The Fall of Night Read Online Free Page A

counter-productive; we will begin practical training once all units have returned to their barracks and entered lockdown.  Security will be maintained.”
     
    He paused.  “The operation has been extensively wargamed,” he concluded.  “Assuming that everything goes in our favour, we will win within a month; assuming that the enemy is aware of our intentions and takes steps to thwart us, we should still be able to win, but within six months.  It is therefore important that the long-range strike plan is launched; if we can destroy the European logistics chain, our victory is certain.”
     
    The Minister of Industry, Ostap Tarasovich Onyshenko, coughed.  “That assumes, of course, that we neutralise both the European nuclear deterrent and the prospect of American intervention,” he said.  “Can you guarantee that we can accomplish both?”
     
    Nekrasov smiled thinly.  “All warfare is based on risk,” he said.  “We can knock out most of the nuclear deterrent in the first round.  Olga?”
     
    Olga Dmitriyevna Sedykh, the Foreign Minister, spoke from her part of the table.  “The Americans are fully committed in the Middle East and Korea, where the North Koreans are preparing to launch an attack against the south.  We have said nothing about this, of course; Kang is unlikely to need encouragement from us to attack either the Americans or his southern brothers.  The rift between Europe and America is a deep and apparently permanent one; the Americans no longer have an obligation to come to Europe’s rescue.  We expect that they will protest and secure Iceland, somewhere where we are not even preparing to threaten; even if they intend to interfere, they will have very limited forces at hand to interfere.”
     
    She paused.  “The main danger is the American ABM units in Poland,” she concluded.  “They have to be neutralised…carefully.  We cannot afford to give the President a bloody flag to wave.”
     
    “I have a specialised unit prepared for that mission,” Shalenko assured her.  “If nothing else, avenging the insult offered to us in Iran will seem like an excuse for the American public, as unreasonable as the Americans are on such matters.”
     
    “In any case, they would hesitate, I think, before becoming embroiled with us,” Nekrasov said.  “They will be confused, at first, as to what is actually going on.  Maksim; what about our security?”
     
    Maksim Nikolayevich Zaripov, FSB Director of External Intelligence, smiled.  “There have been no signs that anyone within the American or European intelligence services suspects the existence of Operation Stalin,” he said.  “We have very good penetration of the establishment in Brussels and Poland and while the Poles are worried about the presence of so many Russian soldiers in Belarus, to say nothing of the influx of refugees, they do not have any actual proof that we mean them ill.  The greatest proof, I think, is the ROE that Brussels gave to the three EUROFOR deployments; Poland, Ukraine and Bosnia.  All of the units have no authority to so much as blow their noses without permission from Brussels.”
     
    “Requested in triplicate, of course,” Admiral Petr Yegorovich Volkov said.  “Fifty-page forms, no mistakes, in three different languages.”
     
    There were some chuckles.  “I believe that our security remains intact,” Zaripov said.  “Our deployment of submarines and weapons to the Algerians and Serbs has excited some comment, but nothing major; the main complaint is that we have been muscling out their weapon manufactures when it comes to sales to the Far East.  For some reason, not many people trust European weapons.”
     
    Shalenko smiled.  The French had supplied weapons to Iran, weapons that they could turn off at will…and they had been caught at it.  The Americans had forced the French to hand over the shutdown codes; the final radio broadcasts from Tehran had warned the entire world of the