Shalenko smiled. He had read the FSB’s briefing on the Mayer carefully. He had been a stout Green, someone who could always be counted upon to pass laws concerning the environment in Germany… and a total novice when it came to military matters. Steiner had been considered a safe pair of hands for Hanover by the Greens; there was no way that they would have allowed him into the rarefied heights of German National Government, or even the European Parliament.
“Actually, I can,” Shalenko said. He took no pleasure in ensuring that the city was starved into submission — or death — but it was better than feeding his men into a meat-grinder. The British might have joked about being sporting enough to let the enemy do the killing, but Shalenko had always considered the joke disgusting; his soldiers were a priceless resource. Hanover wasn't a threat, but if the Germans had some armoured units in the city, they could come out and hit his rear. “The Convention doesn’t actually say when I have to let them out, does it?”
Steiner said nothing. Shalenko’s lips twisted; Felix Steiner had been an SS officer and a brave fighter, commanding soldiers in battle personally. His distant descendent had none of the spine that had allowed Felix Steiner to stand up to Adolph Hitler himself. He was at home with the law… but the law was gone, replaced only by the invading army and the Russian occupation forces that were either occupying cities, or surrounding them and waiting for them to surrender. Shalenko wouldn’t have given much for the fate of the Germans who had to be forced into submission; the FSB units had a reputation for brutality.
“I am quite within my rights to let them all starve to force you to surrender,” Shalenko said calmly. “You must understand; your position is hopeless, there will be no forces coming to your relief, no force that can break the blockade around your city. I will fire on your people if they attempt to leave… this is not Qom, when various factions tried to fly in supplies to the city and the Americans refused to fire on them. Your position is hopeless.”
Steiner wilted. “I understand,” he said. Shalenko wondered what advice he had been getting from the German soldiers trapped inside the city. “What do you want?”
Shalenko started to tick points off on his fingers. “First, you will tell your soldiers to lay down their arms and surrender,” he said. “We will treat them decently provided they surrender and assist us to disarm any surprises that they might have created for us; any further resistance will be considered a breach of the agreement and responded to with maximum force. Second, you will disarm your policemen and order them to assist us in keeping the city calm; our units will take up policing duties as soon as possible. Third, you will warn the civilian population that any resistance, either in the form of armed attack or civil disobedience, will be treated as a breach of the surrender agreement and punished harshly. Finally, you will provide us with all possible assistance in working Hanover back into the national infrastructure and using it to support the advance.”
Steiner stared at him, trying to deny reality. “And if we refuse?”
“We will take your city by force and sack it,” Shalenko lied cheerfully. He would wait for them all to starve if he had no other choice; FSB units could maintain the blockade when he moved his armoured and infantry units west again. “I invite you to consider just how many of your people would die if I stormed the city.”
Steiner’s face was pale. “In that case,” he said finally, “I will surrender the city. Please be aware that the behaviour of your troops will be recorded for possible future action by international agencies such as Amnesty International and…”
“And exactly what do you think they can do about it?” Shalenko asked dryly. “My soldiers will behave themselves, or they will end up in the penal units; the FSB troops, on the other hand…”
He smiled. “Better keep your people under control.”
“That went well,” Captain Anna Ossipavo said, as the bent back of the Lord Mayor headed back towards his city. “Colonel Boris Aliyev has arrived and is asking for an immediate meeting with you.”
“Is he?” Shalenko asked. Aliyev had done well in Poland, but since the airport had been relieved by the armoured units of 2nd Shock Army, his unit had been on the sidelines, waiting. Shalenko guessed that Aliyev wasn't happy about that; the man was a soldier though and though. “I need a briefing first.”
Anna nodded as they walked back towards the command vehicle, carefully concealed in a thatch of trees. “The forces probing into the Netherlands are reporting that the city of Wilhelmshaven has fallen to our forces, although there is a great deal of uncoordinated resistance in the Netherlands itself, some of it from Muslim factions that we armed, as opposed to the remains of the Dutch forces. We have pushed to within ten kilometres of Switzerland, but as per your orders, we haven’t gone any closer to their border.”
Shalenko checked the mental map in his head and smiled. Switzerland had retained its neutrality and its paranoia about outsiders; every Swiss was still expected to have a gun and training in how to use it. It would take fifty divisions to hammer the Swiss into submission and the planners had decided that they could leave the Swiss alone for a while, perhaps even permanently if something satisfactory could be worked out. The Czech Republic’s decision to switch sides had started the dominos falling; entire countries were considering what they could gain from offering their submission to the Russian Federation.
“The worrying point is that the British are up to something in Ostend,” Anna continued. “The Royal Marines made a major landing there two days ago; we believe that they secured the area and are using it to evacuate what they can in the way of their forces and perhaps other European forces as well.”
Shalenko bit off a curse. The British forces had been chased back across the continent along with the other European forces, but if they managed to get across the Channel, it would be several weeks before the final stage of Operation Stalin could be mounted; they would have the chance that the rest of Europe had not. If they pulled out and rearmed the other European forces, the Russians might find themselves facing a resistance movement in their rear before they were ready to deal with it.
They reached the command vehicle and Shalenko immediately reached for a map. The Germans had used that terrain before to slow up an invading army; the Allies had had to grind their way through the terrain step by step. The Dutch could do any number of interesting things to slow an invading army; if there were German forces digging in, they might even buy the British enough time to complete the evacuation.
The display was warning of new threats. A French force was slowly pulling itself together in Lorraine, near the French border, the last significant force on the European continent. The French were scoring some successes against the Algerians; the odds were that the French command either didn’t know anything about the situation in the south, or the damned Americans had tipped them off to the real threat. They would be short on fuel and ammunition — their logistics train would have been shot to hell — but they had to be crushed while they presented such a tempting target…
Anna paused as a signal came in. “That’s the Germans laying down their arms now,” she said. “The occupation units are requesting permission to enter the city.”
“Granted,” Shalenko said, still thinking. For the first time since the campaign had begun, he had too many tasks and too few men in the correct position to handle them… and there were political implications. If he crushed the French force that was massing in Lorraine, he would be able to overrun the remainder of Europe, but if the British forces, such as they were, got away, the conflict would become a lot harder to bring to a successful conclusion. “Order the reconnaissance units to press on towards Belgium, advancing as quickly as they can; let me know what resistance they meet. The main force is to prepare to advance into France as soon as it can be organised.”