“Then they might trigger the bomb anyway,” Dwynn snapped. “I need an option.”
His mind ran rapidly. They couldn’t catch the lorry, not on their own, and they didn’t have any weapon that could destroy it. “Call the RAF,” he snapped, “and then get into the bunker.” They’d found the old Russian bunker – it dated from the First World War – purely by accident. “If the RAF doesn’t make it in time…”
Squadron Leader Shelia Dunbar forced the Eurofighter as fast as it could go, pushing at Mach Three as it sped along, high above the ground. The orders left no room for interpretation; she might not return from the mission even if it succeeded.
Find a lorry. Destroy the lorry at all costs.
“This is Eagle-one,” she said. “Proceeding east. Status report?”
“Everyone has gone to nuke alert,” the controller said. She cursed; among other things, nuke alert involved shutting down equipment that might be damaged by EMP. She cursed again as a nasty thought struck her; if the EMP was powerful enough, it might damage the satellites. “I’m sorry Shelia, you’re on your own.”
“Fuck,” she sneered, willing the Eurofighter to go faster. Warsaw swept by under her aircraft as she flew lower, risking a lucky shot from the Russian anti-aircraft weapons for improving her accuracy. The maps weren’t detailed; they didn’t tell her everything she needed to know. At supersonic speed, there would be no time to recover from a mistake.
“Target only one mile ahead,” the controller said. Dunbar cursed the odds that had had her assigned to escorting B-29’s when the alert had been sounded. The only weapon she had that was any use against the lorry was her cannon, and she’d used some of its ammunition already. “Good luck.”
Dunbar committed a direct breach of regulations and turned off the radio. She didn’t need distractions. The hills and roads – mud tracks, mainly – swept past faster and faster, and then she saw it, just before her.
“Die, your fuckers,” she snapped. The lorry made a desperate attempt to escape her shells, but it was too late; the shells swept through the cabin, sending the truck cart-wheeling across the road. She had only a second to feel her triumph… and then the world went white around her…
Hauptsturmfuehrer Thierbach was saved by the purest accident. The driver’s shout of warning had made him throw himself away from the cab, and the cannon shells had missed him – and the massive bomb beside him. The British plane was close, too close, and Thierbach knew his duty. If the bomb still worked...it was his duty to detonate it.
Thierbach worked quickly, moving as fast as he dared as soon as the lorry came to a rest, checking the connections. Originally, the bomb had had a timer, but the weapon could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. He was certain that the British would have troops on the way, and he was tempted to wait for them to get them caught in the blast as well, but he heard the roar of the British plane and knew that there was no time. Quickly, calmly, he pushed the detonation button.
Chapter Forty-Six: An Eye For An Eye
RAF Oakhanger
Hampshire, United Kingdom
1st July 1942
“I confirm NUDET, repeat NUDET,” Captain Bacon snapped. Colonel Gardner cursed; they’d hoped that the warning had been a hoax. “Confirmed detonation; location, Poland.”
Colonel Gardner hit the automated system for alerting the principles and stared down at the display. The blast had been… weird; it had even damaged some of the satellites high overhead. For a region roughly five miles in length, the firestorm would be raging even now; he couldn’t tell if it was going to overwhelm any military units or not.
“Spectroscopic analysis is very clear,” Bacon said grimly. “The bomb is very dirty.”
“There goes the neighbourhood,” Colonel Gardner said wryly, trying to find refugee in humour. It didn’t work; the plume of rising fire and smoke was horrifying. “We have to warn the Poles; hell, we have to warn everyone.”
Ten Downing Street
London, United Kingdom
2nd July 1942
Hanover stared down at the map and felt sick. He knew just how lucky the Allies had been; it had been sheer luck that they’d had even a few minutes of warning. Even so, there had been thousands of causalities, mainly Americans who hadn’t grasped the danger. How could they have? They’d never seen a nuclear weapon before.
He felt like crying. No one – in any known timeline – had tried to fight a massive battle in the ruins of a nuclear war; it had never happened before. Stalin had; the blast had been taken as the signal to launch an all-out attack on the Allies, Russian soldiers charging blithely through radioactive clouds, falling upon the Allied positions with a determination that made up for their tactical disadvantages. The forces in Warsaw, unaware of the poison cloud and lashed on by the NKVD, broke out of the city and tried to raise the siege.
He scowled grimly. The EMP hadn’t damaged the British radios; they had been designed to be hardened against EMP. The American systems, and the new ones made since the Transition, had been damaged; they’d not been intended to face a nuclear-armed opponent. General Flynn had done his best, and the undamaged satellites had come over the horizon to provide new reconnaissance – and thank God that the space stations hadn’t been overhead – but the Soviets had come close to scoring a strategic victory.
If they’d concentrated on us, they might have won, he thought. The Soviets had charged at the American lines, hammering them, and the British forces had been able to cut them off. In hours of brutal fighting, the lines had been driven back several miles, but the advantage of surprise was gone and the Soviets had finally been destroyed. Warsaw itself was for the taking and an American battalion had finally occupied the city, but large parts of Poland would be ruined forever.
Cunningham spoke into the silence. The entire world had been stunned, with pundits predicting total nuclear war and/or the collapse of the Allied lines. The BBC had managed to sneak their reporter – Kristy Stewart – into a hospital, where she’d reported on the gas attacks. The protesters were already outside Downing Street, waving signs.
DO YOUR JOB, one read. DROP THE BOMB.
“We have managed to stabilise the situation,” Cunningham said. His voice was hoarse. “The active soviet combat units have been destroyed.”
“And when can we advance again?” Hanover said grimly. “After today… there will be panic.”
“A lot of people want Russia destroyed,” Noreen said, waving a hand towards the protesters on the streets. The anti-nuke crowds had run into the pro-nuke crowds and come off worst. “Sir… we can’t do that.”
“The Americans have sent formal notice of their intention to use their nuke, the… ah, Fat Lady, on Stalingrad,” McLachlan said. “General Groves is flying the mission himself.”
“How nice of him,” Hanover said. “Not Leningrad?”
“Apparently there were people in the American administration who felt that Leningrad was a bad choice,” McLachlan said. He snorted. “I cannot say that I disagree with them.”
“Which leaves us with a problem,” Hanover said. “Can we advance into the teeth of more nuclear weapons?”
“We don’t know how many there might be,” Stirling admitted. “A lot depends on how much the two powers have shared; the Germans had the ability to build Thande reactors, clearly, but did they share it with the Russians?”