2000 Paris

The Europeans could see them. Could see every single thing the Russians did with their damn satellites. Their military GPS systems were among the most advanced in the world, their imaging systems were the best in the world, and Russian Army movements were not an invisible thing.

"What have we here Colonel?" General Armandou de Bankole, supreme commander of European Forces said. A former member of the Rainbow Counterterrorist unit, intelligence he knew was everything. The map display was the newest in holographic technology and spanned on the Federations entire western frontier, where the Russians loomed. The colonel, a Spaniard named Gonzales tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She was from the Logistics and Intelligence division of the European Enforcer Corp. She was a pencil pusher, a woman who hadn't the backbone to lead fellow countrymen onto the battlefield but able to supply them with weapons to slaughter themselves with. Bankole hated these people. But Sun Tzu's art of war stated that one cannot move without Intelligence so he endured.

"General, the Russian alliance have massed troops along our borders for the last six months claiming combat exercise performance. They have done this publicly and have offered no provocation." She said quickly. Bankole nodded stiffly, she was reviewing old news to him. The last L&I colonel was "transferred" over to that front, where he would remain until he redeemed the honor he lost for serving in a noncombatant post. Bankole wasn't even French, he was Algerian by birth but even he knew what honor was and that man had none. This woman, smart enough to rise to this post, was being stupid and wasting his time on a briefing that she obviously thought she following as per procedures (which were never meant to be taken literally). "And you General have matched their moves by reinforcing our eastern border. Conducting combat excercises as well." She continued oblivious to the aura of scorn Bankole was sure he was emanating.

He had killed more terrorists with honor than this woman. He didn't want to waste his time on the eastern front, he had the Americans to the west and their military had a history for not losing many wars. Had it only been a week since the destruction of their Freedom IV lifter? A mistake which the Americans saw as an act of war? They were arrogant and would be dealt with soon. But Bankole had to pay attention to the threat here.

"Among the Russian forces, our Satellites have catalogued twelve of their army groups composed of heavy Tank divisions and Motor Rifle Regiments along with the majority of their air forces. Along the Swedish border there are a quarter of those numbers."

"Too much for a mere combat exercise." Bankole finished for her. The Spaniard nodded oblivious.

"Their unit readiness appears to be excellent. All of their army groups at the front now, are composed of A class armies and there are another ten a hundred kilometers behind the front of the same type."

"Class A?" Bankole stroked his chin in surprise "They cannot field so many top armies, the logistics alone would be a nightmare you yourself should appreciate."

Gonzales shook her head. "If you refer to the age of their equipment General I fear that we were greatly mistaken about this. You remember the declaration that the Russians, in response to pressure from both the Americans and our government to disarm their Strategic Rocket Forces?"

Bankole did. The Russians had taken down all of their nuclear missiles and scrapped them including much of their aging equipment, leftovers from the 1980s, tanks, planes even entire ship classes in their navy were scrapped.

"The Russians" the analyst said "used that opportunity to remove old units they had to maintain and replaced them with their top of the line equipment. They've secretly taken control of many of their civilian plants in Siberia to meet their production standards. In other words, if we factor that into the equation we have here-" she gestured with her laptop stylus at the holodisplay – " we can be quite sure that these are all heavy duty shock armies."

"They'll roll over our comrades in Poland." Bankole covered his mouth to hide the shock. The thought of twelve Class A armies rolling over the Eastern front was akin to taking a bulldozer to squash an anthill. Bankole had ten Enforcer battlegroups on that front but they were not expecting a fully equipped modernized foe. And the enemy had ten of the same type in reserve!

Roughly ten thousand troops fighting Five hundred thousand. They could not hold their border but his troops would be able to put up quite a fight. Most of those troops were veterans of the Insurrectionists that had threatened the formation of the Federation not so long ago. And the Russians would not be so foolish as to swarm the border, not with the Europeans laser defense satellites in place. He could vaporize those armies one at a time.

"That is not all." Gonzales said and typed a command on her laptop to bring up several new markers that appeared as red stars all across the Russian border. "at these areas we believe there to be ASAT missiles, capable-"

"Of neutralizing our Satellites." Bankole shook his head again. They had done this beautifully, snuck all of those right under the noses of the European Federation. He always respected an intelligent and deceptive enemy.

"They would not be so foolish as to use WMDs to blast holes in our line?" he asked.

"No. If Russia wants the respect of the world, they will not do such a thing."

"This army threat is real then."

"Yes."

"What of the Ukraine, Finnish and the troops from the other countries?"

"I assume they are being held in reserve, their technology is not as modern as the Russians themselves, I would classify them as type B armies and will probably be using them to hold land."

Bankole squeezed the bridge of his nose to concentrate then nodded.

"I will brief the president soon then. Alert Satellite command to begin evasive burns on our satellites. How soon will we be able to deploy reserves to the east?"

"It will take them at least a week till they reach Poland, If we begin mobilizing our forward armies now, they could reach the Polish front in little over a day" Most of the Enforcer armies were located in France.

"The Russians could not be more ready for an assault than they are now. Move 10th, through 30th Mechanized to that front immediately and send our front commanders war warnings. The Russians are coming." Bankole said.

Ivan Gregoriavich was a Russian Merchant. Or at least that's what the credit cards and false passports said about him. Most of it was lies, except for the picture of course. But the Mossad did manage to grab an IP address that he commonly used (which was at a small off the side Internet Café) and it didn't take much for the computer warfare geeks to plant snooper viruses into the man's Email and Instant Messaging accounts (which invariably lead to the personal connection sites he frequented). Almost as soon as Dolan ordered the spyware to be activated, it began churning up gold. There were just two numbers and linked site on one Email. A bank account, a password, and the site for which the account could be activated. And after firmly asking both banks to release files, Dolan found that there had been a total of several billion dollars transferred to anonymous accounts all over the Middle East, banks whose countries were not at all fond of the Israelis. She checked the other emails. The "trash folder" was a joke. On such a public email she was able to pull up stuff this Gregoriavich had thought to be a bad memory. Five emails had been sent to five accounts. All displaying an identical message: a date and a time.

"Here." The techie said as the hot printer spat out its latest. The work done here was fast if it involved computers, Israeli hackers (they preferred the term "cyber warfare infiltrators") were among the best in the world, and some of even their private sites had security firewalls that the CIA and NSA would be frustrated with. "we linked up the IP addresses; five emails, five countries. All of our border neighbors aren't happy with us."

"Get that to the director." Dolan said and rubbed her temples. "He needs to know that we're going to be expecting an attack at that time and date."

It would have to hurry, the attack would come the next day.

0200 3rd Shock Army on the west border of Ukraine

It was two AM by delicate European times. And the Russians were mobilizing. All across the two hundred kilometer front the army groups were beginning their final preparations. The SVU (Russian intelligence network) directed Strategic Rocket Forces under direct command of Pavel Leonardovich Gorobov, CINCWEST, elevated their ASAT- three stage tridium tipped missiles pointing them skyward. It would be a massive coordinated assault, strategic surprise it appeared had been achieved else the Europeans would be bombing these missile would they not? That or they would have at least addressed the concern. Their army had the strength of a bear, mauling their way across the land till they reached the European capital and secured it but those satellites had the capability of destroying them in the blink of an eye and must be destroyed.

CINCWEST's plan was elaborate but he'd been training his twelve armies into crack divisions in these past six months, and the coordination that would be required on this sort of level of assault would be unmatched by any of the history books.

The Flash message from Moscow came to his headquarters, a single word that would start his war.

Dosvodinia. Goodbye. Operation Horizon was now in effect.

He forwarded this on the radio to the forward telecommunications outposts where it was forwarded to the advanced teams that had already infiltrated in the Federation. CINCWEST had unleashed the wolves on the sheep of Europe. All across the border, the Russian war machine rumbled to life like an angry giant poised to strike on a command.

0230 Berlin Enforcer Corp rear echelon CP

A Mercedes stretch limousine, black and custom manufactured, for some reason never aroused suspicion among any local police force. It was as if all law enforcement shared some rule that any person with enough money to own a limousine was clean and took no thought to the fact that the person in question might have gotten that limousine by dirty deeds. Four of them in a row had also not raised suspicion. German police, well renowned for their diligence and perfectionism had let them pass on that supposed notion.

It was a notion that the wolves were counting on. The Limousines pulled to a stop a block away from the European army base and all of its thirty well dressed passengers climbed out. Some laughing in feigned drunkenness (the women of the group mainly) and others laughing as though they were having a good time. It was probably the last bit of laughter they'd have for awhile they'd supposed on the trip. Their tuxedos and billowing party dresses hid body plates, bandolier pouches with grenades and spare magazines for their AK-108u cut down assault rifles. In the alleyway that they all ducked into in groups of two or three they stripped off their needless party clothes and snapped their weapons together, assembling them in cold and eerie robotic precision. Two of the women who sported the most ridiculous and flowery of the dresses assembled sniper rifles and would act as overwatch. The black suits of Russian Spetsnaz special forces troopers blended them into the night as they all dashed to their positions. The bases motion sensors were disabled first. One of the Spetsnaz troopers had with him a touch laptop and modified cell phone communication card. Powering up the computer he sent his infiltrator disguised as a call to the army base. When the message receiver activated, the trooper jabbed the "7" key overloading the telephones computer systems and allowing the infiltrator program to slip in. It was a simple matter to disable the power at the base after that, European systems, although cocooned with firewalls, were all linked together. Once the walls went down, the entire system was vulnerable. The Spetsnaz wolves were in the base two minutes soon after.

The twenty four Russian commandos split afterwards six man squads to each objective. One group went to the powerstation to ensure it wouldn't reactivate, another went toward the mechanized department where the European vehicles slept. The third and fourth slipped silently toward the base satellite uplink and the armory to destroy those.

The guards were easily dispatched by silenced rifle fire or garrotes. It was a textbook perfect special forces raid that was copied all over Eastern Europe at this time. By 0300, despite the war warnings all the bases had received, sixteen of the twenty special operations had succeeded with one completely failed and the other three unable to make clean getaways. These three were larger formations and tasked with taking full satellite command posts alone. The heavy security coupled with the on site commanders cautiousness in the fact that they were so close to the supposed frontlines had resulted in the troops unable to enter as silently as they hoped and three firefights erupted in Poland that night.