'Stand-To' (Armageddon's Song) Read online

  Armageddon’s Song

  Book 1

  Stand-to

  By

  Andy Farman

  This book is a work of fiction and as such names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the authors creation or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, whether living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © Andy Farman 2013

  Dedicated to my parents Audrey and Ted Farman who brought up three kids on a Flight Sergeants wage, taught us to appreciate the written word and encouraged us to always have a book nearby. Kenneth Grahame, Arthur Conan Doyle, Alistair MacLean and Sven Hassel all send their thanks.

  Foreword

  My reason for sitting down and putting pen to paper was due to a lack of good military yarns in print at that time. I felt there were too many novels that although well written were almost totally American in outlook, giving only lip service to other nations services.

  There have also been too few novels of a major conflict that do not end with the wheeling out of ‘the secret weapon’ / super-secret technology (rather similar to the manner in which Greek playwrights ended the play with the involvement of ‘The Gods’). I am not sure if that is an over reliance in books on the superior technology aspect that became apparent during the Gulf War, or simply a deep desire to find an ending to the story. On that note I have to admit that before I began to write I would have used the term laziness on the part of those authors but after three years of trying to write, hold down a full time job and still have a life I am not so critical. I recognise that desire to just finish and have done with. I have not invoked any Gods in this, my first effort, at writing either to inspire the words to appear or to bring it to a sudden end. The weapons within the book are old or existing technology at the time of writing and with one exception the performance of those weapons is documented and public domain. I was unable to find any data on the effects of nuclear weapons detonated below the sea, and as such I admit to ‘winging it’ there.

  Since I began writing, the SA-80 rifle in UK forces use has undergone some major, and very expensive re-working. It is by no means perfect but it has improved in terms of reliability, however it hangs a large question mark over the wisdom of those politicians who ordered its original distribution and over the integrity of the senior officers who permitted it to happen.

  There are several novels that used World War 3 as the stage, most memorable for me have to be Harold Coyle’s ‘Team Yankee’, Tom Clancy’s ‘Red Storm Rising’ and Bob Forrest-Webb’s ‘Chieftains’. Bob’s book told the story from the viewpoint of the crew of a Royal Armoured Corp Chieftain tank, the only book about the British armed forces and it was superb.

  This book has many viewpoints but the principle ground war in Europe is centred around a British Army infantry battalion and my reasons were that are A/ I am British, and B/ I am an ex – infantryman who served at the time the Warsaw Pact posed a very real threat.

  There are heroes, heroines and villains from all sides of my fictitious global conflict and although you will pick up on my deep dislike of politicians I have even written a couple of good guys into their ranks – the laws of probability state they must exist somewhere, right?

  Attempting to create a tale of global conflict as depicted in the books with contemporary levels of forces, particularly the land battles in Europe and Australia was a non-starter.

  David Cameron’s declaration that the UK’s intelligence services abilities render British Armed Services unnecessary in order to justify further cutbacks was farcical and deluded as events since his taking office have shown. This did not save the Harrier fleet, regiments or warships though; it has not even provided aircraft for the new carriers either.

  Therefore, in this tale the equipment and formations of post-Cold War 1998 have been restored.

  I have never served in any navy or air force, let alone fought at sea or in the air, so please bear that in mind when you come across any errors because at the end of the day this book is only meant to be a means of harmless escapism.

  My thanks to my old friend Bill for his knowledge of police firearms tactics and the occasional slap on the back of the head to keep things real.

  Thanks also to Ray for providing one of the characters, and a very special thanks to my father Ted Farman for patiently correcting grammar and punctuation.

  DEDICATION

  Dedicated to my parents Audrey and Ted Farman who brought up three kids on a Flight Sergeants wage, taught us to appreciate the written word and encouraged us to always have a book nearby. Kenneth Grahame, Arthur Conan Doyle, Alistair MacLean and Sven Hassel all send their thanks.

  Foreword

  My reason for sitting down and putting pen to paper was due to a lack of good military yarns in print at that time. I felt there were too many novels that although well written were almost totally American in outlook, giving only lip service to other nations services.

  There have also been too few novels of a major conflict that do not end with the wheeling out of ‘the secret weapon’ / super-secret technology (rather similar to the manner in which Greek playwrights ended the play with the involvement of ‘The Gods’). I am not sure if that is an over reliance in books on the superior technology aspect that became apparent during the Gulf War, or simply a deep desire to find an ending to the story. On that note I have to admit that before I began to write I would have used the term laziness on the part of those authors but after three years of trying to write, hold down a full time job and still have a life I am not so critical. I recognise that desire to just finish and have done with. I have not invoked any Gods in this, my first effort, at writing either to inspire the words to appear or to bring it to a sudden end. The weapons within the book are existing technology at the time of writing and with one exception the performance of those weapons is documented and public domain. I was unable to find any data on the effects of nuclear weapons detonated below the sea, and as such I admit to ‘winging it’ there. Since I began writing, the SA-80 rifle the UK forces uses has undergone some major, and very expensive, re-working. It is by no means perfect but it has improved in terms of reliability, however it hangs a large question mark over the wisdom of those politicians who ordered its original distribution and over the integrity of the senior officers who permitted it to happen.

  There are several novels that used World War 3 as the stage, most memorable for me have to be Harold Coyle’s ‘Team Yankee’, Tom Clancy’s ‘Red Storm Rising’ and Bob Forrest-Webb’s ‘Chieftains’. Bob’s book told the story from the viewpoint of the crew of a Royal Armoured Corp Chieftain tank, the only book about the British armed forces and it was superb.

  This book has many viewpoints but the principle ground war in Europe is centred around a British Army infantry battalion and my reasons were that are a) I am British b) I am an ex – infantryman who served at the time the Warsaw Pact posed a very real threat.

  There are heroes, heroines and villains from all sides of my fictitious global conflict and although you will pick up on my deep dislike of politicians I have even written a couple of good guys into their ranks – the laws of probability state they must exist somewhere, right?

  I have never served in any navy or air force, let alone fought at sea or in the air, so please bear that in mind when you come across any errors because at the end of the day this book is only meant to be a means of harmless escapism.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to my old friend Bill for his knowledge of police firearms tactics and the occasional slap on the back of the head to keep things real.

  Thanks also to Ray for providing one of the characters, and a very special thanks to my father Ted Farman for patiently cor
recting grammar and punctuation.

  And lastly of course my thanks to all the many and varied personalities I have met during both my careers over the years, both the good and the bad varieties, who have unwittingly added to this story.

  We Stood-To before the dawn, our bayonets fixed, to repel we knew not what.

  CHAPTER 1

  The picture was that of a city, as it would be seen from a thousand feet in the air on a clear spring day. From the shadows cast by buildings and weight of traffic in evidence it could be supposed that the time was just before the working day began. It was a large city, with its old and new buildings hinting at commerce, history and possibly a seat of government.

  A wide river flowed through its centre and river traffic was evident. Bridges spanned the river; tunnels crossed beneath it and together carried roads, tracks or pedestrians. Tiny figures showed people going about their business. One could only suppose at the mood of the drivers of vehicles that moved at a slow crawl.

  The picture centred over a section where vehicles disappeared into a tunnel beneath the river to reappear upon its opposite bank.

  Intensely bright spears of fire eight hundred metres long suddenly spouted from each tunnel mouth before being eclipsed by a rapidly expanding flower of flame emerging from the centre of the river between both tunnel mouths. A blast wave travelling at the speed of sound preceded the awful bloom, it shredded the tall symbols of commerce, levelled the markers of history.

  A cyrillic word in orange letters began to blink in the top right corner of the picture at the instant the scene froze. A window appeared and overlapped the left side of the picture listing the estimated bounds of destruction and numbers of dead and injured. The vision of Armageddon disappeared as a disc was ejected and placed into an envelope bearing the cities name and was then filed in an attaché case amongst other discs in their separate envelopes. Each envelope bore a different name and there were one hundred names.

  Enroute from Moscow to Beijing: 0223hrs 20th March

  At 20,000 feet above Manchuria an Aeroflot flight with only four passengers aboard flies toward the capital of the People’s Republic of China, all four wear western style business suits although the bearing of one of these passengers suggests he is most at home in uniform.

  Serge Alontov, Colonel General of Spetznaz Forces, currently inactive, switched off his laptop and ensured none of the discs had come loose from their envelopes before locking and putting aside his attached case. He had come a long way since his first fire fight as a young lieutenant in the Dasht-e-Margow Mountains of Afghanistan. That war had been the first crack in the mighty armour of Soviet communism that the majority of the world had witnessed.

  For years NATO had encamped itself in the then 'West Germany' facing the combined forces of the Warsaw Pact known as the Red Army. It is historical fact that NATO had been greatly outnumbered on land, sea and air but the West had striven to maintain a status quo in arms by fielding ever more technically superior equipment, quality versus quantity. Had the Soviet Union remained reliant on its winning formula of weight of numbers instead of bankrupting itself attempting to match the West's technology, then Alontov knew with all his being that the Red Army would have triumphed because after all at a sixty to one advantage in armour, quantity has a quality all of its own.

  Alontov was a patriot from a long line of loyal patriotic soldiers of the state whether Czarist or post-revolutionary, both his grandfathers had fought in the great patriotic war against Nazi Germany. His maternal grandfather had first battled Luftwaffe Messerschmitt Bf 109s from the open cockpit of a WW1 era biplane in the opening days of Germanys 'Operation Barbarosa' and barely escaped with his life. Later in the war he had risen to command a squadron of Yak-1 fighters before disappearing forever over the vast forest reaches of the Ukraine with two Fw 190s on his tail and thick oily smoke streaming from beneath his faltering engines cowling.

  Alontov's paternal grandfather had been more fortunate, and young Serge had sat silently in awe on the floor near the log fire as his grandfather, and not so young old comrades retold one another of their journey from Moscow to Berlin, the battles fought and friends lost along the way.

  Young Serge never tired of listening to those tales on the long winter nights as the old warriors drank their vodka.

  Alontov turned his head to regard his travelling companions, ten years from conception, a germ of an idea with no hope of official sanction to this, the eve of the rebirth of the Soviet Union. The four of them would seal the bargain made with their one-time bitter enemies and rivals for communist domination of the planet. None of the passengers would ever claim to be true communists; it was the regime rather than the politics that brought their Mother Russia its greatness. Corrupt, inept and flawed leadership that lacked foresight had brought the downfall of their beloved country from its place as equal first with America in the world order, to the humiliation of begging for hand-outs from those same Americans in order to feed its people. All that would change very soon now, from Alaska on the continental United States, to the English Channel and from the North Cape of Norway as far south as Gibraltar would become the new Soviet Union. If the Europeans needed persuading then the British Isles would be left a glowing cinder in the North Sea for a hundred years by way of example.

  Alontov glanced along the aisle as the elder of the four; Anatoly Peridenko came into view. Making his way from the cabin crew station where he had been doing his lecherous best to persuade a striking blonde from St Petersburg of the career advantages in visiting his dacha. Peridenko ignored his own seat and sat down unbidden beside Alontov. Serge resisted the urge to lean slightly away from his fellow countryman; the former KGB chief had the knack of making one want to wash by the mere act of entering the same room. Alontov was no guileless romantic with fluff still on his chin, as a professional soldier he accepted that whenever possible his job was to engage his countries enemies without warning, but he would not shirk from the frontal assault against a prepared defence if the situation demanded it. Peridenko on the other hand was the archetypal 'snake in the grass', he would never contemplate confronting an enemy face to face, and it would always be from behind as they slept and then only after he had persuaded them he was a friend. Peridenko half turned in the seat to regard Alontov, he was aware of the others distaste of him but it mattered to him not a jot; as long as he was respected then he cared nothing for the emotions that engendered that respect.

  "Have you had chance to study the latest intelligence predictions?" Alontov sighed to himself before replying

  "Anatoly Peridenko, history itself gave coinage to the phrase 'a plan never survives first contact with the enemy'. You expend valuable time and resources attempting to guess at the West's moves on Day plus 9 when we have not yet gathered all the required pieces for our own opening gambit. I would much rather those same resources concentrate greater effort on assuring Day 1 happens as planned and less time gazing into teacups willing the future to appear.". Without any sign of concern over the censure Peridenko pressed the seat button to summon a flight attendant before replying. "Provided the assets we are certain of and the Chinese act as promised, the West and Asiatic governments will be too stunned and afraid to coordinate an effective response". He inclined his head away to admire the form of the approaching blonde attendant

  "Do you think she is a natural blonde Serge?" he mused without expecting any reply.

  Forestry Block B, Sennybridge Training Area, Brecon, Wales: Same time

  A gentle wind, moving through the branches of tall Pine trees, has a way of making people relax. If the experience could be had on prescription, pharmaceutical companies would go out of business. Abroad this night in the heavily forested blocks at the western side of Sennybridge training area in Wales, are groups of men with no time nor inclination to stop to hug the rough trunks or otherwise ‘find themselves’.

  Moving very slowly along a firebreak between tall pine trees are one such group, six figures well spread out and
burdened down with full fighting order webbing and Bergen’s on their backs. Apart from the rear man who held an LSW, Light Support Weapon, the remainder was armed with SA80 assault rifles. Two more figures are knelt off to the side of their line of march, watching the proceedings through small light intensifiers. Although one wears the same two-tone camouflage cream on exposed skin surfaces and DPM, disruptive pattern material, combat jacket, trousers and boots. His only burdens are the tactical radio on his back, night sight and the white armbands that denote 'Umpire' on tactical exercises and a DS, 'Director of Students', on training courses in the British Army. The six soldiers he is 'Dee Essing' are all would-be infantry section commanders from various infantry regiments undergoing eighteen weeks of organised discomfort, physical and mental pressure, plus good old-fashioned general embuggerance to sort out the leaders from the led. In 'soldier speak' this course is known as 'Junior Brecon', viewed with trepidation by those yet to undergo it and pride by those who pass it and describe themselves as 'Brecon trained' to lesser martial mortals. Company Sergeant Major Colin Probert was accompanied by a young man clad in a camouflage uniform of a different style. Senior Lieutenant of Paratroops Nikoli Bordenko was his given name and title, although he was called something very different by the Brits, was quite enjoying his attachment to the British Army’s School of Infantry. In all, thirty soldiers, sailors and airmen from his homeland were at this moment ‘seeing how the other half lived’, with NATO armies. Nikoli considered himself fortunate to have been chosen, although ideally he would have preferred an American facility. Should that have transpired he would have found some way of visiting California and discover if it were true that residents of that State lived at the beach, were independently wealthy, wore only revealing designer clothes in the dubbed versions of ‘The OC’ he had once watched with interest. As it was, the local Welsh girls may have lacked suntans and Ferrari’s but their natural looks and sense of fun had charmed his trousers off, in fact all his clothes off, on two occasions thus far. Outings to the unpronounceable Tafarn-y-Cwm Inn and Abercamlais Arms would have been more memorable had he not imbibed quite so much of the local ale.