***
In a small restaurant overlooking the city ten men met in secret. This was a place reserved for only the very rich. They always had the best food and wines. Even now they had good food, although the men noticed that it was somewhat below their usual standards. After shooing away the staff, the men got down to business.
“This isn’t working,” said a man in an impeccable suit with a red carnation in the lapel. “We were supposed to have been to the English Channel by now. All my plans were predicated on us having completed our mission. Now my factories are being bombed, I have to generate my own electricity and my workers are too cold to work! I am afraid we have been misled by our military abilities,” he said.
“Ever since the Americans got involved, our lines have simply moved back and forth. We gain little ground. What’s worse, they seem to be draining us of everything. Did you hear that the casualties have now passed one million people?” cried out another man. “That’s not counting thousands of tanks, aircraft, and other vehicles. My factories cannot keep up because we now can’t get the materials we need,” he lamented.
“Borodin has led us down this path. He told us there was no way for this to fail. That is why we supported him. That is why we started this venture. Now we are going down a road to disaster. How do we stop it?” asked another.
“We must be careful. You saw what happened to Rosenko. No one has seen him for a month!” said a man standing by a window keeping a lookout on the street outside.
The others nodded. It had been a rude awakening of what could happen to each of them. “We must find a way to get him out of office. If we could, maybe we could stop this,” said the first man.
“Wait. You must be sure of what you want to do, first. It must be things he cannot see or find out. Let us plan these things carefully and still maintain our supportive relations with the man. Then, when the time is right, we can move together,” said the man in a ruffled suit sitting in the corner. The rest nodded in agreement.
Pavel Velinkov finished taking down what he overheard through the vent leading from a small storeroom to the private dining room the other men were in. He had overheard everything, and it disgusted him. All of this was started just to line to pockets of these men. Placing the notebook inside the lining of his jacket, he grabbed a box of supplies and left the room, unnoticed by anyone. Returning to the kitchen, he went back to cleaning off the stainless steel work spaces so they could be ready for the dinner meal. His mood was sour. Yet, he knew he would be able to do something about it.
Recruited by the Americans years before, he had been able to pass along information concerning business and industry he picked up from the patrons. It had meant having a stash of money he could use to make an occasional purchase or to be ready to leave when the time came. He was single. His parents were dead. There was no one to worry about. As a gay man he was not welcome in Russian society anyway. Tonight he would make the drop and ask to be removed. He could now make a better life somewhere else, away from the corruption in his native land.
Hammond watched the giant table intently. Everything had gone well over the first twelve hours. The southern force in Poland was almost entirely cut off. His plan was to let them wither around Krakow. The central Polish campaign was moving rapidly back toward the Ukrainian and Russian borders. The Black Sea and Sakhalin Island landings had met little resistance and were moving inland. The first air attacks in the Black Sea had been stopped with no casualties.
The German Chancellor was sitting next to him. “This is almost beyond belief,” the Chancellor said. “I had my doubts such things might work, but I can see now what our technology can really do,” he said. “It appears your country has become very efficient in the art of war.”
“Efficient? If you mean we try to find ways to prevent our troops from being killed, that is certainly true. We are the least of the nations wanting to get into conflict, but it seems we are always the one being forced into one. We are constantly being asked to take care of some problem or another. So we must be ready for anything, and we developed an arsenal that has a lot of tools. Since the war started I made sure we used what tools we had to keep the Russians at bay. Our technology was really the only thing we could do to counter the great numbers of men and machines they had. We are in a war of attrition, and that attrition must be on their part,” Hammond said. He pointed to the three dimensional table in front of them. “This is one of the biggest tools. With this, we can see where the enemy is, where they are going and what they are doing all the time. We can stop them before they are able to make their plans work, move out of their way and then hit them where they are the weakest. With our drones, we can hit them night or day with a weapon they have not been able to counter. I am told they are scared to death of the things. Our Predators and other drones harass them day and night, bombing their facilities and strongholds without jeopardizing the life of a pilot. Our stealth technology allows us to now attack with impunity with the greatest chance of getting pilot and plane home, not to mention ships and tanks. Plus there are other weapons we are but just now employing to keep the pressure up. Because of all this our casualties are very light, but the casualties for our enemy are staggering. We estimate he has lost over a million people under arms. They have lost over half their aircraft and most of their fleet. Their armored vehicles and artillery are similarly reduced. With Arctic Wind, we hope to force the Russians to spread their resources too thinly, making it easier and less costly to win this war,” he said.
“I also appreciate your insisting all these assets be made available to all forces. I know our German troops have benefitted greatly from them,” said the Chancellor.
“I don’t want any of the troops under my command to bear more than their share of the burden. The German forces have stepped up magnificently. The close work with the Poles has been an inspiration. All our Allied forces are feeling how close a team we have all formed. I dare say it will make changes in the post war Europe,” said Hammond.
The Chancellor smiled. “We can only hope. I will be talking with President O’Bannon tomorrow on what that post war Europe may look like, especially for the Russians. I’m not sure we need to do any kind of occupation. After the First World War, that occupation made us feel like outcasts. Luckily the second time around we found out what friends the Americans could be. I think we need to be there to help, but keep a hands-off approach. If things keep going as they are, the Russian people may overthrow the government anyway. If we let them do their jobs, kind of like MacArthur did in Japan after the war, things might just turn out all right. Just keep them from doing what happened to us between the wars,” the Chancellor said with a wink. “Russia could become one of our greatest allies.”
“Maybe,” said Hammond, “but after this, things will change. This technology is making the fighting of a war impractical. People die needlessly by remote control. The technology itself will become the ultimate deterrent. In the future, diplomacy will become the most desired way to accomplish a nation’s goals. I may have put people like myself out of a job,” he said.
The Chancellor nodded. “You may be right, but it will take people like you to remind us of how bad it can get and how much we can lose. If we are lucky, maybe people will decide to never fight a war again.”
“One can only hope,” said Hammond. He pointed toward the Black Sea. “The air strikes have begun.”