The young man smiled, gave her a wave and nodded thanks to her father before turning to rejoin the others. The farmer ushered his daughter inside and looked at his wife. “These are nice boys,” he said. “They told me they will be leaving soon. They’re not even taking our food and stock.”
The mother had already opened the large box. Inside were some canned meats and vegetables, rice, noodles and tea. Then there were several smaller boxes with words written in Cyrillic. “What is this Meals Ready to Eat?” she asked. Reading the instructions, she found boxes labeled beef stew, chicken teriyaki, Salisbury steak and beef Stroganoff. “Just add water,” she murmured in Russian. “Humph,” she grunted. “Some of this sounds Russian,” she said. At least today they would eat well.
Just before dawn the people along the shore were wakened by the sounds of hundreds of aircraft. The ground began to shake as they fighters and bombers began clearing the way for troops to come ashore. Some even looked out their windows to see a line of three battleships open fire on targets further inland. It seemed as if every second the ground would shake from a new impact. The residents scrambled for the shelters and basements fearing for their lives.
The army detachment assigned to this part of the coast scrambled to get to their trucks and meet the assault, although they weren’t sure where the assault was coming from. As they ran toward their trucks and tanks they saw them explode in front of them. A call went out to the nearest air base to get help.
One mile behind the battleships was a line of ten Farragut class destroyers. They were modifications of the Zumwalt class of destroyer designed to carry the newest of naval artillery — the electro-magnetic gun. Built with extreme capacity to produce electricity, each ship carried four of the guns. They didn’t rely on propellant or an explosive shell. These guns fired by use of electro-magnetic force. It sounded like a gun when it went off. There was even flame, but the projectile was a simple stainless steel dart. When fired, it left the barrel doing Mach 7. On each ship, the barrels elevated and fired.
The air base was forty miles inland. Within seconds, the darts struck still doing Mach 6. There was no need for explosive. The kinetic energy alone destroyed everything in its path. Runways became unusable, hangers collapsed and aircraft burst into flames. Pilots scrambled out of their barracks to get to their planes only to be shredded by the mounds of shrapnel generated by the darts whenever they struck something. Every twenty seconds a volley hit the base. Within just fifteen minutes, there was nothing left to fly and no runways left to take off from.
The next army unit was just ten miles away. After making sure the immediate area was clear, the battleships switched to secondary targets designated by the Link 16. The first rounds tore into the armory, leveling it. The motor pool was ravaged and finally the fuel tanks were ruptured and set afire. The few soldiers left, could do nothing but stand and watch it burn.
The LCACs began moving in. Because this was a relatively lightly populated area of shore, they came in unopposed. Moving up the beach, they deposited their troops and tanks, then turned around and went back for more. The Ospreys were next. Swooping in from the ships, the Ospreys landed further inland and disgorged their troops. Wave after wave came in. Within an hour, over 20,000 troops had been set down on the beach. Two hours later fifty thousand more were there and moving inland.
The skies became filled with Allied aircraft. They dashed across the battle lines and struck targets deep into occupied territory. Everything was hit. Tanks, trucks, aircraft, supply depots, tent cities, everything that was of military importance was laid to waste. Russian troops reported the aircraft overhead, but no radar systems saw a target. Russian fighters were scrambled and dashed to the front, only to be met by planes their radars could not see or lock onto. Because of the American Eyeball system, American controllers were able to vector aircraft in behind the advancing fighters and blow them out of the sky. Only twice did a Russian fighter get behind an American and loose a heat seeker. One of those times, the countermeasures worked. With the loss of that one aircraft, the Allied forces decimated over three hundred Russian planes in just the first hour.
Drone units were launched and went in ahead of tanks and infantry, making sure that opposition was quelled before they got to an area. In three cases, a specialized drone went in and sprayed the area around a company of tanks with a specialized liquid. Upon hitting the ground it expanded leaving a thick ooze on the ground. Tanks, trucks and other vehicles simply got mired in the stuff and anyone inside the tank had a hard time getting out without slipping and breaking their necks.
The American Abrams, Bradleys and Humvees poured across the line along with Leopards, Chieftans and Leclercs. Polish and German units that had been harassing the enemy rear were pulled back for a rest. The Russian lines began to disintegrate.
A lone sentry made his way along the cold, snowy beach on Sakhalin Island. He considered his duty hell. It was always cold there. There hadn’t been electricity. Only the administration building and the officers’ quarters had the use of a generator. The rest stayed cold and hungry. They had even run out of fuel to drive the men back and forth to their lonely outposts. The sentries rode bicycles back and forth. Only vodka seemed to take the chill off and even it was in short supply. Stationed in a small town of Nogliki on the eastern shore, everyone was suffering. There had already been three deaths from the cold. True, they had been old, but to freeze to death was not something the sentry looked forward to.
The wind had mercifully died an hour before and a mist had rolled in to cover everything. You couldn’t see past 100 meters. Something caught the sentry’s ear. It was a strange noise he hadn’t heard before. He pulled his rifle from his shoulder, not that he would be able to stop anyone trying to invade this god forsaken place. The noise got louder. Suddenly, out of the mist, a huge machine plowed ashore almost directly in front of him. It was followed by several others. The sentry watched in horror as the machine seemed to circle him and then stop. It looked like it sank into the ground before a large ramp dropped in from of it and men began running out. Several pointed their weapons at him. The sentry threw down the gun and raised his hands. One of the men motioned for him to come forward. As he approached, the man said in Russian, “Go aboard the craft and get some food. Don’t do anything stupid and you will be fine.”
The men then turned and walked away. Just then a tank came out of the craft. He decided to follow his instructions and walked aboard. Two other soldiers led him inside where it was warm. There were some pastries and some coffee in the small galley. Another man came up and began asking him questions. He barely realized he had become a prisoner of war.
The troops entered the town and made their way through the streets. There were no other soldiers around. A few explosions were heard in the distance. That had been the small barracks and army headquarters. In a few minutes the soldiers had made their way to the center of town and assembled on the square. On the beach more troops and equipment were landing unopposed. Once ashore, they would turn south and take the island before turning north and moving on to the mainland. While there, they would turn off the entire oil and gas supply to the rest of Russia.