The Long Hard Road

Chapter Nineteen: Ghosts from the Future of the Past

Forward Base

Tikrit, Iraq

25^th April 1942

General Robert Flynn examined the map with some degree of satisfaction. To an amateur, it would have looked bad; red icons were dotted around the cities of Iraq and Iran. He smiled; it wasn’t anything like as bad as it looked. Admittedly, the borders between Iran and India were nowhere near as secure as they would have become in the future, but with some of the newly-equipped units of the Indian Army poking their way into Iran, he was confident that the Indian renegade could be caught soon.

He checked the locations of his tank columns. The Russians were retreating, heading north to Tabriz, where he expected that Zhukov would make his stand. In the week since the campaign had begun, his forces had made powerful advances through uninhabited territory, seeking out and destroying enemy forces outside the cities. With the Russian forces trapped in the cities, they could press the offensive as fast as they could, hammering and harrying the Russians as they fled.

“I think this must be the first time we came here as liberators and were welcomed for it,” he said, smiling wryly. The Russians had levelled Tikrit, taking extreme care to slaughter all of the young male children, trying to kill their later… semi-ally. The boy who would become Saddam Hussian had vanished in the bloodshed, along with thousands of others. By the time the 1^st Forward Recon had slashed the Russians out of the town, they’d almost depopulated it. The handful of remaining citizens, mainly young women, had been saved.

Flynn sighed. The British Army was far too professional to take advantage of them, even though they had offered – it had been all they’d known since the Russians had overrun the town and slaughtered the defenders. They’d been sent back to Arabia; perhaps Shahan McLachlan could find help for them.

“Yes, sir,” Colonel Toby said. The display flickered as the 2^nd Armoured Division overran a Russian convoy and destroyed their vehicles. “We just took three thousand more prisoners.”

Flynn nodded. “Anyone interesting?” He asked. One body, apparently carefully prepared for Stalin’s contemplation, had been identified as Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, who would later have threatened the world with the Cuban Missile Crisis. He shuddered. What sort of mind would have gloried in making an old man fight in the hellhole of 1^st Basra?

“Some Ukrainians,” Colonel Toby said. Flynn looked up. “Nearly two hundred of them were from the 113^th Ukrainian Infantry, which had apparently been deployed down here on suspicion. They want to join up.”

“I thought they might,” Flynn said. Politically, he understood, the British were working on forming a Ukrainian army, and with the amount of Soviet weapons and supplies overrun and captured, arming one wouldn’t be a problem. The main problem had been in securing the dumps; hundreds of maundering Arabs were riding around the battlezone and they didn’t need more weapons. After helping to clean up after a Saudi attack, Flynn understood the Republic’s concern.

Colonel Toby nodded. “What do you want us to do with them for the moment?”

Flynn scowled. Despite the best efforts of the combat engineers, it would be a long time before the new rail network, the result of nearly two years work, would be extended as far as Iran. With the Turks in a… questionable mood, he wasn’t keen on asking them for help; even through they were supposed to be allies.

“Have them held in POW camps where they are at the moment,” he said finally. They’d had to learn how to set up POW camps at a moment’s notice as the Russian position disintegrated; it was that, or let them die in the desert. God alone knew how many Russians and their subjects had already died of heat and dehydration.

“Separated, I assume,” Colonel Toby said, making a note on his PDA. “Fed and watered?”

“Yes, I think we better had,” Flynn said. Mistreating the non-Russian POWS, short of beating them to death, was almost impossible; the Russians had been hard taskmasters. “Have them well treated; find an interpreter and explain to them that we have to keep them until we can arrange transport.”

Colonel Toby made more notes on his PDA. “Once we have transport freed up, have them sent to the camp in Egypt; they can choose their paths then.”

“Yes, sir,” Colonel Toby said. Logistics remained a problem for any army, but with IFFs and on-board databases, it was possible to plan ahead with greater certainty than ever before.

Flynn nodded and wandered towards one of the Challenger tanks that was being repaired after having struck a mine. The town had been almost destroyed by the Russians; it was a charred ruin. The Russians had dug a grave for the townsfolk, and simply shoved them all into the pit.

“Bastards,” he muttered. “This place is never going to be the same.”

“You say that as though it was a bad thing,” Colonel Toby said. “Perhaps something new will come from this devastation.”

HMS Warspite

Black Sea

25^th April 1942

Admiral Somerville studied the display – that almost seemed commonplace to him now – and grinned to himself. The Black Sea had been closed to the British when the war had broken out… until the Gallipoli defences had been forced open. The Russian Black Sea Fleet had tried to keep the British out… tried and died in the attempt. Even Contemporary forces alone could have thrashed them in a fair fight… and Somerville wasn’t interested in a fair fight.

“We are entering missile range now,” Tom informed him. “The Paris Commune is ahead.”

Somerville shook his head. Only the Russians – in an attempt to seem the leaders of world communism – would name a ship after a revolution that had been unsuccessful. Parizhskaya Kommuna, a dreadnaught that dated from before the First World War, was the only surviving Russian capital ship on the Black Sea.

“Stand by to attack,” he said. “Load main guns.”

“Aye, sir,” Tom said, relaying the orders to Captain Holland. His voice was a question; they could have killed Parizhskaya Kommuna almost as soon as the Mediterranean Fleet entered the Black Sea.

“I don’t want to waste missiles,” Somerville explained, watching the threat board. Parizhskaya Kommuna didn’t seem to have radar, or any of the small bits of 2015 technology that had popped up in the Axis Powers. “Stand by” – he watched the display as the guns sighted on the ship – “fire!”

Warspite shuddered once as her main guns fired. Somerville knew that there had been plans to refit the old battleship with missile launchers, replacing the main guns, but they had had to be shelved for lack of time. As the drone started to relay images of Parizhskaya Kommuna, the ship exploded with a monstrous gout of fire.

“Excellent shooting,” Somerville said. “Has everyone got their targeting assignments?”

“Yes, sir,” Tom assured him. “The missiles are locked on their targets now.”

Somerville nodded. The Mediterranean Fleet had spread out; four of her missile-launching ships had headed east, as close to the Caucasus ports as they dared. The other ships closed in on Sevastopol, the home of the Black Sea Fleet. Time slid past as the ships prepared to fire and then…

“Sir, we have aircraft rising,” Tom said. “They’re not ragged any more.”

Somerville scowled. The Russians had been grossly incompetent in the air for the first year of the war. The Germans must have been teaching them new tricks.

“They must have seen us,” he said. “Open fire.”

Warspite’s main guns fired, along with the other battleship and the three missile-armed cruisers. On the drone’s image, the city seemed intact… until the first salvos crashed down on the port. Entire sections literally disintegrated under the impact of high explosive and FAE bombs; parts of the city caught fire and triggered ammunition dumps.

“The enemy planes are incoming,” Tom snapped. “Request permission to declare weapons free.”

“Weapons free,” Somerville snapped, and the anti-aircraft ships went into action. They had begun their lives as old American destroyers, before being converted to carry thousands of radar-guided machine guns and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition. They put up a curtain of bullets, ripping through the Russian planes and hacking them out of the sky.

“They’re brave,” Tom muttered, as the Russians came on, trying to bomb the British fleet. They fell in their hundreds, falling from the sky and died; the attack force vanished in the fire.

“The Russians are always brave,” Somerville said. “They just make bad warriors.”

He glanced at the display. Hundreds of missiles were seeking out targets within the Caucasus Mountains, hammering away at Zhukov’s supply line. As he watched, their icons came to a stop, destroying their targets. Others headed into the Ukraine, destroying the Soviet occupation forces they’d pinpointed.

“They may or may not revolt,” he said grimly, “but we’ll give them the best chance we can to succeed.”

The Kremlin

Moscow, Russia

27^th April 1942

Molotov winced. In the none-too-recent past, they would have had problems linking the various sections of the USSR together – he remembered the Civil War with bitterness – but now they were able to hear about events almost as they happened. The massive program of landlines and enhanced radio systems had ensured that they heard about everything – including the beginnings of riots in the Ukraine.

“This is a plot,” Stalin snapped. He saw plots everywhere and was normally right. “Lavrenty Pavlovich’s forces are destroyed!”

Molotov scowled. The attacks in the Ukraine had been diabolically targeted; they had hammered the NKVD battalions in the region, and the Russian regiments that had been working up in the Ukraine. Only Ukrainian regiments, the ones being impressed into service for Iran, had been spared; many of them were in near-revolt.

“Comrade,” he said, taking his life in his hands, “we have to withdraw from Iran.”

“Even if that were possible,” Stalin snapped, “we cannot give up a single bit of soil!”

Molotov, who knew that the Russian troops were in headlong retreat, shuddered. The British attacks had been cunning; they had almost succeeded in interdicting the supply lines to Zhukov. In fact, with the impact of a RAF air raid on Baku, the USSR was suddenly short of oil and fuel.

“The Germans discussed peace with the enemy,” he said. “We can make the same offer, while withdrawing to territory that is indisputably ours.”

“We cannot show weakness in front of Trotsky,” Stalin snapped. Molotov scowled; three high-ranking NKVD officers had been assassinated, and five more had been shot for incompetence. Trotsky’s campaign against the state was taking its toll, particularly with the other stresses on Mother Russia.

“We could keep the negotiations private,” Molotov suggested. “The rebels against the workers and peasants would never find out.”

“The British would tell their puppets,” Stalin snapped. “Himmler himself informed me that they rejected the peace proposal in no uncertain terms.”

“Perhaps,” Molotov said, who trusted Himmler as far as he could throw the Kremlin. “Comrade, we cannot leave the entire force in Iran – and at the same time fight against the Americans in Sweden. We have to hold the British back, which we can do in the Caucasus Mountains, while concentrating against the Americans.”

“They are the most dangerous in the long-run,” Stalin said. “What about the deployment of the other weapons?”

Molotov shuddered again. “Comrade, they have made it very clear that they will retaliate against one of our cities with an atomic weapon if we use gas,” he said.

“True,” Stalin said. Molotov hoped that he’d dissuaded him. “Lavrenty Pavlovich must gain results, or his head will roll.”

A pity that Beria didn’t meet his fate with his people, Molotov thought coldly. The NKVD had been damaged by the loss of its headquarters, and then the loss of some of its senior personnel. Beria’s personal… habits had been a feature of the underground newspapers for weeks, ranging from child abuse to being a covert German agent. Intellectually, Molotov understood that the images were faked – but they seemed so real.

“Comrade, we must withdraw,” he said desperately. “There will be other opportunities, ones not on the end of a long supply line…”

“No surrender, no retreat,” Stalin snapped. “I will not order them to surrender! I will order them to fight to the last!”

Tabriz, Iran

27^th April 1942

Tehran fell in an hour when a British force surrounded it, Byelorussian and Ukrainian troops shooting the NKVD force in the back and taking control of the city. After a quick negotiation over surrender terms, they left the city and surrendered to the British, leaving much of the city intact.

Far to the north, in Tabriz, General Zhukov knew that the game was up. The British had forded their way around the rivers, or lifted the tanks in by helicopter… for all he knew they had some kind of teleportation device. All that mattered was that British tank columns were snaking their way northwards towards the city, and they’d be at Tabriz within a couple of hours at most.

He stared down at the map, and then at the pistol. In a handful of days, the entire front had collapsed; it had been nothing like his battle at Nomonhan. There he’d had the better tanks, and his enemies had been the ones stupid enough to fight to the death. Here… he was the weaker force, and his enemies could reduce the impact of what advantages they did posses.

“Comrade General, Comrade Major Petra wishes to report that the 23^rd Shock Regiment has taken up position inside the city,” Commissioner Petrovich said. The sheer lack of men had forced him to press the Commissioners into service. “We can hold the city…”

“No, we can’t, Comrade Commissioner,” Zhukov said. “We’re caught in a trap.”

He waved a hand at the map. “They’re destroyed our supply lines,” he said. “The tribes in the Caucasus Mountains are in revolt and the Ukraine is simmering. Once we run out of food, it’ll be all over and we’ll starve.” An explosion echoed across the city as a British aircraft made a bombing attack. “They’ve already hit one of the food stores,” he commented.

“The Great Stalin ordered us to fight to the last,” Commissioner Petrovich said. “We must obey his orders.”

“To die?” Zhukov asked. “We’re trapped here!”

Commissioner Petrovich sighed. “You want to surrender,” he snapped. “You are a defeatist!”

Zhukov snapped. “I understand these matters far better than you, you untrained amateur,” he snapped. “We will die here, never seeing the enemy, and we will die for nothing!”

Commissioner Petrovich grabbed his pistol in its holster. “I won’t stand by and let you…”

He started to draw the pistol. Zhukov, faster, shot him neatly through the head. Seconds later, his two guards burst their way into the room.

“We have to end this now,” Zhukov said. They didn’t argue: Commissioner Petrovich had not been popular. “Order Comrade Rabin to round up the other Commissioners.”

“Yes, General,” the guard said. He left the room. Zhukov picked up the telephone and made certain that the lines to Moscow were cut, and then scowled grimly.

“Escort me to the radio room,” he said. “I have to get in touch with the British commander.” He smiled suddenly. “Oh, and put the so-called resistance leader in jail,” he ordered. “We might as well offer the bastard to the British; they want his head on a platter.”

The city had been created by a famous caliph, before the Islamic world fell back into darkness, a victim of its own success. General Robert Flynn watched as the Russian troops, delighted to be out of the war, filed out of the city and headed into POW camps. They were joking and laughing amongst themselves; a far cry from the doom and gloom of the few western soldiers who had been captured during the terror war.

He sighed. There was a duty to do, one that fell to him alone as the senior officer, and it troubled him. He half-wished that he could pass it on, but self-respect demanded he do it himself; there was no one else who could. He smiled wryly as he entered the catacomb-like prison; anyone could do it, but it wouldn’t mean so much, would it?

The building felt empty; the handful of city leaders the Russians had deemed worthy of being kept alive – mainly Iranian communists – had been freed as soon as the surrender had been acknowledged. The only prisoner remained in his cell, abandoned and left alone.

I wonder what you think, Flynn thought coldly, as he reached the final cell. It was the only locked cell; there was no light, but that that came from a tiny window. It stank; he sniffed the air and recoiled. The person inside had no sanitation at all.

“Serves you right,” he muttered, and unlocked the door. He lifted his pistol in his hand as he opened the door, but it wasn’t needed. The prisoner was chained to the wall; his eyes bright with malice. A matted beard hung down from his torn face, covering rags and a skinny body.

Flynn felt no pity. He’d seen the results of the prisoner’s work. “Good evening, Mr Saud,” he said, a deliberate insult. Ibn Saud looked up at him. His face contorted as he took in Flynn’s uniform. “You have been judged by a court of your victims.”

Saud said nothing. Flynn studied him grimly. He had been given very specific orders about Saud; he was not to be allowed to threaten the new Republic of Arabia. Only one form of sanction could terminate the threat forever.

Flynn inclined his head. Saud’s eyes followed his; he was in full command of his mind. “Do you have anything you wish to say before sentence is passed?” Flynn asked. Saud glared at him; his little piggish eyes glittering with malice.

“Then I command your soul to the Lord God for judgement,” Flynn said, lifting his pistol. Saud flinched back as he carefully sighted the pistol, and fired once. The man who had brought Islam to near-destruction in the future that was past died without making a sound. Flynn dropped a thermal grenade near the body and walked out.

He shook his head as the grenade went off behind him. It hadn’t been enough.