General George Thomas was of two minds as he watched the Chinese party walk towards where he stood next to his mobile headquarters.
On the one hand, he was pleased that he was accepting the surrender of Vienna from Tsing Shi Tao, and that his men had been able to take control of the reactor farms without any real difficulty. Furthermore, the reports from his troops were that Chinese forces were retreating as fast as they could go, all along the line. Surviving Greek and Croat ELA forces had already taken control of their countries' capitals, American forces were on the outskirts of Budapest, Bucharest and Sarajevo would be liberated in two or three days, and Belgrade within the week.
Unfortunately, there were some things that had not gone quite as planned.
While they had inflicted heavy losses on the Chinese forces retreating from Vienna, the force that he'd really wanted to destroy—the original Vienna garrison, which was largely intact thanks to the fact that Austrian ELA forces had mostly secured the passes into Switzerland—had made it out as a coherent fighting force. All of the troops who had been caught, once his men finally turned the salient into a pocket, had been the ragged survivors of the divisions shattered in the north, effectively useless for anything except holding fixed positions. Meanwhile, the retreating Chinese forces were doing so in good order, had been laying mines faster than his men could clear them behind them as they went, their anti-air was coordinated well enough that hitting them with planes was a chancy business, and they were moving fast enough that hitting them with Particle Cannons wasn't an option.
To make matters worse, based on the preliminary reports from Bulgaria and northeastern Greece, the Chinese were digging in on a much tighter defensive line, one that they could actually feasibly defend with the forces they had available. He outnumbered them enough to where he was reasonably confident that the League could launch a successful attack, but at this point he suspected it would be better to just wait for the Chinese to wither on the vine.
He didn't like killing people, but waiting was just painful—especially because people still died, in little meaningless skirmishes and probes instead of battles that actually decided things.
He frowned. There had been something in that last intelligence report that had bothered him. What was it?
Oh yes. Wu Tsien's reserve division had moved from Timisoara to Ankara, of all places, and had done so within three days, which was speedy enough to be worrisome in and of itself. The intel analysts said it was because the man was worried about losing Anatolia, but he wasn't so sure. Wu had struck him as the sort of fellow who intended to make the enemy react to him, not the other way around.
But what could he possibly be planning? To fight his way out of the multilayered trap he found himself in? His superiors wouldn't let him take that risk.
Would they?
Major Lin Zhong was somewhat nervous about her assignment.
That was an understatement.
She was extremely nervous about her assignment.
Supposedly, she and the negotiating team she was a part of were in Baku in order to see if they could get the Azeri government to look the other way while the Chinese government sent critical supplies clandestinely through Azeri territory. This cover story had the advantage of being true, so far as it went—if they could get even a few planeloads of certain critical parts to their forces in Anatolia, their chances would improve drastically, or so the general said, and she believed him.
But they were also here to negotiate with the leaders of the Kurds, to see if Chinese forces could gain safe passage through the part of Syria they currently.
Wu had summed it up neatly when he'd briefed the team he was sending. "The Kurds are the weak link in the American blockade. They're good soldiers, and brave, but neither Iran, nor Iraq, nor Turkey actually like them, and they won't want to lose a lot of men and equipment opposing us." He'd smiled wryly. "Now that the Azeris control what used to be northwest Iran and Turkey is effectively defunct, an independent Kurdistan looks a lot more viable, and I think they'll go for it. They don't want to do anything that will decrease their chances."
He'd paused then. "Unfortunately, the Americans are also their main patron, and the Kurds have little reason to love us. So when I say they're the weak link, that's only by comparison to trying the Israelis or the Azeris. They can't stop us, but they might hurt us badly enough that we won't be able to fight our way back home."
Those words echoed in her mind as she and the others left the Azeri president's office. They hadn't been able to offer him much, unfortunately, but he knew that a Russia fully resurgent would be detrimental to his country's sovereignty, and Ambassador Li had been able to play on that in order to persuade him to let the supplies trickle through.
Now, it was time for the difficult part.
The route from the Presidential Building to where they would meet the Kurds involved an underground vehicle transfer, going through the service entrances of a Chinese-owned hotel, where they changed clothes, another underground vehicle transfer, and then going in through the basement door of a small Georgian restaurant, where three mid-ranking Kurdish officials awaited them.
They got straight to the point, barely giving Lin time enough to activate her microphone rig, which connected back to Wu's headquarters.
"Why should we betray the League by letting you through?" the one in the center asked, in English, as that was the only language both parties had in common. The irony was not lost on her, nor on anyone else at the table, she suspected.
Well, perhaps Colonel Zheng. The man was notoriously insensitive to such things.
Li folded his hands. "A reasonable question, if we were asking you to betray the League. We, however, are not asking you to do any such thing."
That caused the Kurds to sit up and take notice. "If you came to discuss terms of surrender, then, we are not the men to ask," the same man said.
Li shook his head. "Again, no. We are not asking you to betray the League by letting us through. We are asking you to fulfill the League's objectives by letting us through."
This was certainly a new approach.
"Explain yourself," the Kurdish—Spokesman? Leader?—requested firmly.
"Is it not the League's objective for all Chinese forces to be out of what it calls the Occupied Zone? Would it not hasten the fulfillment of that objective if we could move from Ar Raqqah to Al Mayadin unopposed?"
That was forthright for a negotiation of this nature. It wasn't as though it was a secret that any Chinese force would have to go along that route if it didn't want to fight the Peshmerga all the way through Iraq and until it reached Iran, and possibly even after that, but still.
The Kurd on the left leaned forward. "We ourselves do not have the authority to decide this matter. Should we step aside, however, what would we gain from this?"
Li inclined his head. "Recognition. As well as the benefits that would accrue to you from not having to face the IRGC-GLA coalition that has arisen in western Iran."
The Kurd grunted in acknowledgement of that, but that did not change his rather skeptical tone when he said, "What of the Iraqis? You have lent them your support."
Li simply looked at the man, who said "Never mind." Zhong wasn't surprised. The only reason the Chinese had provided aid to Baghdad was the Occupied Zone, and the single Iraqi effort to try and break through, in conjunction with some Syrian units who had been cut off from Damascus, had ended with the attackers ten kilometers back from their start lines.
The Kurds would have no difficulty defending themselves against Iraq, and she would not be surprised if the general replaced some of his lost equipment from what the Chinese had supplied to Baghdad.
"Further," Li continued, "we would raise no objections to your…expansion…elsewhere. So long, of course, as it held to the standards of national self-determination."
The Kurds were not particularly interested in any territory that wasn't mostly Kurdish—aside, perhaps, from the oil wells around Mosul—which meant that the condition wouldn't limit them much.
"What do you think your superiors will say to that?" he finished as the Kurds' eyes lit, and Lin suppressed a smile, as she heard Wu chuckle.
President Michael Harrison had every right to be pleased with himself. Despite having been elected after the GLA attack on the West Coast, with the implied but never outright stated position that he would not involve the United States in foreign wars and focus on "America First," he had not only been able to develop an alliance that could topple China from its newfound perch, but also had been able to convince Congress to declare war on the Chinese—even the attempt on NORAD hadn't been enough by itself to get the supermajority needed.
And right now, everything was quite well. So far, most of the European countries were already working on free and fair elections, the collaborationists weren't being too badly treated, the ELA forces were shifting back into their national armies, except for the ones still pursuing the Chinese through the Balkans, and they were already planning on how to rebuild. Globally, the only Chinese allies left in the fight were Burma, South Africa, and Pakistan—and the Indians were about to finish off the latter. Islamabad's nuclear weapons and material were a concern, though, and he had every asset he could spare trying to keep on top of where it was. The Australian-Indonesian blockade was strangling what was left of China's seaborne trade, and Korea and Japan had both mobilized, although neither had declared war yet. Even so, the potential threat to China's most productive and populous regions meant that they couldn't send any more reinforcements to try and get their people out of the trap they were in.
But now decisions had to be made that would affect what sort of world it would be like after the war was over.
"Let me get this straight. The Chinese want the Kurds to let them through into Iraq so that they can fight their way through Iran, Central Asia, and our Russian and Indian allies in order to get back home?"
"Yes sir. That's about the size of it," National Security Advisor Jim Cook replied. "The Kurds didn't want to tick us off, so they discussed it with our ambassador to the area an hour ago. They've got a Chinese delegation in Baku, waiting on an answer."
"General Thomas," Harrison said, turning to where the League commander in Europe sat in his mobile headquarters, "what are the chances of stopping the Chinese retreat through Turkey?"
Thomas shook his head. "Low, sir. Our air assets are close to the limit, and moving them to within striking range of Turkey will simply take time—a week, at least, and by then we might be able to strike their rear guard. The Israeli air force is still refitting after hammering Syria, and wouldn't be enough in any case. The Russians stripped the Caucasus in order to make their attack into Central Asia. As to the ELA, there's a division's worth of fighters in Turkey, and while they could delay the Chinese advance, they almost certainly couldn't stop it."
"What's your read on how Arslan might take this?"
Thomas shook his head. "I don't know, sir. I think his main objective is to have the Chinese back in China. I'm not sure if how that happens is really that important to him."
"In your opinion, General, could opposing the Chinese retreat into Iraq weaken them enough that they would not be able to make it back to China?"
"Possibly, sir. Too many variables to be certain, and General Wu is tough and smart. If he'd commanded the Occupied Zone, I wouldn't be here in Budapest. If we were lucky, I'd be in Bonn. But the chances go up significantly if he's delayed."
Harrison nodded. "Thank you, general. I won't take more of your time. Harrison out." As the feed cut out, he looked over at his Secretary of State. "Ramifications on your end?"
George Cavender shrugged. "Not too many, one way or another, aside maybe from the Russians and Indians. The question is what will happen in China."
Harrison nodded. No one wanted to actually invade the Chinese homeland. While not doing so might mean having to fight another war in a few years, doing so might also set off a nuclear war. However, what everyone was hoping for was that the PRC might implode from recent events, or at the very least spend a few years chewing its own guts out in a civil war.
"What happens if the Chinese forces are destroyed somewhere in Central Asia?"
"Nationalist uprisings in the west and Taiwan, generalized domestic unrest elsewhere. It'll take them years, maybe decades, to recover."
"And if they manage to make it home?"
"Assuming General Wu survives, he'll be the only person in the Chinese leadership with an enhanced reputation. The Politburo and General Leang will feel threatened by that, and may decide to try and get rid of him permanently. Any survivors of this march are going to be more loyal to him than the Politburo, and the rest of the military will be split. At that point, there's every chance of a civil war between those loyal to him and those loyal to the Politburo, which will also result in nationalist uprisings as rebels try and take advantage of the chaos. It would take them decades to recover from that, for a certainty. But there's no guarantee, sir."
"What are the chances that the Chinese will be able to retaliate against our allies, in a worst-case scenario?"
"Unlikely."
Then Cook spoke again. "There's also the resurgent GLA in Iran and Central Asia to think about. If a beaten, battered Chinese force, retreating from us, manages to fight their way through them, it might finish the GLA off for good."
That clinched it. "George, tell the Kurds they have the green light—but they're not to allow any flights to go westward. Make sure they have that clear. The Chinese go out, they don't come back in." He paused. "But tell them not to make it too obvious."
Black Lotus was utterly exhausted. She'd been able to set her hackers to keeping the League's cyberwarfare specialists occupied, and they seemed to have done a good job of it—for one thing, the Americans and ELA hadn't even tried to attack the supposed defensive line they were setting up to cover Istanbul, which they would have if they knew there was less than a division's worth of troops holding it. Although, since nearly everyone else was almost through Istanbul already, they might have decided to let the Chinese go.
However, she had assigned only herself to the most dangerous part of the job—keeping this movement from the Chinese government. It hadn't been hard to misdirect the Politburo—they were busy trying to keep a lid on things in the Middle Kingdom itself, and were trying to distance themselves from the utter catastrophe that had unfolded in the Occupied Zone.
General Leang, on the other hand, knew that unless she somehow managed to put the blame on somebody else, the Politburo would sacrifice her first, and she did not have many options. Of the four generals under her command, two had died early in the fighting, and had already been memorialized as martyrs to the People's Republic, one had surrendered but would be very difficult to blame, and one had held his forces together through it all—and as a result, was a potential rival.
Black Lotus felt some sympathy for her position, as Leang had only been doing what the Politburo told her to do, and she knew better than anyone just how hard Leang had had to work to attain her current position. However, it was very obvious that the orders she was handing out were designed to say that she had told Wu to stand fast, but he had disobeyed her in order to save his own skin.
As a result, since she was far more interested in seeing to it that China survived the upcoming unrest than she was in preserving Leang's career, she was busy misdirecting queries, editing files, and making sure that the telephone connections weren't working. If she was ever discovered, "severe" would not even be close to describing the consequences she would experience. She was also busily subverting the command links between Leang's headquarters in Xi'an and the commanders in Iraq—and, to make things more difficult, was making it look like a Russian job.
The only reason she wasn't doing the same thing with her forays into Leang's files was that if Wu succeeded, Leang would want a paper trail that indicated that she had at least not gotten in his way. And if Wu failed—well, she wasn't altogether sure if she would survive that. So she wouldn't have to worry about Leang's retaliation.
Sergeant Aloysius Germain was slightly grumpy.
It wasn't because he was being deployed to Turkey. He'd always wanted to see Istanbul, after all, and that's where he was.
No, it was because of what he and his buddies would be doing there.
"Why are we the ones providing security?" he asked as they debarked from the plane that had taken them from Rome.
Palmer shrugged. "Maybe they figure the best way to counter a sniper is another sniper. Would you rather be shadowing the Chinese?"
"I would. At least then we'd be doing something. I mean, who's going to try and whack General Thomas? ELA's with us, and last I heard the nearest Chinese are in Ankara. It's a waste of our time."
"Maybe. But there's some GLA still left—you heard about what happened in Eskesehir."
Germain grunted in acknowledgement. Six hours after the Chinese had left the city, the ELA had moved to claim it, only to run into a group trying to raise the GLA's banner again. The fighting was still going on, it was extremely confused, and the ELA was having to pull troops away from watching the Chinese retreat to try and secure the city.
Six hours later, Germain was somewhat happier. He was still thought that his talents would be better used elsewhere, but now that he'd been here for a little while there did seem to be tension in the air, which wasn't what you'd expect from a city that had just been liberated.
He couldn't explain why he thought there was tension, given that he was presently perched in a tower overlooking the Golden Horn. It was probably the fact that, while everyone seemed happy to see them, the smiles looked a little strained. In fact, that had been more and more the case the closer they'd gotten to where they'd be setting up.
He wasn't sure what that was a sign of, but he knew it wasn't good, and the first thing he and Palmer had done when they got up here was look around for all the potential sniper's nests they could see. They'd found more than a dozen, and he was sure they hadn't found them all.
The commander of the security force's voice came through his earpiece. "Chickamauga and Manzikert have arrived. High alert, gentlemen."
Germain knew why Thomas had been assigned the code sign "Chickamauga," but he had no idea why Arslan had been given "Manzikert." Maybe that was also a battle?
It didn't matter, and Germain wiped everything from his mind but searching for potential assassins or other troublemakers.
The only distraction was the progress reports for the motorcade carrying the generals down to the Golden Horn for the photo op. He knew that he needed to get a feel for what should be there before the vehicles got into his sector. Any attack wouldn't have a lot of preparation time-this little jaunt had only been announced to them twelve hours ago, and had only been revealed to the locals six hours ago.
If there were GLA terrorists in the city, they'd be improvising the whole thing, which would mean they'd almost certainly be sloppy. Like...That one.
"Palmer. Man on the corner. Blue burnoose. See anything different?"
There was a pause as his spotter swung his binoculars to look at the man, and then he spoke. "Yeah. He's looking a little too fixedly at the route they'll be coming down. Might have explosives under there, might not. I'll call it in."
"Keep watching him. There's probably more around."
As Palmer called in the potential threat, Germain scanned the area carefully. There didn't seem to be anyone on the rooftops, which surprised him a little. Then something in a window caught his eye, and he zoomed in his scope.
"Sniper in the window. Just moving into position. One block up from the first man."
"Command says they're diverting the motorcade to the alternate route. Reaction teams are moving in now-Germain, the man on the corner's starting to run!"
He moved his rifle quickly, seeing it all in his mind's eye. The terrorist running, either getting caught by the reaction team or reaching his goal, pulling out a rifle or pressing the detonator...
The crosshairs settled on a blue burnoose, running swiftly.
"Do I have the target?"
"Yes."
Germain had one of the fastest reaction times ever recorded in Pathfinder School. It wasn't something he bragged about-fast reflexes were rarely necessary, and a steady hand was much more desirable. But it did mean that by the time Palmer had gotten to the "s" he'd already squeezed the trigger, making sure to lead his target just a little.
The bullet took the man between the shoulder blades, and he pitched forward onto the street. A detonator fell from his hand, and for a moment Germain wondered if the bomb had been set to a dead man's switch before Palmer spoke urgently.
"Sniper going out the window, he's making a run for it!"
Germain flipped the bolt up and yanked it back as he swept back up to cover the street, slamming it back and flipping it down as the cartridge pinged off the tower floor and he settled the crosshairs on the jumping sniper, who landed in a crouch on the pavement, somehow keeping his Dragunov from hitting the ground as well.
He was impressed, but not enough to distract him from his mission.
He fired, and the round blew through the man's right knee and his left calf, turning his attempt to stand up into a topple to the right as the reaction team came into view.
"Stay alert," he heard as the reaction team closed in on the would-be assassin. "There's probably more of them around."
He wondered, for a moment, if the generals would still go through with their plan. Then he set himself to scanning the area again, and breathed a sigh of relief as he realized that he hadn't heard an explosion. That would have been difficult to live with.
Wu Tsien was tired.
Which was better than being dead, but the retreat through Turkey had been a truly painful exercise. Moving hundreds of thousands of men down one or two roads, neither of which was of exceptional quality, was not an exercise for the faint of heart or body, and he couldn't remember when he'd last gotten more than an hour of sleep at a stretch. He was just glad that the ELA and the League had apparently decided to let them run, only harassing the rearguard and making a few pinprick assaults wherever his men had gotten sloppy.
He'd still taken losses he could ill afford, but things weren't nearly as bad as they could have been. The only question now was what the Kurds and Israelis would do.
Yes, the Kurds had indicated that they wouldn't do more than offer token resistance along his line of march, but they might have been lying, and the IDF could be something of a wild card. However, they detested the GLA as much as he did, and didn't bear the PRC any more animus than they did any of the other countries that had sided constantly with the Palestinians, which included the Europeans.
The GLA's rise had done for that last, though. The West Bank and Gaza Strip had been some of their prime recruiting grounds, and Palestinian fighters had been seen everywhere from Beijing to Germany. No one backed them anymore, except for the truly rabid anti-Zionists/Semites.
Either way, he suspected the Israelis wouldn't do more than imitate the League, and just harass them a bit as they left.
The moment of truth was about to happen, and he found himself having to restrain the urge to lean forward towards his mobile headquarters's console as his lead division counted down towards the assault. They were on a narrow front, and the Kurds knew exactly where they were going to attack.
The timer hit zero.
The bombardment began.
It wasn't going to be a long one—not with a division's worth of artillery concentrated on a brigade's frontage. But as he watched the imagery coming in from the camera feeds his men had set up, and saw buildings crumble to rubble and burst into flame, he hoped that the Kurds hadn't been lying. It was going to be a long way to the Iraqi border if they had been.
After fifteen minutes, the bombardment subsided, and the assault elements moved forward. This was his only brigade that had more than three-quarters of its assigned strength, and he did his best to breathe normally as they came into range of where the Kurdish outer defenses had been. No artillery bombardment killed or shocked everyone, and he waited for the sounds that would indicate that he would have to fight his way through the city.
None came, even as the first Battlemasters and Dragon Tanks moved into where the buildings had been on the outskirts of Ar Raqqah.
He didn't relax, though. If he'd been in command and planning to make a fight of it, his main strength would be concentrated in the city center, where bombardment would block the roads with rubble and prying his men out would require flame and bayonet.
But the lead elements reported no contacts as they moved through the city, and he ordered the follow-on brigade forward to secure behind them, and the reserve brigade to prepare to go in after them.
As they swept to the outskirts of the city, no one reported any contacts. The Kurds had apparently ordered all civilians out of the city—probably to make sure that the Syrians wouldn't interfere, somehow.
He waited for the peshmerga to come boiling out of the buildings with blood in their eyes. They did not, even as his lead division took positions to secure all the roads out of the city, and reported light screening forces to the northeast and the south.
He then ordered the next division forward, and told them to search every building along the route the army would take.
There was no one there.
With that, he ordered the surviving Helix squadrons to take up screening positions, told the lead division to push south until they ran into heavy resistance or the Iraqis that were supposedly containing the Kurds, and then got the rest of the army moving.
He was glad of it, too-the vanguard of the ELA force was starting to skirmish with his rearguard, and he didn't want to lose any more men than he had to.
He'd need them in the Zagros.