power, so he and his wife had made a holiday of it.
The sudden death of the Prime Minster in the Atlantic had ended the holiday, and to his great surprise he found himself in office, it came as a surprise because only hours after the death he had been given the name of the new defence minister, prior to the reshuffle announcement, and it had not been his.
The Minister had rushed up to the alternative seat of government site, below ground in northeast England, where he found that his new colleagues were well versed in the intricacies of the Human Rights Act, and could find their way around a spread sheet, but their attitude was that of battlefields being ‘other’ people’s domains. The defence ministers own military experience was limited to a year in the Eton College Army Cadet Corps, but he had taken his shadow post seriously, put himself about and had a serious respect for the nations fighting men and women. Unlike his colleagues, when he said “Army or “Navy” they did not sound like four letter expletives.