The Red Alert Story

The Red Alert Story.
by Gareth Bird

CHAPTER XVI
He had been told that it was a large glass building, almost office like in its appearance, but with the smoke and explosions, scouting was difficult. Jack approached the southern region of the base and came to another wall. He drove as close as he dared, for fear of the vehicle becoming visible to the guards who surrounded another wall.

A lone set of gates provided the only access to this inner compound. It was heavily fortified with guard towers and a few strange looking structures Jack could not comprehend. He stared at the gates, sizing them up. Finally he convinced himself that by driving at full force, perhaps they would buckle and he could drive in and find the exact location of the Centre. He backed off several yards for a good run up, before engaging a forward gear and racing along his runway.

Bemused soldiers stared, shouted and shot at the mysterious vehicle as it suddenly became visible to them. As Jack came within about 20 yards or so from the gates, the two towers began to glow blue. "What the hell?" he asked himself, keeping his foot flat on the floor. In an instant, a brilliant flash of white light hit his transport. All the instruments in the tank fell silent for what seemed to be an eternity, but was for little more than a split second.

Jack leapt back as the electric shock greeted the steering controls. The tank crashed through the gates amidst a wall of flame from the guard towers incendiary defences. He clasped his hands back to the controls and peered through the flames and smoke and saw his objective. The Russian Technical Centre stood before him about 100 yards away, surrounded by yet another fence, complete with guards and watch posts.

Jack grabbed the microphone from its cradle and yelled the waypoints as many times as he possibly could. The noise around him was so intense he could not hear himself shout and certainly could hear no response. He saw to his left a large runway strip with several Soviet MIGs lining up to take off, whilst others landed one after the other. They were quickly reloaded before being sent out as another attack wave.

Jack radioed in the co-ordinates of the airstrip too, thinking that the destruction of the runway would give the Allies an added bonus. He drove around in circles, unsure whether he could be seen by the enemy. It was a matter of minutes before Allied Longbow helicopters littered the dawn sky. Jack looked in awe as possibly 70 - 100 machines pinpointed the Technical Centre with their lasers and launched their missiles. "Oh shit!" he thought suddenly, "I really don't want to be here!"

Flooring the Phase Tank, Jack raced away from the site as the deluge of missiles struck the building. Hundreds of Soviet soldiers ran about aiming their RedEye missiles towards the sky and fired their defences at the Allies. Amidst the confusion in the sky, several helicopters were hit; some exploded instantly, whereas others plummeted to the ground before crashing heavily.

Jack could see that the helicopters had done a good job for the building lay in both tatters and flames. However, they had not finished their job as he saw another wave arrive and attack the building in a similar fashion. This wave was different from the first attack only in that there were both less Longbows and that they escorted two Chinook transport helicopters. They hovered for just a matter of seconds some 40 feet from the ground as 8 men from each made the swift controlled descent to Soviet soil.

In formation, they swept the ground with deadly accuracy. Using just a single shot at a time, some of them put down enemy soldiers, while others set up explosives. They covered the ground to the airstrip extremely quickly and with apparently no casualties. Jack would have had his attention focused firmly on their actions longer were it not for the fact that several Mammoth Tanks burst their way into the compound. Jack had never seen them in a real military operation before, just the test demonstration. They raised their turrets and fired at the helicopters.

V2 rocket launchers accompanied the tanks and two drew to a stop and aimed low. The missiles flew right by Jack and towards the Allied commandos. Jack hadn't the time even to turn and follow the missile before it had detonated some three or four hundred yards away. The resultant explosion threw the Allied men flying, mostly without their limbs. Jack knew he had to get away as fast as possible; as he was, he was a liability there and his stealth efforts could be appreciated elsewhere.

Jack radioed to Miller and asked for his next assignment, but to his surprise, Miller ordered his return to the Allied compound, saying that they could not afford to lose the stealth tank. It needed to be repaired before returning with more commandos to finish off the Soviet base from the inside. Jack reluctantly agreed, before he remembered how much he'd been through and how much he deserved to leave the battle zone. After weeks of pain and injury, frostbite on his hands and feet and gashes in his flesh from shrapnel and ricocheted ammunition, Jack finally admitted to himself that he needed the sanctuary of Allied medics and his part in the war would be over.

Winding through the maze torn up roads in the Soviet base, Jack could not believe the carnage he witnessed. Thousands upon thousands of corpses, battered tanks and crashed aircraft lay motionless amongst the collapsed structures that had been the heart of the Soviet Headquarters a matter of hours earlier. Dodging the semi-active enemy, Jack ploughed through the crumbling perimeter wall to escape the compound, only to find himself gawping at a sight he could never have imagined. If the sight within the enemy walls shocked home the reality of war, then what befell his eyes was simply incomprehensible. As far as his eyesight could strain, all the way to the horizon lay not just thousands, but hundreds of thousands of units of both allegiances crushed under the weight of hundreds of thousands of others. The Allied operation to storm the Soviet Headquarters had been the biggest military onslaught the world had ever seen, dwarfing all other wars.

Driving over or through soldiers' bodies, Jack finally made his way into the equally shattered Allied base. He pulled up some distance from the main gates, before radioing Miller to ensure that the Allies knew he was arriving and not to attack him, thinking he was Soviet. After all, he was wrapped in Soviet clothes and his vehicle sported all the hallmarks of a surprise Soviet attack. Jack was greeted by a large group of soldiers and medics. Jack was ordered out at gunpoint, while the APC was checked over for security reasons. Satisfied that Jack was who he claimed to be, Jack was finally ushered to the medics and Miller himself.

Hustled into a makeshift field hospital in one of the barracks, Jack was immediately operated on by some of the surgeons. Through the corner of his eye, Jack saw several other Allied soldiers, almost unrecognisable as human beings through injury. "Why me? Why, why not them?" he muttered as the operating gas began to take affect. He thought he heard someone say something about operating on those most likely to survive first.

Remaining semi-conscious, Jack was able to reflect on the past weeks and felt cheated. He had stared death in the face and lived to tell the tale on several occasions. Battling against the odds, he had, so he felt, played a key role in precise location of the Soviet Headquarters, yet would no-doubt be remembered as a vague, inaccurate, one-in-a-million statistic of those dead or injured in this battle.

All of a sudden it was over. "God only knows what happened to you," Jack was told by his surgeon, "but you're one damn lucky lad to be alive." Jack tried to nod in agreement. "But there's no way you're going to take part in this or any other battle for quite some time. You'll be lucky if you're not bed-ridden for more than a year." Jack didn't really take in what his surgeon was saying to him. The surgeon finished the job he was doing on Jack's leg. "Just make sure you don't go and die on me after all this." Jack promised himself he wouldn't then was lifted up off the table and onto a makeshift bunk-bed, left to see out the remainder of the battle in a room full of veterans.

Exactly twenty four hours after the Allied mass chronoshift deep into Soviet territory, the entire Allied force shifted back. Jack awoke to a new pain in his head to echo all the pains from the rest of his body. It took a moment or two for him to remember where he was, and to think about where he might be now. He tried to move, but couldn't. All he could manage was to open his eyes slightly as he felt the bustle of bodies rushing around as they had done seconds earlier in Russia.

"What happened?" asked Jack to no-one in particular. Ignored, Jack tried again. As far as he knew, they had won. The Soviet threat had been smashed in one foul swoop. The casualties had been high, but the menace that had threatened to demolish the world's supercities with its array of nuclear missiles had been vanquished. Had it all been worth it? Jack thought so. Countless lives lost had been a small price to pay for the safety of the millions and millions more innocent civilians of London, Paris, Rome, Berlin and the like which would have been lost had the Soviets won.

Jack smiled to himself, glad that he was one of those who played his part and survived to enjoy the liberation he had been fighting for. In fact, it was the happiest day of his life. Happier than the day he had passed with distinction the examinations required to join the Allied forces all that time ago. His sense of achievement was greater than he could ever have anticipated. Were it not for his physical restraints, he would have jumped up in the air with joy.

Jack rolled his head to the side and looked over at the other bunk. A similar sight became apparent across the room. Perhaps two hundred men lay in the cramped quarters, each with a small grin across his face. Jack sensed, though, that he was missing something. Where was the euphoria? Where was the celebrating? Where were the smiles of the men who had helped save the Western world from Stalin and his ways?

Straining, Jack saw Miller trudge into the room and speak to some of the officers who lay in their bunk. A couple of papers where signed, before Miller himself broke down in tears. Finally, thought Jack, someone else was showing the emotion of their victory. Miller's tears, however, became less and less like cries of joy, but more of despair. He was escorted away and Jack felt a sickening feeling grope at his chest. Just what was going on?

The Soviet officer entered the room, escorted by several Soviet soldiers. Not prisoners of war, for they were armed to the hilt. Jack peered through the open doorway at the ground outside. The winter sunshine beat down on the British soil he had made the return shift to. It was not as he could have hoped. Jack's motherland looked every bit as desolate as Russia did the day earlier. Not just because of the incomprehensible abundance of Soviet soldiers, but more because what else he could see.

He painfully jolted his head around and ducked below the bunk-line and peered through the cracks in the barracks. He was still there, in Russia. The warzone he had witnessed earlier was mirrored by the destruction outside. It made no sense though. The Allies had won. They had made the return shift. Jack simply couldn't take it. "What the hell is going on!" he screamed as loud as he could, "Take me home!" he cried. Jack sobbed like a child until one of the Soviet soldiers marched over to him, and calmly asked something of him in Russian. Jack would not, or perhaps could not stop screaming as hysteria set in. The officer yelled again. This time he waited for no response from Jack.

He raised his gun and shot Jack dead.


[ Epilogue ]
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