Thursday, July 20th, 2017
The Arctic
23:00 GMT-5 (04:00 GMT July 21st)
Zero Hour + 11 hours
It had been a long day and everyone was beyond tired, and that included the Royal Marines and the Paras.
Nobody saw the two white-clad soldiers working themselves closer and closer to the Axis facility using the natural cover to maximum advantage. It had taken them two hours to cross between the two forces and then to finally roll beneath the main structure of the facility. Together, the two Russian paratroopers watched and noted the movements of people and machines, waiting for a suitable gap.
The Russian paratroopers had been very careful in their approach and infiltration of the facility. They knew that one wrong move could mean death for them and some very likely repercussions for their colleagues out on the ice. But they were highly skilled and they knew what they were about. They had two missions ahead of them; one was to find out what was going on while the second was to cause trouble (sabotage) and thus encourage the enemy forces to leave. Russian intelligence had identified the British forces accurately enough but the other forces were unknowns although it was known that there were some Americans on the icepack as well.
The two men were no mere paratroopers, they were members of the Special Purpose Centre "Senezh", itself a part of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and they were not to be messed with. They were to the Russian Federation what the Special Air Service was to Britain and Delta Force was to the United States and arguably in third place – behind Delta Force of course.
The two men lay beneath Block Two – the power house, for several minutes as they observed the goings on and movements around them. Then they moved under Block Four where they found major damage to the interconnecting passageway which in turn allowed them a view of the interior of the facility via a small fibreoptic camera. They only saw carnage – which was not altogether a surprise as they understood that it had been down to the Royal Marines to take the facility. There were many bodies amongst the debris and the heating had been cut off to prevent the bodies becoming a health risk. It was also noticeable that nobody hung about in the block as they passed through from the workshops to the accommodation areas and back. Most of those who moved through were uniformed and bore British military insignia – mostly Royal Marines but there were also quite a few Royal Navy personnel in view – but there was a group of people, some whom appeared to be shorter than most of the adults, who wore civilian equipment as far as clothing was concerned but carried the very latest weaponry.
American accents had also been observed amongst those of the British and indeed, two people conversing in French. That was slightly confusing to the two Spetsnaz troopers but they filed those inconsistencies away for their future debriefing. A short crawl later, and they were beneath the shattered accommodation and communal areas which formed Block Three. It was very obvious that a major battle had been fought and there were many dead. The dead did not concern the two men who moved onto the next block – the ablutions block, Block Eight which was located directly across from Block 1, the command centre.
Naturally, the ablutions block was not a hive of activity which allowed both men to leave the icepack and move inside the facility where it was slightly warmer.
..._...
Hal was sitting on her backside, on the steel deck, her laptop beside her as she checked and labelled their pile of external storage.
Each unit had to be checked for faults, labelled, and then passed to Q who would begin the chore of compressing and packing data to fit onto the device. He would then copy the compressed data onto the drive, ensuring that the data copied correctly and securely before he moved onto the next device. That device would then be securely packaged and then packed into a transport container which remained under the eyes of two Royal Marines who had orders not to let the container out of their sight. Beside Q, Battle Guy was busily working through the deactivation codes, decrypting them with the information provided by Synthesis and then matching up that deactivation code with a particular device located somewhere in the world. So far, two nuclear devices had been deactivated – out of fifty one – and they were Vienna, Switzerland and one of the two devices in Toronto, Canada. There was still along way to go and a lot of work to be done to get there but the progress was speeding up with every decryption.
Rampart was currently in the command centre watching for trouble which she knew could come from anyway and anytime but she had not considered an infiltration of the facility. However, Foxtail had, and she was not happy with the overall tactical situation – in her mind, the facility was wide open. It was a concern which she had shared with Piranha and the older girl had been just as concerned. The pair went looking for Hit Girl and were entering the facility at Block Three when they both saw Hit Girl emerging from the far side of the accommodation area where she had tried, in vain, to get a few minutes sleep.
"What are you two after?" Hit Girl asked cautiously with a little suspicion thrown in for good measure.
"The tactical situation sucks," Piranha pointed out.
"Tell me something I don't know," Hit Girl responded.
"We're too exposed and anybody could get inside without us knowing any different," Foxtail added.
"Tell me something I don't know," Hit Girl repeated as she walked away from the two girls.
Piranha thought that she was receiving a typically cold shoulder from Hit Girl but then she read the body language and she exchanged a look with Foxtail who nodded as she casually moved after Hit Girl, her right hand reaching for her fighting knife.
..._...
Neither Spetsnaz trooper moved as they both realised that they may have been rumbled.
A piece of equipment had shifted, somewhere over to their left, probably as a result of a dead body going through the initial stages of decomposition. They had seen the three women appear and then congregate and talk quietly between themselves. Then one had turned in their direction, followed by another. That could mean trouble, or it could mean nothing. They lay perfectly still and silent as the first woman moved past them, her eyes darting everywhere as she sought out a potential threat - them.
Then the second girl focussed on something for a moment before she darted past the first girl.
..._...
Foxtail raced towards where a bedframe lay across a desk.
She wrenched back the bedframe, flipping it over end and then she groaned as she laid eyes on the rotting corpse of some luckless bastard. She figured that some of the expanding gasses within the corpse had caused the body to shift and dislodge some of the chaotic wreckage. As she turned back to report her findings, she saw Psyche appear from the direction of Block Four but as she made to call out a welcome (actually something sarcastic) she saw Psyche unholster her pistol and then Hit Girl and Piranha snapped around as Psyche put two bullets into a pile of wreckage. Then Hit Girl's eyes went wide and before her mind could fully pronounce Ruchnaya Granata Oboronitel'naya, she had thrown her body off to one side, dragging Piranha down with her.
Psyche dropped like the floor had been cut out from under her and she rolled beneath a steel desk glad that she had seen her friend, Foxtail, take a similar defensive stance even as the UZDS dual action fuse in the RGO - 'hand grenade defensive' – armed after 1.6-seconds in the air and then the grenade struck a partition wall and the impact fuse triggered the ninety-grammes of A-IX-1 explosive which in turn shattered the double-layered pre-fragmentised body sending hundreds of deadly shrapnel shards out in all directions at high-speed. Without hesitation, the youngster rolled back out from underneath the steel desk just a second after the desk was peppered by shrapnel, her pistol raised and she fired off half-a-dozen rounds in the general direction of where the grenade had originated. She was joined by Hit Girl who angrily sent six three-round bursts into the same area. As they pushed through the chaotic wreckage, they found nothing at first but then Psyche held up a steel grenade pin.
"Find them!" Hit Girl growled at Piranha and Foxtail who were both ferociously searching the block for any sign of the intruders.
However, Spetsnaz Sergeants Konstantin Fedoro and Pasha Pavlov were no longer in Block Three.
..._...
The detonation of the hand grenade had been heard all over the facility and charging handles were pulled as an immediate response.
The defensive teams in the control room took up defensive positions around the main access door in three layers of defence – the decryption and deactivation had to continue at all costs. Royal Marines were lined up alongside American and British vigilantes of all ages, fighting as one to defend the planet from the unthinkable. Nobody knew who the intruders were – Axis or otherwise – but the grenade had been a possible indicator for a Russian breach. Outside, the defensive vehicles changed positions to ensure that they had not been marked for attack or otherwise sabotaged. The attack, when it came, was both expected and a surprise.
A massive explosion ripped apart the four-way passageway junction which joined Block Three: the accommodation and mess, Block Eight: the ablutions, Block 1: the command centre, and the since-destroyed Block Five: the server farm. Two Royal Marines were taken down by the explosion and they lay dazed and bleeding on the icepack beneath the facility. Marine Anthony Chandler, despite the pain in his side and back, noticed the two shapes hiding beneath Block Eight and he put a knife into one before he was shot twice in the chest. The two Spetsnaz sergeants scrambled out of their hidey-hole and Pavlov pulled the knife out of his right thigh with a grunt of pain. The wound was not bleeding very much indicating that no artery had been struck and therefore no medical treatment was immediately required.
Both men raised their AK-104 assault rifles and they sent a rapid burst of 7.62-calibre bullets into what remained of the passageway junction, the bullets catching another Royal Marine and Piranha. The onslaught kept heads down and allowed the two men to advance on the command centre spread a few feet apart. The large calibre bullets from their assault rifles punched through the walls of the blocks and continued onwards, causing carnage as they went. While one of the men swapped a magazine out, the other continued firing ensuring that the defenders had to be very careful as one of those bullets could take a head off.
However, the two Spetsnaz troopers had not counted on those who did not generally follow the recognised rules of combat.
..._...
Foxtail was angry and the sight of her friend writhing in agony had her seeing red.
She had moved over to Block Three from where she planned to outflank the Russians. After racing through Block Three, she raised her C8 CQB carbine and leapt down and to her right, landing on the ice pack just a few dozen yards away from the Russians who were being forced to keep their heads down as Foxtail's movements were covered by her colleagues. She triggered off her forty-millimetre grenade launcher, sending a smoke grenade in the direction of the Russians. The grenade landed, and copious amounts of whiter smoke erupted out, concealing the two Russians from sight and, more importantly, concealing friendly forces from the two Russians. For Foxtail, everything came into view through her infra-red goggles which she had lowered over her eyes. She could clearly make out the two hot bodies just yards away as she ran forwards.
She dropped to one knee a dozen yards out and she fired off two three-round bursts.
..._...
The flanking attack had been a surprise as had the smoke grenade.
Neither man was put off by the unexpected attack but they dealt with it, as they flattened themselves onto the snow and ice at their feet. Bullets came zipping out of the smoke from their right, narrowly missing both men but Pavlov was able to roll to his right and he sent his own burst back down the approximate line of the inbound bullets. But that just drew more bullets, one of which caught Pavlov's colleague, Fedoro, in the right arm. The man grunted with the pain but he kept on firing off bullets from his AK-104 assault rifle, despite the blood dribbling down his Arctic clothing. Pavlov pulled the pin on another RGO, throwing the device into the smoke over to his right. He smirked as he heard the detonation of the device followed by a scream. Then he frowned as more bullets reached out for himself and his partner from where the scream had originated. He and his partner were trained to continue fighting through injuries but whoever it was in that smoke, they too were of an elite force he figured – probably a Royal Marine.
The smoke was infuriating and it blocked out everything in all directions. However, they had succeeded in part of their mission – they knew that the British forces had secured the command centre and the servers. Then the servers had been destroyed which was a mistake the two men knew, however, they had also identified that most (if not all) of the required data had been recovered prior to the destruction of the server facility. During their short spell beneath the ablutions block, an encrypted burst transmission had been sent the kilometre or so back to their commanding officer, so even if they died, their mission would have been at least partially successful.
"Берегись!" Sergeant Federo shouted as something emerged from the smoke.
Pavlov turned his head and was surprised to see that it was a person, decked out in civilian Arctic clothing but which blended in surprisingly well with the surrounding ice and snow – and smoke. That person was obviously wounded as testified by the ripped right leg of the person's clothing and the red stains plainly evidenced on the fabric. The person was hobbling along, the body language one of intense pain but also one of intense anger and fortitude as the person advanced on them. Pavlov raised his rifle as he switched from a prone position to perching on one knee and he fired off the final round in his magazine – which missed – and he swiftly ejected the magazine...
Then hell on earth descended as Pavlov heard a swishing sound in the air behind him and then something thudded to the ice beside him – it was Sergeant Federo's head.
..._...
Foxtail grinned as she saw Rampart leap down to the snow, a beautiful high-carbon-steel samurai sword with a full tang black blade which extended a little over two feet from the grip.
One smooth swing had been more than enough to end the life of the injured Spetsnaz trooper and as his compatriot had turned to face the dangerous weapon, Foxtail had bolted forwards, drawing her twin butterfly swords from beneath her jacket and she lunged at the man ignoring the pain in her right leg caused by grenade shrapnel.
Surprisingly, the trooper dropped his, apparently unloaded, AK-104 assault rifle and he seized a pair of combat machetes from his webbing and he parried away Rampart's inbound strike even as he changed position so he could watch both opponents and defend himself accordingly. As the smoke began to clear, Pavlov noticed that there was an audience watching the fight and he also noticed that all weapons were lowered to the ground, indicating that his only way out was to kill the two women he was fighting. Only, they were damn good, he realised – even when one of them was wounded.
Swiftly, Pavlov realised that the wounded attacker was the most dangerous with her twin blades which whirled and slashed with precision and no movement or thrust wasted. Pavlov was good but he very soon felt outclassed as melee fighting was not taught to the level he would require to win the fight in which he had found himself and it did not take long for his stamina to become low under the intensive dual attacks which wore him down and down until he made a fatal mistake and he found himself on his knees but unable to get back up as the blows came down, harder and harder . . . until they paused.
Sergeant Pavlov found himself staring up into the dead cold eyes of a young woman who seemed pissed. He recognised the infra-red goggles on her head for what they were and he smiled as he understood how he and his fellow trooper had been outwitted in the smoke. As the twin blades came down for the final time, Pavlov took a moment to think of his family as they...
The man's head was cut cleanly from his shoulders by the razor-sharp blades of the twin butterfly swords and copious amounts of steaming red blood splattered across the pristine ice and snow before rapidly freezing. Foxtail wiped off her blades on the freshly deceased torso and stowed them on her lower back. Hands reached down to pull both young women up into the command centre where they could get some warmth. One of the Royal Marines grinned as Rampart strolled past, cleaning off her blade.
"Damn! I think the bastard nicked my blade – oh, no, just a bit of bone."
It was cold, damn cold, but the killing had been epic to watch, the marine realised.
..._...
As the smoke began to clear, sucked into the many air-conditioning vents, Battle Guy groaned as he laid eyes on his laptop, the device which was managing the majority of the decryption – it was shredded!
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Battle Guy declared.
"Oh, crap!" Q added as he laid eyes on the smoking piece of scrap which had once been an eight-thousand-dollar laptop and the 7.62-millimetre holes in the body.
"Is that going to be a problem?" Captain McFadden asked, knowing the answer.
"Oh, yeah!" Battle Guy announced.
"We have six codes yet to decrypt – and guess where one of those is for?" Q stated.
"London?" Captain McFadden ventured.
"You got it!"
"Not good!"
"Get the last of the data off the staging server and onto the drives," Battle Guy directed. "The bullets also shredded the transmission encoder – we can't remotely defuse anymore bombs so we may as well get the hell out of this frozen shithole."
"I agree," Hit Girl said. "Where are we with the remote deactivation codes?"
Battle Guy punched several keys and a list appeared on the large screen.
Washington D.C. (Deactivated: 4 Active: 1)
London (Deactivated: 0 Active: 5)
Paris (Deactivated: 2 Active: 0)
Berlin (Deactivated: 2 Active: 0)
Canberra (Deactivated: 2 Active: 0)
Vienna (Deactivated: 1 Active: 0)
Chicago (Deactivated: 1 Active: 1)
Los Angeles (Deactivated: 3 Active: 1)
San Diego (Deactivated: 2 Active: 0)
Ottawa (Deactivated: 2 Active: 0)
Toronto (Deactivated: 0 Active: 2)
Moscow (Deactivated: 3 Active: 0)
St Petersburg (Deactivated: 2 Active: 0)
Tehran (Deactivated: 2 Active: 0)
Tokyo (Deactivated: 2 Active: 0)
Mexico City (Deactivated: 1 Active: 0)
Rome (Deactivated: 2 Active: 0)
Beijing (Deactivated: 4 Active: 0)
Madrid (Deactivated: 2 Active: 0)
Abu Dhabi (Deactivated: 1 Active: 0)
Riyadh (Deactivated: 2 Active: 0)
Gotham (Deactivated: 0 Active: 1)
"Not good – can you remove the cities which are in the clear?" Hit Girl asked and a new list appeared consisting of just six cities.
Washington D.C. (Deactivated: 4 Active: 1)
London (Deactivated: 0 Active: 5)
Chicago (Deactivated: 1 Active: 1)
Los Angeles (Deactivated: 3 Active: 1)
Toronto (Deactivated: 0 Active: 2)
Gotham (Deactivated: 0 Active: 1)
"Okay, that sucks," Rampart pointed out as she helped Piranha onto a table so she could receive medical attention.
"Where is the D.C. device located?" Kick-Ass asked.
"The Thomas Jefferson Memorial," Q stated quietly.
"I'll pass the details to Team Bourne," Hit Girl said. "They're in New York and can be onsite very quickly to defuse the device. "Better do the same with Gotham; not that I really care if that fucking shithole was wiped off the face of the earth – where is the device in Gotham?"
"Some bastard has a sense of humour," Q commented as he typed. "The device is located in Midtown – a block west of the GCPD headquarters."
"I'll call Batman. You send him what he needs to find and defuse the device. Next?"
"Chicago – Washington Park, South Side," Q announced. "I've notified Lynx and Hawk; they are mobilising. As for Los Angeles – no massive surprise! It is located at the Aon Center. I have notified Mist and they are mobilising as well. As for Toronto, the devious bastards placed the device atop the roof of the CN Tower – at that height it will devastate the area as well as cause a nasty EM pulse covering a wide area. Concord is already in the city."
"London?" Arbiter asked.
"We don't know yet – we still have some decrypting to do," Q replied. "Sorry."
While they had been talking, the captain had been on the radio for several minutes and as she returned the handset to her radio operator, she turned to Hit Girl.
"Transport out of here will be arriving in about forty minutes," Captain McFadden announced. "It will take us onto London via Thule in Greenland."
"What do you mean by 'us'?" Hit Girl asked.
"We're coming with you," the captain replied. "Alpha Troop and Brigade Patrol Troop."
"Nothing you can do to stop us, Hit Girl," Captain Racell stated for the record as he entered what was left of the command centre. "Alpha Troop has twenty-four remaining and I have fourteen which gives Fusion an extra thirty-eight fighters."
"Considering that we have just over thirty fit to fight," Kick-Ass announced, "any assistance is welcome – thank you, Captains."
"Yes," Hit Girl added. "Thank you. Send a message to Alert and have them move out – they have no need to remain. We will need Mercurius and Tempest but the rest can board Phoenix and head for London. Advise Eagle accordingly."
"You got it, Boss!" Q responded.
Hit Girl felt immense relief that she and her teams would not be alone for the final part of their mission.
..._...
Elsewhere, in and around the facility, the various members of the occupying forces were gathering intelligence information and the dead (there were a total of six deceased – three from the Royal Marines and three from the Paras).
In Block Seven, the vehicle workshop, Resolute watched as Rigour and Fury climbed up the ramp.
"What are you two looking so guilty about?" Resolute asked the two girls.
"Us?" Rigour responded somewhat unconvincingly.
"You both look guilty as hell," the boy pointed out.
"We spend too much time with Psyche – it rubs off," Fury said.
"Bullshit!"
"Whatever!" Rigour said with a wave of her left hand as she and Fury headed towards Block Six.
"Bitches!" Resolute chuckled as he hit the button to close the roller shutter in a futile attempt at retaining some vestige of warmth in the block.
But as the boy turned his back on the shutter with just two feet to go, he suddenly felt hands on his ankles and he was yanked under the roller shutter, his head striking the steel ramp and knocking the boy senseless before his surprised brain could trigger a response.
Intrepid stepped into Block Six just as the roller shutter clattered closed and stopped.
"Resolute!"
"Resolute!"
The girl peered under and around each vehicle but found nothing.
"Where the fuck are you?"
A peek into the ravaged Block Ten showed nobody.
"Fucking twat must have headed back without waiting for me – twat!"
With that, Intrepid turned and strode towards Block Six.
Alert, Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada
23:49 GMT-5 (04:49 GMT July 21st)
The message had been most welcome and they had been packed and ready to go for over an hour.
What did surprise them was their return transport which turned out to be a stunning-looking Canadair CC-144B Challenger jet belonging to No.412 Transport Squadron of the Royal Canadian Airforce. The executive jet was painted a deep gloss blue with a trio of white stripes on each wing and carried the single word 'Canada' above the cabin windows along with the national flag which also adorned the vertical stabiliser. The national identification roundel was carried on the upper surface of the left wing and a maple-leaf version below the cockpit windows. All fifteen of them were able to sit comfortably in seats normally occupied by the Queen of Canada, the Governor General of Canada, or other high-level government officials and foreign VIPs.
Rodney Staite grumbled constantly, much to the enjoyment of his two daughters, once he heard that he was being given the dubious privilege of meeting up with the returning Arctic assault team for the flight to London. As the aircraft took off, a pair of McDonnell Douglas CF-18 Hornet belonging to No.425 Tactical Fighter Squadron of the RCAF took station to port and starboard – the Canadian Government were obviously taking zero chances in ensuring the safety of those entrusted to them for transport.
Rodney Staite was far too worried to sleep and his mind tried to tell him that the vast majority of the devices had been defused, but he knew that only one needed to detonate to cause massive numbers of deaths and worldwide panic.
Canadian Forces Base Goose Bay, Canada
23:49 GMT-5 (04:49 GMT July 21st)
The gigantic aircraft which had sat on the tarmac for almost three weeks had lent some much-needed colour to the otherwise dull appearance of the combat facility.
The alert message had the crew mobilising. The aircraft was fully-fuelled and had launched twice to flight-check everything and to ensure that nothing was allowed to remain out of operation for too long during the long layover. For the previous two weeks the aircraft had been surrounded by Canadian Army soldiers to prevent any interference from outside forces.
"We are scheduled to depart at five, once our passengers arrive – expect thirteen," Captain Anderson directed his crew. "We are headed for London Stansted."
"Into the thick of it?" Arya asked.
"Of course!" her father responded cheerfully.
Arya grinned as she headed for the cockpit for pre-flight checks.
New York City, United States of America
00:50 GMT-4 (04:50 GMT July 21st)
The cell phone on the desk rang.
"This is Siren, how may I direct your call?" Natalie asked after she had accepted the girl.
"Is the super-assassin in?" a familiar voice asked.
"DAD! Call for the super-assassin!"
"Is that the purple assassin?"
"I'm not askin'; I like livin'!"
"Wise girl," Jason chuckled as he caught the phone which curved through the air in his direction.
"Jefferson Memorial in Washington," Hit Girl advised. "We are sending you over the deactivation details – the Secret Service should be aware that you are coming. Enjoy..."
"Thanks!"
Jason dropped the call and then sighed.
"Enjoy, she says. Enjoy deactivating a thermonuclear device which may or may not detonate in my face. Funny, bitch!"
"You wouldn't feel a thing," Tim pointed out.
"Not helping, Timmy," Jason growled.
"You got somewhere better to be?" Nicki asked.
"Nothing comes to, unfortunately."
Nicki laughed as she went to pack their bags.
Toronto, Canada
00:58 GMT-4 (04:58 GMT July 21st)
Hit Girl's call was not all that welcome.
"I am so beginning not to like you!"
"Cheer up, Phosphor; just think of it as a bit of fun."
"Fun! FUN!" Phosphor growled as she dropped the phone and sat on a couch, scowling as another picked up said communication device.
"Hi! Canada's favourite ninja here."
Ninja Girl listened for a few minutes before she spoke again.
"You said, 'bombs', as in plural... Fuck! Okay, I'll have the team ready, including moody. Stay safe, Hit Girl."
Phosphor and Ninja Girl exchanged glances before they then looked at the boys, neither of whom looked very happy with their lot.
Somewhere, in the North Atlantic Ocean...
Friday, July 21st
Zero Hour + 12 hours 1 minute
HMS VENGEANCE
05:01 GMT+0 (05:01 GMT July 21st)
Everyone in the control room jumped as the buzzer sounded to alert them of the arrival of a Very Low Frequency encrypted transmission originating from the 365-metre tall mast antenna located at Skelton, Cumbria in the United Kingdom.
They all knew what the message could contain, but they hoped and prayed that the unimaginable would not come to pass. It took less than minute for the signal to be processed and printed out. The atmosphere in the control room was tangible as the radio operator stepped into the space and Commander Burbidge felt his hands shake as he was handed the message by the radio operator who had raced to get the message to his captain. As the commander studied the three letters printed on the signal paper, he felt intense relief as he reached for the handset from the overhead.
"Stand down condition 1SQ. Secure all missiles. Secure all missiles."
There was a brief burst of relieved murmuring throughout the control room before the on-watch crew settled back to their tasks while back aft, in the missile compartment, aft of the control room, the WEO audibly sighed with relief.
"Let's do this by the numbers, people. Close all hatches. Power down missile four and missile seven. Stow this damn thing!"
The WEO handed the launch trigger to his subordinate for return to the safe.
Wayne Manor, Gotham City
United States of America
00:05 GMT-5 (05:05 GMT July 21st)
The call was picked up within just a few seconds as was usual.
"Wayne Manor."
"Is the caped crusader available, Alfred?"
"I shall let the young master know you are waiting, excuse me."
Alfred chuckled as he pressed a button on the phone and replaced the handset and strode towards the drawing room where he found Bruce seated on a couch across from Selina.
"Sir," Alfred said, lifting the handset from a phone on the coffee table and he pressed the correct button. "A call for you."
"Thankyou, Alfred," the young Bruce Wayne replied as he took the receiver. "Bruce here."
"I have a job for you," came the familiar voice. "Somebody wants to destroy GCPD and devastate Midtown. Codes are on their way. Take care."
"Thankyou, we shall take care of it."
Selina looked up expectantly as Bruce calmly replaced the handset on the phone.
"There is a nuclear bomb near to the GCPD headquarters," Bruce elaborated.
"Great! Just great!" Selina Kyle grumbled but then she grinned. "To the Batcave, Batman?"
"To the Batcave, Catwoman!"
"Bloody Nora!" Alfred breathed as he stabbed the button for the fireplace.
"Wait for me!"
Aiden Maxwell, AKA Nightwing, ran into the room and pushed past Alfred as he followed Bruce and Selina down the stone steps.
Safehouse Zulu, Chicago
United States of America
00:08 GMT-5 (05:08 GMT July 21st)
Nobody had been getting much sleep over the fast few weeks and for Marcus, the waiting and not knowing was cutting deep.
He had his family, along with other members of Fusion, safely ensconced deep below D-JAK Prime. Almost every waking hour had been spent in the command centre waiting for news – good or bad. Then it had finally come, of a sort.
"You had better be safe!" Marcus exclaimed as he swept the phone up to his ear.
"I'm safe, old man."
"The others: Jamie and Stephanie?"
"Yes," Mindy confirmed. "What about the little ones; you don't want to ask about them?"
"They call me, every night, unlike some!"
"I will never complain about a Chicago winter again, Marcus."
Marcus laughed then turned serious.
"Where next for you?"
"London."
"Stay safe, all of you."
"Love you, old man."
Marcus stared at the phone for a few moments as his wife came over, dressed in her combat suit minus the mask and gauntlets.
"She'll be fine," Paige said as she gave her husband a kiss.
"Let's roll!" Kim said as she pulled on her gauntlets and her mask.
Marcus watched as the two women left the command centre. He followed Hawk and Lynx on the security monitors as they were joined by Fortune, Red Raven, Ember, Discord, and Relentless.
Manning the command centre alongside Rhino were Ares, Sneak, Valerian, and Rook.
City of Los Angeles,
United States of America
Safehouse C
21:08 GMT-8 (05:08 GMT July 21st)
It had been weeks.
But nothing could fill the gaping hole in her heart. Nicholas had tried to cheer her up but nothing he could do would so much as produce a grin on her young face. Guinevere had commented that she had better conversations with a corpse and the punch she had received to her stomach in response had been backed with pain and anguish. Every day, the girl had taken to the punchbag and she had beaten the thing to pulp before retreating to sob her heart out. Event he twins had made no inroads and they were no strangers to loss. In fact, the only person Juno actually spoke to was Maddie.
Now, however, there was a mission and Juno had refocussed her mind onto that and the memory of Logan Dark was allowed to reside in the back of her mind until a later time and date. As the team geared up, Juno had not smiled, but she had begun to join back into society and talk to her friends, all of whom were very worried about her.
Erika had been in two minds about taking Juno, but they needed her and she was safest with her friends.
The Arctic
00:08 GMT-5 (05:08 GMT July 21st)
Zero Hour + 12 hours 8 minutes
The third MV-22 settled into the snow beside the first pair and the ramp at the rear end lowered just as a fourth machine landed.
Swiftly, the three teams ran aboard with their equipment which included several large crates, one of which was in the custody of Rigour and Fury with very little explanation as to why, however, there was too much else to be done, so they were quickly left to their dubious activities. Battle Guy and Q took separate Ospreys along with a crate of data drives each so that they could continue to decrypt the data during the long flight south.
Care was taken to destroy all remaining vehicles not needed for other uses and to ensure that anything intelligence-worthy was burnt to a crisp. The badly wounded which included Hal and Termino as well as several Royal Marines and Paras were transported to HMS TORBAY for evacuation along with several dead bodies and masses of intelligence information gleaned from the facility. As for 1 PARA, they would make use of whatever vehicles they could find and they would head south for several kilometres to a point from where they would be evacuated in due course by the Royal Canadian Air Force.
At half past midnight, local time, and with much relief for all aboard, the tyres of all four tilt-rotor aircraft left the icepack and the aircraft translated onto a southerly course towards Thule, Greenland which was located some six-hundred nautical miles away and they would be airborne for around some three hours.
02:00 GMT-5 (07:00 GMT July 21st)
Zero Hour + 14 hours
The message spelt out in no uncertain terms that the Russian paratroopers should leave the Axis of Evil Site A directly, as anybody remaining at the site would be killed or incinerated.
The message had been hand delivered to the Kremlin by the British and American Ambassadors to Russia and written in both English and Russian to avoid any chances of misunderstanding. The very same message had also been delivered to the commander of the Russian paratroopers in the Arctic. That had been ninety minutes earlier and the Russian troops had been observed to move away from the main facility but only to their original lines one kilometre distant. Then, as the clock ticked over to seven o'clock local time, a roaring sound could be heard coming from the southeast and all heads turned to examine the newcomer.
Actually, there were three newcomers and they were spaced just one hundred yards apart, one behind the other. The UGM-109E Tomahawk Block IV Tactical Land Attack Missile (TLAM) was the latest and greatest of the series of missiles made famous in the skies over Baghdad in 1991. Each 5.56-metre long missile had a diameter of 51.8-centimetres with a 2.67-metre wingspan. The long-range all-weather subsonic cruise missiles had been ejected some two hours earlier from the torpedo tubes of the Royal Navy submarine HMS ASTUTE, herself located some one-thousand nautical miles to the southeast and just a dozen nautical miles east of Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean and beyond the ice.
One by one, the missiles raced past the Russians at around 475-knots before they pitched up and then each plunged downwards into a separate part of the Axis of Evil facility. Each 475-kilogramme warhead detonated, ripping apart the superstructure of the buildings and laying them open to the frozen elements.
But that was not the end of the operation; it was just the opening act.
..._...
To add some sex-appeal to the operation, a pair of United States Air Force B-1B Lancer strategic bombers swept overhead at eight-hundred knots, a hundred yards apart.
As they approached the Axis facility, they too pitched up and two-dozen items were tossed from the bomb bays of each aircraft. With a roar of power and flame, the two aircraft then dropped to just two-hundred feet over the icepack and they ignited their afterburners, rapidly departing the area at Mach 1.2 even as the final act arrived in the area. Despite the expensive distraction caused by the sleek swept-wing bombers dumping forty-eight Mk84 2,000-Ib bombs on the various outlying buildings which made up the facility, they were just that, a distraction for the main event.
Unlike the incredibly accurate and sophisticated Tomahawk cruise missiles and the stunningly crafted B-1B Lancer bombers, the MC-130E Combat Talon II was neither sleek, nor incredibly sophisticated. Indeed, the bomb run was one of the most basic and the weapon itself would simply be shoved out of the rear of the aircraft at the right moment to descend upon the target below.
Colloquially, the weapon was referred to as the 'Mother Of All Bombs' – MOAB – which actually stood for Massive Ordnance Airblast Bomb. Designed to shatter rather than to shred, the weapon weighed in at 9,800-kilogrammes of which a devastating 8,500-kilogrammes was composition H-6 explosive, a mixture some 1.35 times more powerful than pure TNT. It was only the second device to be used in action – the first having been dropped over Afghanistan in April that same year.
The Russians appeared somewhat confused by the sudden appearance of such a strange aircraft that was not normally suited to bombing missions. Some on the ground expected more troops to jump but no, a drogue chute appeared out of the rear ramp area, and then a massive pallet carrying something huge was ejected from the aircraft. As the pallet increased its angle from the horizontal to the vertical, the thirty-foot device carried by the pallet dropped off and plunged earthwards. Two stubby wings helped to stabilise the object even as four petal-like panels moved into position at the rear end to add drag to the device as it plunged faster and faster. Then, after some forty seconds of flight, it struck the Axis facility about fifty yards to the west of the intended target point.
Not that the fifty yards made much difference as almost nine-tonnes of explosive detonated, creating an immense fireball of overpressure which flattened any surviving structure and immolated anything manmade which remained within two-hundred yards of ground zero, leaving nothing but a solitary mushroom cloud behind.
End of PART IX