The noise and heavy beat of the music was rudely interrupted by a chatter of automatic fire followed by the sound of several men trying to voice orders above the music. Dolan shut the door.
"Shit, what do we do?" she turned and saw Clark already checking his spare magazines.
"Try to sneak out; if we can't we fight our way out."
"Ever done this sort of thing before?" Stuart asked.
"Once in Iran." Clark said and paused for a moment. "It didn't blow over nicely."
"Glad to know we have a veteran here." Stuart snapped a G19 automatic together and charged the weapon. Clark conversed in hushed tones to Peled who then quickly opened one of the bedroom drawers and revealed a few blocks of plastic explosives. Dolan peeked out the doors and saw the clubgoers hustling out of the room while the soldiers fanned out.
"Do they know we're here?" Dolan asked, and Clark came over and took a look as well.
"Looks like it."
"How?"
"Maybe our friend here had someone from the government tailing him. We should have checked for that." Clark admitted. "I'm getting too old for this."
"Done here." Peled said and Dolan noticed he had wired explosives around the door frame and attached the primachord to a cell phone.
"Alright people, nice and slow; Peled stick close to me. We pretend we're drunk, if that doesn't blow over we hug the walls, got it? Don't shoot until I give the signal." Clark said and took a deep breath.
"What's the signal?" Stuart asked.
"You'll know." Clark said and stumbled out the door. Dolan was third out and raised a laugh, hopefully it sounded as drunk as possible. She leaned heavily on Peled feeling the palm gun brush against her breast as she did so. One of the soldiers shouted something at them and raised a rifle.
"Woah woah!" Clark said chuckling a little. "Easy shir! No need for that here!"
"Amerikane?" the soldier cocked his head but didn't lower his rifle.
"Yeshir!" Clark managed another laugh and took two steps toward him but stumbled.
"come here!" the soldier shouted, and in the low light, Dolan managed to spot some sort of rank insignia on his uniform. Dolan laughed all the harder and fended off a pretend grope by Peled. If it came down to a firefight, it wouldn't be good. They were in a confined area with low caliber weapons and they were outgunned and outnumbered. Their best equipment was all back at "base", although a pair of Micro TAR-21s were in the back of the van used to drive here. They might as well have been back in Israel for what good they would do now. Clark meanwhile stumbled forward again and leaned heavily on the Turkish soldier. "I'm sorry man-" two shots rang out and Peled immediately straightened up while Dolan dived for the nearest piece of solid cover, the bar. She drew her palm gun and heard the sound of an explosion as Peled thumbed a button on his cell phone, blowing the room that they had just occupied to splinters. The soldiers reacted immediately, turning towards the sound of the explosion, leaving their aim off the Israelis for just a few moments. Dolan sighted up and double tapped the trigger, stroking it as she'd been trained to do at Quantico.
One dropped, with a pair of shots drilled neatly behind the man's ear. Then the club burst into a hailstorm of rounds as both sides began trading fire. Dolan could only presently describe it as a mass of confusion, dark shapes that ran from cover to cover lighting up the dark room with muzzleflashes that clashed spectacularly with the disco lasers and strobe lights. She saw a rifle slide toward her and Peled nodded as he reloaded his own captured rifle and began shooting. The rifle was an European issued Famas. So the Europeans liked funding the Turkish government did they? Dolan popped up and fired at one of the dark shapes. A grenade went off and suddenly she managed to hear Clark shouting "Back! Back!"
Back where? Dolan turned and she made out Clark's big shape sprinting for the exit with Stuart in tow who took cover behind a chair and sprayed fire. Peled and Dolan ran together, eventually sliding out the door and ruining her dress in the process. Clark was the last one out, a pair of grenades bowled backhanded through the door to discourage a chase. A van streaked to a halt and Stuart slammed the door open.
"Come on!" Zilich shouted from the drivers seat and the team leaped into it. Dolan found she was sweating all over and shaking as well. "Chavez and Johnston just checked in, they got the message to the Director."
"So we are mission accomplished." Clark said.
"As long as we get out alive."
"Mortar rounds, incoming!" someone shouted over the screeching sound of 40mm shells smashing into the street. Sopot ducked under the barricade; this was a nightmare, the battle of Hanburg had turned into a running street battle, with Sopot and his Commandos trading fire with Russian infantry street by street, building by building, room by room. His troops were excellently trained and extremely well disciplined but the battle was taking their toll. He only had sixty of his original proud hundred left.
The Colonel in charge had ordered them to pull back slowly, sowing mines where they went (the new Spider leaping mines that could plug in holes in the field. Sopot had lead his platoon back to the Tango uplink site and were now bunkered up with a Tank squadron, an understrength regiment of infantry, and a dozen Archer combat drones with TOW missiles alongside its light machine gun. The engineers inside the Uplink site were commanding the Combat drones and hopefully they knew enough combat tactics to support the troops rather than hinder them…
"Tangos in the open!" Another shouted and Sopot peeked over, he could see a squadron of Ogres charging over the rubble of a building they had just blown through (collateral damage apparently meant nothing to Russians) followed by Russian infantry. They were bottlenecked there, and open to all the guns of the defenders who let into them with gusto.
"Incoming!" another shouted and pointed upward, following the dark shape of an SU-47 Slamhound nosing down for a vertical attack. Sopot dropped flat and soon heard a massive explosion engulf what probably was the Panther tanks. The heatwave washed over Sopots back as the Slamhound kicked upward to break out of its dive-
Sopot looked up to see its wingtip clip the top of the uplink center which spun the fighter and sent it slamming into the side of an apartment building to continue out the otherside and destroy another.
"Lancer, this is Epee." Sopot gasped into the microphone. "We're getting massacred out here, we can't hold! Say again we can't hold!"
"Hold tight, Epee, Cavalry's on the way." The radioman on the other side of the city responded. "Emerald and Diamond attack squadrons are enroute, designate targets with infrared strobes and lasers."
Sopot copied an affirmative and barked the orders as loudly as he could to his troops. Red tracers kicked out towards the European positions which were well covered and slightly elevated. Dark shapes of infantry huddled behind the burning hulks of tanks as the second wave of Ogres drove through the gap, its guns belching flame to knock out the Archer drones. Wire guided missiles licked out from the European positions and burst on the Ogre's refractive coating. A few managing to strike the depleted uranium armor that made the outer hull of a T-100.
The Archer combat drones were wheeling about in some sort of defensive pattern that eluded Sopot's memory but were quickly targeted and killed by missiles and armor piercing rounds. His HUD began lighting up the Infrared lasers that his men were activating to illuminate targets. He fired a strobe grenade from his launcher and flipped the laser-
The gunships flocked in, spearheaded by a volley of missiles which exploded on the forward Russian positions and gutting three tanks, and they subsequently were ripped into by 20mm chain guns as the nimble cheetahs flitted between the avenues at low altitude.
Sopot popped up and sprayed fire at a squad of Russians who were now scrambling for the closest building and solid cover…
The gunships were a nuisance. They'd been off of Andreyev's radar tracks by flying between the streets until the very last second. He sent orders for a Cockroach IFV group with his own Spetsnaz Wolf infantry embarked to counter the latest threat. The Cockroaches had heavy 40mm AA flak cannons and numerous firing ports for his men to shoot out. It would be as easy for them as shooting ducks with the same weapons. At such close range, the IFVs would barely have to aim and helicopters (aside from the Russian ones) were notoriously lightly armored.
His second attack had demo charges in place on the other building which would be collapsing soon. The Captain in charge had ordered a suppressive barrage of handheld mortar fire which managed to keep the Europeans bottled up and not counter attacking, but not much else. They held their position fiercely and gave ground stubbornly, that Uplink site held the key to the entire battle. If Andreyev's riflemen could slice into the computer codes they'd have control of all its Satellite and GPS imaging systems in the entire sector, and invaluable intel for a long duration of the war.
The Europeans were now swinging everything to bear on this, his Slamhound overflights were picking up numerous tank squadrons heading to that Uplink, while they managed to hold everywhere else.
How many troops were pouring into this insignificant little place now? He checked the data with a flick of his eyes, over ten thousand had been committed to the battlezone on the Russians side alone. And it was mostly infantry, the city streets proved too hindering for the Russians to use their armored strength. His Zhukov SPHA vehicles were having trouble finding decent firing solutions that would land artillery shells perfectly between the tightly packed buildings, but they could still be used. Air dominance over the battlefield was slowly becoming more and more contested as both sides air forces came into full swing and planes fell from the sky like leaves in autumn.
His Anti Air flak units were coming into place now, and had shredded an entire squadron of gunships, clearing the way for his rear echelon to launch UCAV low altitude flights equipped with air to air weapons. Swarms of UAV drones were now entering on the Russians side and beginning to hunt for Cheetah groups with singleminded efficiency…
The General running the entire battle from his Command vehicle (Sun King) suddenly saw his gunship groups become swatted out of the sky as new Russian units began entering the battlezone, UCAVs were slow but deadly efficient in an air to air role and the Russians made good ones. With air coverage denied to his troops, the Russians began their own helicopter counterattack KA-65 howlers swooped in all over the lines and began peppering columns of European reinforcements and Russian tanks steamrolled his forward positions so that his lines began crumbling. The Russians were strong everywhere, his weapons seemed ineffective against them. He had one weapon left.
"Signal to all forces." He said darkly to his radiomen. "Waterloo." His men stiffened, then set about to their orders.
"Received code sir!" One of the technicians ran from his station and handed a slip of paper to CINC SPACE/CYBER.
WATERLOO
That was it then. CINC SPACE/CYBER checked the orbital GPS realtime image and didn't like what he saw when he matched it with the Force tracker. The European units were holding on it seemed by the skin of their teeth and with the Waterloo signal, the rear units had begun to break and fall back. General Mondrian in charge down there had a second wave of reinforcements standing by now, waiting for a certain Judgement from the Heavens. CINCSPACE/CYBER had followed every procedure to be sure this wouldn't mar his record and made the call to the Rammstein Satellite Uplink center.
The General in charge of the Rammstein Uplink confirmed the order and shouted orders for his men to begin THEL (Tactical High Energy Laser) warm-ups. The twenty men inside the Uplink center punched in their codes to begin generator spooling (only the second live firing they had ever performed) and targeting procedures. The maximum amount of damage called for a twenty second burst which would ionize most of the Eastern block of Hanburg.
In spatial terms, it required precision burns at such miniscule numbers that the Rammstein center's computer systems were not equipped to handle them and therefore were reliant on tight coordination between the teams operating the imaging systems, the team monitoring laser heat output, and the tracking team which would be the ones calculating by "eye" when the THEL would be fired and cut
The orbital laser platforms were never designed to strike ground targets, rather they were tasked with destroying ICBMs in midflight; it was only at the beginning of the war that the crews began training in ground strike missions. The weapon in particular was only designed for a burst of less than a second which would be more than enough to destroy a 3 stage ICBM. For a ground attack of this magnitude, the generator would need close monitoring.
There was, however no time to practice and the teams set about.
"Firing solution." The officer in charge of targeting shouted from his station.
"Achtung; Last check." The general said.
"Engineering – check."
"Maneuvering – check."
"Tactical – check."
"Fire."
Orbital laser platform number twelve oriented one last time and fired; its laser (the "width" of a naval destroyer) lanced from the sky, boiled every cloud within ten kilometers of its strike point and struck the Eastern block at the head of the Russian advance. Its orbital burn began to change its trajectory and the laser moved at a surface rate of eighty KMPH glassing the ground it crossed over (and within two kilometers from the strike). The heat was so tremendous that it boiled through concrete walls, liquefied steel, and ionized the men unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast.
The THEL slashed across Hanburg from North to South, plowing a flat furrow through the buildings, lights, machines and men that occupied its section. The unfortunate souls who were caught staring or looking up in the direction of the blast were instantly blinded, the ones closer had their eyes liquefied or HUD visors melted permanently to their faces. The instant heating of the laser set off ammunition dumps, cooked off rounds inside their barrels and even caused full magazines that were not loaded explode. The casualties on the Russian side were horrendous.
Andreyev lost units in the Northern Block so quickly that he didn't understand what was happening until he heard the artillery commander he was currently speaking with via crosscom suddenly broke into screams about his eyes. When his forward units began winking out (My God! So many!) he understood what was happening and quickly commanded his two ASAT rockets to be fired. Hopefully, the THEL would be overheated and not be able to track and destroy the two incoming missiles.
"General?" the phone rang back at CINC NORAD's suburban home. He rolled over and groaned waking his wife who irritably tossed a pillow at him. He glanced at the clock through sleepy eyes. Four thirty in the fucking morning!
"You have any idea what time it is?" he growled into the wireless phone.
"Apologies sir, but we have satellite reports of a Tactical High Energy Laser fired over Eastern Europe just a few moments ago. American Eagle is requesting a meeting in half an hour."
"Fine." CINC NORAD grumbled and hung up.
"What is it?" his wife asked incredulously but not too incredulously, she was used to such things and unfortunately it came with the job.
"Trouble." CINC NORAD lied. The President Becerra "American Eagle" (which NORAD found was ironic because Becerra was Hispanic and born of migrant farm workers) probably was panicking because the Europeans had fired off a laser for reasons the US couldn't exactly see right now (beyond the few stealth COMIT sats that were probably orienting to get a peek) and would ask NORADs opinion on the current DEFCON. In other words, it was just another boring meeting where NORAD would tell the president that it was nothing to be worried about and he'd fall asleep in Cheyenne mountain until he was on duty so he could be fresh when they ran the KinWep tests. It was a bad way to start a monotonous day.
"Raider Raider! Incoming ASAT missiles, two of them!" a technician on the imaging team shouted and rattled off the coordinates.
"Reorient and fire on designated threats." The general of the Ramstein Uplink said.
"Executing targeting burn now!" the mauevering crew scrambled to maneuver the weapon to fire again.
"Overheat sir!" the captain in charge of the engineering section shouted. "Generator overheat!"
"Is there any way to spool up the weapon?" the General called.
"I can try pulling removing the reactor safeties and that might-
"Do it!" this was his weapon they were trying to kill and he would be damned if they did it.
"Weaponized! We have enough energy for a half second weapons burst at short range without meltdown." the captain of engineering shouted from his station and he gave the General a thumbs up. The General snapped his fingers and pointed at the Tactical officer who gave orders for his men to track the incoming missiles and fire.
The number twelve THEL spun quickly to direct itself at the first missile and fire and it did so magnificently, spitting the incoming at a range of 600 miles and detonating its fuel cells midflight so as to engulf the entire missile. The second one closed at Mach 9 releasing its second stage boosters and firing its third stage rockets on its kill trajectory. The THEL fired again missing it by a scant mile and boiling away part of the outer casing but the ASAT continued on its course. The maneuvering team immediately hit its emergency retros and sent the orbital laser platform out of the trajectory so quickly that the ASAT rocket couldn't maneuver to keep up. The missile continued spaceward into the black while the Rammstein Uplink crew attempted to keep their satellite in orbit.