"Comrade General" the lieutenant inside the kingspider looked over. "air force reports ready."
"the 24th is in position General." A second reported.
"The missile is armed and waiting." The call came over the radio.
"ready for Uplink crash sir." The colonel in charge of electronic operations said from his station.
Andreyev still wore his colonel's pips, it felt so strange to have been brevetted up two ranks in a message that hadn't even been three lines long, but the 24th Motor rifle was his now, and it was its weight that he could feel as if a yoke had been dropped onto his shoulders. He booted up the tactical computer and the lights representing the army formation winked onto the display. He ran his eyes over his forces one last time and saw the rocket, the massive Hydrogen missile that lay a kilometer away.
"Signal Go to all units." He breathed.
"Elevate twenty degrees and fire!"
The missile launcher had the singular purpose of raising the most destructive conventional weapon in the Russian's arsenal and sending it off a safe distance away. The missile was designated a ZHU-90, a copy of the American Tomahawk cruise missile but with upgraded land skimming components and greater accuracy, upon orders to launch, the missile truck angled its weapon upward twenty degrees, secured itself to the ground via metal rods (a safety measure due to the force of the missile launch actually causing the truck to tumble like a ball), locked down the safety flaps to cover windows and the commander hit the big red launch button (the irony of an actual big red launch button was not lost on him).
The missile lifted off slowly and picked up speed rocketing into the sky and leveling out at 30 thousand feet to enter its programmed trajectory towards Hanburg. Two minutes later it reached Mach 1.
Sopot had hefted his F2000 and mounted on top of the Badger IFV where most of his other men were sitting. It was much faster to disembark if one was riding on top, he'd learned from the time he was running from the Russians.
But now he was bringing the fight towards them and that certainly felt good. Those were friendly helicopters up there, cheetah gunships moving to head off any Russian tanks lying in wait. Friendly European aircraft streaked contrails in the skies above. There were a dozen of them and heading east…
No wait, there were thirteen, one was heading west and-
The Russian Hydrogen FAE missile exploded in a massive airburst on causing destruction the scale of a tactical nuclear warhead. The fires vaporized and charred the men immediately below, Poland suddenly had a scar of black earth with an average raidius of three miles. The Russian coordination for this strike was perfect. Just a minute before the last firewall was penetrated and the Russians initiated a massive electronics crash which disabled the Satellite uplinks and effectively eliminated the European's eyes in the sky.
The European fighters suddenly had been cut off by their land based radar and their squadron commander immediately ordered them to illuminate their radars.
The Russian T-50 stealth fighters immediately detected radar emissions coming from the fighters and angled in to fire at close range.
The kills were perfect, the entire squadron wiped out in a matter of deadly seconds. That cleared the way for Russian Su-47 ground attack Slamhounds which streaked in and began dropping smaller Fuel Air Explosives in the city of Hanburg. The Russian ground units rumbled across the charred ground.
"What do you mean they're blacked out?" Bankole roared.
"The Russians initiated a massive satellite uplink crash at Hanburg sir. We've lost contact with all the satellites under its control-" CINCSPACE/CYBER began but Bankole cut him off with a glare, the Video chat in Paris was still online and was clear enough to show that Bankole was not a happy man at all.
"Do you mean to tell me, that after directing a satellite to fire on European soil, the Russians are still able to take the ground and complete their objective from us?" Bankole said coldly.
"That is unfortunately correct." His aide said.
"It is possible that the units we have in place around the city are able to continue to defend Hanburg?" CINCSPACE/CYBER tried a pitiful attempt at recovering.
"They will be at a terrible disadvantage without coordination, those satellites are the reason our forces are such an effective fighting unit." Bankole shook his head. Now it would be imperative that his diplomatic gamble in the Middle East succeed. The European federation would need the help of Turkey more than ever.
"Break left!" Bronco shouted, and Reaper four snaprolled left to give Bronco a clear shot at the SU-27 on his tail. The dogfight had closed into the aerial distances of a knife fight, close and personal. The Israeli fighters had finished all their long range weapons and closed the distance to prevent the Lebanese fighters from using their own ranged weapons. Bronco squeezed the trigger and stitched a quick two second deflection shot off the passing fighters left fuelselage.
"Got him!"
"Good kill lead!"
This was becoming hell. Bronco only had a single JSM left and had made enough kills to make Ace in this one engagement, but these Lebanese kept coming. There were probably forty fighters on both sides in this engagement alone, and they weren't as unskilled as most people made them out to be. They were pilots, the cream of the crop in the military and Bronco usually had a healthy respect for all of them. It was way he never underestimated these people. Bronco had never really thought about it before, how he was killing people he might have been happy to have a beer with. He snapped his fighter in a wide turn searching for more of these possible friends to kill.
The compound was coming alive. Issad could hear the alarms going off inside as the station became alerted to the presence of the IDF commandos. The doors were locked, but they weren't the sealed doors requiring heavy explosives. Issad gestured for a breaching grenade.
A commando snapped the breaching grenade on the tip of his rifle while the other commandos stacked a little bit farther away from the doors than usual. The grenade, essentially a metal rod, fired off the tip of the rifle and hit the door, detonating a shaped charge on impact, blowing the door inward off its hinges. A commando tossed a semtex explosive inside and flipped the detonator sending a few of the greeting party flying outward. Issad rushed in rifle raised, immediately double tapping the head of a man who was rising, dazed and now dead.
It was killing house time. The killing house was the practice area's for the Mossad's and IDF urban warfare training. The rounds were always live, it was something the IDF copied from the British. Issad and his partner Benjamin went room by room, hunting for tangos.
"Clear!"
"clear!"
"Clear!" There were twenty commandos per silo and the PLI terrorists became more and more stubborn as they went, casualties were light, but movement became bogged down as they came across more and more heavily armed men, some wearing the military uniforms of the Iranian military, others wearing plainclothes but all in ballistic vests. The Tavor commando's heavy 7.62, full metal jacket rounds easily tore through the body armor. Return fire was inaccurate.
Issad arrived at the rocket holding area, his objective. The door here was heavy reinforced steel, the lieutenant attatched detchord to the edges and ordered everyone to stand clear.
"fire in the hole!" the blast and smoke filled the hall and Issad ran forward almost running smack into the door.
"Shit!" Isad said. "It barely scratched the paint!"
"This will do it." The Lieutenant said placing the detchord at the center of the door this time, adding more as well. They scrambled back again.
"Fire in the hole!" the door exploded inward, impacting the other side with a distinctive clang, Issad rushed through, on point again. The inside was filled with orange mist, and there was a very peculiar smell. He heard hissing and his eyes locked onto a broken pipe-
"Shit! The rockets are fueled!" he shouted into the cross com.
"Say again?" the Captain sounded very alarmed.
"The fucking missiles are fueled get out!" Issad turned to run, gesturing for the others to get out just as he began to notice the tremor at his feet. If the missiles were fueled and he had broken the gas into it, they ran risk of sending themselves and the entire silo up in flames. "Everyone OUT!"
"Team blue placing charges…"
"Team green, target destroyed…"
"Team Gold, missile launch!"
"Say again?" the captain said over the intercom.
"We have a missile launch on Silo three!"
"Missile launching in silo four!" the lieutenant of Issad's team shouted.
"Missile la-" Grey team's leader cut out suddenly. The tremor was loud and seemed to be all around Issad. He scrambled through the hallways being very aware that there was a distinctive heat and light rushing up behind him. The exit to the silo was just ahead, he hauled one of his commando comrades up and out, leaping to the side just as the flames jetted out, engulfing where they had just been.
Issad panted and looked up, seeing the blunted nose of a nuclear missile lift off slowly like a tower being erected. The flames belched out like hellfire as it journeyed skyward and then to the Holy land, his home, where it would destroy everyone he'd loved and cared about… no…no…He'd failed….
The Mossad Captain watched his commando teams check in via the cross com. Grey team had vanished off the face of the earth, blue team had just checked in that they were blowing their target before getting wiped out as well. The Semtex explosives were good for destroying their targets all right, but also did a good job of taking the twenty men who had placed them out as well. The Captain had been lucky enough that his rocket hadn't been fueled, perhaps something was wrong with it.
He'd been briefed on the capabilities of the 2 stage ICBMs Iran had, they would enter extreme low orbit or HALO, then turn downward for a Mach 6 dive onto its target and shower its 10 independent warheads on preprogrammed targets.
Israel didn't even have ten major cities, an attack from even one would wipe out the nation's infrastructure.
And there were three launching right now.
The only thing he could do was radio in the bad news.