Fanaroff said nothing as the girls were loaded into the truck; Madam Rose herself took the wheel. They would be victims if they were caught by the Russians; he had seen some of the classified files of what had happened in Chechnya as a warning to all other Muslims in Russia and the CIS to behave themselves. There were rumours that the Russians had even begun a breeding program to breed loyal Russians who could blend in perfectly with Central Asia — and the new government had offered bounties and rewards to women who had more than three children who were pure Russian — and the girls would be treated as nothing more than whores. It was strange; most of the girls were quite well-educated, in their own way, and yet they had earned more lying on their backs rather than holding down a proper job.
He clutched his weapon tightly as the truck started to move out of the city. The criminals had cleared a path out of the city, but parts of the city were still in a state of lawlessness; in the future, he wondered what the Russians would do when they reached the capital of the European Union. He didn’t think it would be pleasant. The girls fell silent, lost in their own thoughts; Fanaroff almost understood their concern. They were leaving all that they had ever known and as for him…
He would never see the city again.
The helicopters swooped low over the beaches and came into land; a dozen heavily-armed soldiers jumped out of each one and fanned out across the beaches, which were almost deserted. A handful of people who had been nervously waiting for their boats to England screamed and panicked as the soldiers fanned out, running towards their targets as the first ships appeared, launching landing ships towards the beach while the advance guard raced through the facilities, rapidly securing their objectives and holding position. 3 Commando Brigade had arrived at Ostend.
“All targets secure, sir,” Captain Bellamy reported. The Royal Marines had had to put the mission together almost on the fly, but they had done well. The heavy equipment would be landed as quickly as the logisticians could land it from the ships. “The civilians seem very pleased to see us.”
“I’m not surprised,” Marine Colonel Patrick Trombly snapped. The civilians might have escaped some of the chaos, but the criminal gangs who had been trying to use Ostend as a place to send refugees to England had been terrorising the entire region as they offered their services… at the cost of everything the refugees owned. The Royal Navy had been working hard to steer the refugees to camps in Britain; some of the criminals had been literally dumping the refugees overboard as soon as they were out of sight of the coastline, and then coming back for more. “Remind the advance parties that they are not to go into Ostend itself; I’m not wasting lives fighting people in the city.”
“Yes, sir,” Captain Bellamy said. He snapped out orders as more units arrived on the beach, heavy anti-aircraft units and light tanks, improved enough that they could exchange blows with Russian tanks on a fairly equal basis. They would be disintegrated if the Russians hit them, but they would get in at least one punch first; Trombly wasn’t happy at all about having them, but if the Russians reached them before they managed to pull out, they would need their firepower just to buy themselves a fighting chance. “There’s more refugees than we expected…”
“Have them kept well away from the beaches,” Trombly said, grimly. He had been on the ground during the retreat from Sudan and knew what would happen; desperate refugees would overwhelm his men through sheer weight of numbers if they thought that they were being abandoned. “We can pull out some refugees if we have time, but the main problem is withdrawing the remains of British forces before they get overwhelmed.”
He stared down at the display on the terminal in his hand. Major-General Langford had put out a request to shipping, and even he had been surprised at the response; hundreds of smaller ships had volunteered for the mission to Ostend. Britain’s merchant marine was no longer what it once had been; the attempt to replay Dunkirk would be much harder than it had been back in 1940… and that had not been easy. The Royal Marines had studied Dunkirk extensively and knew that repeating it would be tricky; the Germans had allowed the British the time they needed to escape. The Russians… might not make the same mistake.
The skies were clear; that wouldn’t last. Higher command had decided that if the RAF made a serious commitment to covering Ostend, the Russians would realise what was happening sooner and bring the full weight of their air force to bear on the evacuation ships. The nightmare would have no end; if the Russians managed to sink a dozen heavy ships, the remains of British forces would be trapped on the shore. He needed time… and Marine Colonel Patrick Trombly knew that time was the one thing the Russians wouldn’t give him.
A soldier ran up to him and nodded once; Marines were forbidden to salute anywhere where there might be an enemy sniper, looking for targets, such as senior officers. “Sir, the Yanks are here, and ten cunts,” he reported. “They were coming down the road when they met us…”
Trombly smiled. He hadn’t expected that that part of the mission would have worked; Belgium seemed to be as chaotic as the remainder of Europe. “Have them all checked, searched, and then moved to one of the helicopters returning to Britain,” he said. He smiled at the thought of the poor American explaining his travelling companions to his own people back in the States, or even in Britain; perhaps the girls were important, but he doubted it. “All we have to do here is wait.”
“Yes, sir,” the soldier said, and dashed off again.
“Well, fuck me rigid,” Captain Bellamy said. “You know… I really thought that would fail and they wouldn't make it…”
“Let’s just hope the government drives a hard bargain,” Trombly said grimly. The thought of what might happen if — after — Europe fell worried him. Britain was weaker than it had been in centuries. “This is not going to end well.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Breaking the Back
The German is either at your throat… or at your feet.
Hanover, Germany
The Lord Mayor of Hanover was a weak man.
He had, Shalenko knew, been lucky enough to be out of the city when the missiles had blown the New Town Hall of Hanover to bits, and had been somehow able to calm most of the rioting in the city… for a few days. The chaos had started again as the Russian Army had blown through yet another desperate last stand and started its march on Hanover; hundreds of German soldiers and reservists had dug into the city, daring the Russians to enter the city. They had no supplies, no hope in the long run, but if they could smash up his forces…
It had been the reservists presence that had allowed the Lord Mayor, Paul Steiner, to put an end to some of the chaos. Hanover had a large community of different ethnic groups and the chaos had seriously damaged half of the city, but the German soldiers had managed to put most of it down, or at least contained to some sections of the city, rather than the entire city. The Russian soldiers who had surrounded the city had started to turn back refugees; Steiner had been forced to face the unpleasant fact that his city would starve before too long… if the Russians didn’t attack it and reduce it to rubble.
“You have an obligation, under the Geneva Convention, to let civilians go,” Steiner protested, when he came to meet the Russian besiegers. “You can’t keep them trapped in the city…”