Patton pointed one long bony hand at a map. The German force had dug into Goteborg, a Swedish city that would have been famous in the future. Incorporating all their lessons from the first campaign, they’d been careful to sweep the hills clear of possible SAS hideouts, although they had been less successful than they clearly thought. For the distance of nearly one hundred miles, from the American lines to Goteborg, they had carefully dug defence lines and spread out their defences, secure in the knowledge that tanks were almost useless in such terrain.
“We would be better off with an amphibious attack,” Patton observed. Bloodnok smiled; Patton had studied the future campaigns of his former arch-rival Douglas MacArthur, who’d killed himself after the failure of the Wet Firecracker Rebellion. “Unfortunately, that’s not possible.”
Bloodnok scowled. The remains of the Kriegsmarine had been busy. Working from Denmark, they’d carefully mined the entire sea between Denmark and Sweden, preventing the allies from sending a fleet into the Baltic. After a series of bloody air battles, SHAFE had called off any attempt to clear the channel of mines.
“We’ll have to do it the hard way,” Patton said. “Fortunately, we have the aircraft.”
He tapped the map. “We’re going to hammer them as hard as we can, launching round-the-clock attacks, until we can start an advance. We’ll save your craft for the Germans closer to our lines; you’ll be better at avoiding slaughtering our own people.”
“Yes, sir,” Bloodnok said. He waved a hand at the mobile command unit; it had been moved to Oslo by ship and then driven into occupied Sweden. “I’ll issue the orders at once.”
“You will coordinate the entire attack,” Patton said. Bloodnok blinked; it was a gesture of trust, particularly given his ironic lack of experience with directing B-29’s or even the futuristic B-2’s. He smiled; a designer in America was planning to launch his own flying wing aircraft, now that he had access to the future designs.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “I’ll start at once.”
“Give them hell,” Patton ordered. “I want them stunned and disorientated.”
“Yes, sir,” Bloodnok said again. He headed to the command unit and started to issue orders. The strikes would not be precisely at the same time, but by the time the German lines of communication caught up with the attacks, it would be too late.
It was a cold clear day, perfect flying weather. The Eurofighter had no difficulty in following the American bombers, vast… impressive… and completely and utterly vulnerable to a single ASRAMM.
Squadron Leader Shelia Dunbar, who privately gloried in her reputation as a slut, watched the American aircraft disdainfully. Like almost everyone in the RAF, she had joined the online debates about the future aircraft they would produce, both long-term and as a stopgap measure, and she hadn’t included massive bombers on her personal list. Whatever the merits of building what could be built quickly – and she did understand the reluctance to spend ten years building the American technological base to the point where they could build B-1s and B-2s – she also knew that the B-29s would be sitting ducks to modern weapons.
One German homing missile or Deathcloud equivalent and there will be a lot of dead pilots, she thought, watching the formation with concern. The Germans might be primitive, but they’d already managed to develop tactics that caused even the Eurofighters concern. Privately, Dunbar believed that sooner or later the Luftwaffe would run out of morale or pilots, but as long as forces weren’t operating in Europe directly, the RAF couldn’t suppress the German air force completely.
She allowed herself a quick smile before checking her onboard radar again. The Germans had managed a handful of sneak attacks on Britain by staying low, but there was no sign of Germans attempting to engage the American bombers.
“Eagle-one, the flight is about to engage the enemy,” the AWACS controller said. She smiled; the bombers of 1942 might not be very accurate without the modern systems, but with the handful of GPS receivers, IFF transmitters and the computers on the AWACS, they could hardly miss.
“Roger that, Sierra-one,” she said, moving her Eurofighter away from the American planes. It would be the height of irony to die because of flying below an American bomber dropping bombs; it would be almost as bad as the pilot who’d crashed his aircraft while struggling with his waste bags.
“Commencing bombing,” an American voice said. She watched as streams of dark bombs fell towards the ground and explosions started to billow far below… and then realised that the Germans were far from helpless.
“Shit,” she snapped, as streaks of light shot up from the ground, rising to attack the American bombers. For a crazy moment, she thought that they were stolen modern weapons, and then she realised that they were primitive rockets. One struck a B-29 directly and destroyed it; others detonated near the American planes, throwing hails of shrapnel around.
“Sierra-one, we are under attack by ground-based unguided rockets,” she snapped into her radio. The German attack ended as soon as it had begun, leaving twelve B-29’s heading for a crash-landing and five damaged.
“Understood, Eagle-one,” the AWACS said. “Recommend evasive action.”
“Oh, thanks, I never would have figured that out,” Dunbar muttered, mentally striking the controller off her list of possible boyfriends. She scowled; those weapons were primitive, but if a Eurofighter was unlucky, one could kill it – and the pilot.
“Eagle-one, we are vectoring in strike planes now,” the AWACS said. “Stand by…”
An explosion billowed up from the ground as a JDAM struck at the launch site of the German rockets, followed quickly by two more. The AWACS controller snapped out a series of orders, vectoring the B-29s back over their targets. More bombs began to fall; this time there were no rockets.
“They shot their load,” Dunbar snapped. The controller didn’t bother to answer. “Now they know the blasted things will work, they’ll build more of them.”
She cursed mentally, wishing that she’d succeeded in her application for space duty. Sex in zero-gee was supposed to be wonderful, although the trained pilot part of her mind suspected that docking manoeuvres would be harder than they seemed. She snickered; more than a few new pilots had believed the tale that she’d done it in a Eurofighter Tempest, one of the handful of two-seater models.
“Idiots,” she said, as the AWACS finally vectored her home. Trying to make love in a jet fighter while high above the Earth would definitely get into the Darwin Awards. Still, what a way to go.
“The Germans produced a new surprise,” Bloodnok reported. Patton scowled; units of the American army were already moving forward, heading into Sweden. So far, resistance had been minimal, but they knew that that would soon change. “Anti-aircraft missiles.”
Now he had Patton’s full attention. “Guided missiles like yours?” He asked. “Ones that could wipe out a bomber force?”
Bloodnok shook his head. “Missiles designed to rise up and explode at a pre-set height,” he said. “Only a danger in large numbers.”
“Clever bastards,” Patton said. “The attack will continue.”
Through what a British officer he’d met had referred to as a series of unfortunate events, Private Max Shepherd and the 1st Marine Division had discovered that they had been semi-permanently assigned as airborne infantry units. Their force of helicopters, combined with their weapons and tactics, made them ideal units for clearing German strongpoints – and they hadn’t seen the sea for several months, except from the air.