Flash fiction thread

[James G]

May 11, 2020 23:21:10 GMT stevep said:

Fire At Will

   The watcher woke early and took up position on the small hillock. He had heard the 2nd army arrive the previous evening and so was nervous as the key point of his mission approached. His arrival the previous morning had given him time to select his location although given the vagaries of the historical record he had been relieved when their arrival had confirmed he had the correct position.

   Using the telescopic sight he was able to observe both positions to some degree although the attackers location was already clouded by activity as they realised their opponents had arrived and taken up a position on the crest of the steep hill, effectively isolating them from the lands they had raided in previous days. Men were already milling around as they prepared their attack.

   It was a clear and sunny day, despite it already been October so despite the dust he was confident that given a clear view he could complete the mission. Remembering his history however he was waiting for this 1st attack to be completed.

  The attack was over quickly. The steepness of the hill and the vigorous resistance of the defending force meant the attackers recoiled in some disorder. Retreating in some chaos towards the base of the hill. As he looked he could already see some of the defenders on one flank start to chase down after them and cursed quietly at the fools. However having check his equipment when the attack started he looked down at the attacking army again and saw what he was certain was his target.

   The man was of medium height, sat on a large horse and clad in mail and with a number of people clustered around him in some animation. Slowly he took off his helmet and waved it in the air, shouting at the same time although at this distance nothing could be heard. Most of the crowd looked at him and several looked relived.

   This changed to shock as he fell from the saddle as if struck a heavy blow, going sidewards as much as down for several feet. There was further turmoil in the crowd and some panic as men looked around wondering what had happened. Some clustered closely around him and picked up his body and the watcher could see through the sight the hole in his mail armour on the right side of his chest, already red with blood.

   He had gone with a body shot to make certain of the hit rather than one to the head. Given the size of the bullet and the velocity of his rifle he was confident that it would not only punch through any protection available at this time but also a torso shot would be lethal enough.

   Even so he reloaded and looked again down the sights. Things were a bit clearer now as sizeable numbers of the army, with news spreading that their leader was down and possibly wild rumours as to the bolt from the blue causing fear and many were fleeing towards the boats at the shoreline.

   Some were engaging the men who had descended from the hill, with some success as they were isolated and seemed relatively poorly equipped. However the spreading panic must have been clear to those at the crest as more were starting to descend in what seemed a more ordered advance.

   A few people were gathered around the body arguing with much gestation. One who had a prominent bald spot and good quality looking armour was trying to rally the men shouting loudly by the look of it and also waving a cross in his hand that he had slung around his neck. Some were starting to listen to him.

   This ended when the 2nd shot knocked him to the ground and his body thrashed briefly. Dread was now clear in those who had been clustered around him and with the defenders now approaching the bottom of the hill and ploughing into those who had been fighting the 1st wave that had come downwards any semblance of order or chance for the attackers to avoid total defeat collapsed.

   The watcher decided his work was done. He wondered how good his lessons in middle English actually were but thought he would soon find out. Presuming he didn't simply disappear. He had no understanding of the science behind the operation but knew that even the experts who had developed the machine that had delivered him here couldn't agree on how the grandfather paradox – one step he did understand – would resolve itself. Given how desperate 2048 Earth was the decision had been taken, once the option became available that something must be done to change things. Exactly why they had decided on a point so far in the past he didn't know but his was aware enough of the events that he had hopefully averted that he had no qualms about the people he had shot.

  ####

  A little idea that occurred to me earlier today.  Often thought the title phase is very hostile to anyone called William then the thought came to me of a situation which could be interesting from a AH point of view.  I suspect most of your will guess from the description who was the 1st man shot and the 2nd was intended to be his brother.

  Anyway, hope you enjoy.

  Steve

Another time-travelling assassin on the south coast of England!
So it is October 1066 and that is William the Conqueror killed? He had a brother? I'm confused.

[stevep]

May 12, 2020 0:42:27 GMT James G said:

May 11, 2020 23:21:10 GMT stevep said:

Fire At Will

   The watcher woke early and took up position on the small hillock. He had heard the 2nd army arrive the previous evening and so was nervous as the key point of his mission approached. His arrival the previous morning had given him time to select his location although given the vagaries of the historical record he had been relieved when their arrival had confirmed he had the correct position.

   Using the telescopic sight he was able to observe both positions to some degree although the attackers location was already clouded by activity as they realised their opponents had arrived and taken up a position on the crest of the steep hill, effectively isolating them from the lands they had raided in previous days. Men were already milling around as they prepared their attack.

   It was a clear and sunny day, despite it already been October so despite the dust he was confident that given a clear view he could complete the mission. Remembering his history however he was waiting for this 1st attack to be completed.

  The attack was over quickly. The steepness of the hill and the vigorous resistance of the defending force meant the attackers recoiled in some disorder. Retreating in some chaos towards the base of the hill. As he looked he could already see some of the defenders on one flank start to chase down after them and cursed quietly at the fools. However having check his equipment when the attack started he looked down at the attacking army again and saw what he was certain was his target.

   The man was of medium height, sat on a large horse and clad in mail and with a number of people clustered around him in some animation. Slowly he took off his helmet and waved it in the air, shouting at the same time although at this distance nothing could be heard. Most of the crowd looked at him and several looked relived.

   This changed to shock as he fell from the saddle as if struck a heavy blow, going sidewards as much as down for several feet. There was further turmoil in the crowd and some panic as men looked around wondering what had happened. Some clustered closely around him and picked up his body and the watcher could see through the sight the hole in his mail armour on the right side of his chest, already red with blood.

   He had gone with a body shot to make certain of the hit rather than one to the head. Given the size of the bullet and the velocity of his rifle he was confident that it would not only punch through any protection available at this time but also a torso shot would be lethal enough.

   Even so he reloaded and looked again down the sights. Things were a bit clearer now as sizeable numbers of the army, with news spreading that their leader was down and possibly wild rumours as to the bolt from the blue causing fear and many were fleeing towards the boats at the shoreline.

   Some were engaging the men who had descended from the hill, with some success as they were isolated and seemed relatively poorly equipped. However the spreading panic must have been clear to those at the crest as more were starting to descend in what seemed a more ordered advance.

   A few people were gathered around the body arguing with much gestation. One who had a prominent bald spot and good quality looking armour was trying to rally the men shouting loudly by the look of it and also waving a cross in his hand that he had slung around his neck. Some were starting to listen to him.

   This ended when the 2nd shot knocked him to the ground and his body thrashed briefly. Dread was now clear in those who had been clustered around him and with the defenders now approaching the bottom of the hill and ploughing into those who had been fighting the 1st wave that had come downwards any semblance of order or chance for the attackers to avoid total defeat collapsed.

   The watcher decided his work was done. He wondered how good his lessons in middle English actually were but thought he would soon find out. Presuming he didn't simply disappear. He had no understanding of the science behind the operation but knew that even the experts who had developed the machine that had delivered him here couldn't agree on how the grandfather paradox – one step he did understand – would resolve itself. Given how desperate 2048 Earth was the decision had been taken, once the option became available that something must be done to change things. Exactly why they had decided on a point so far in the past he didn't know but his was aware enough of the events that he had hopefully averted that he had no qualms about the people he had shot.

  ####

  A little idea that occurred to me earlier today.  Often thought the title phase is very hostile to anyone called William then the thought came to me of a situation which could be interesting from a AH point of view.  I suspect most of your will guess from the description who was the 1st man shot and the 2nd was intended to be his brother.

  Anyway, hope you enjoy.

  Steve

Another time-travelling assassin on the south coast of England!
So it is October 1066 and that is William the Conqueror killed? He had a brother? I'm confused.

  James G,

  Yes he had a long time waiting in the queue.

  I'd always heard of him as William's brother but he was actually only an half-brother, sharing the same mother, Odo_of_Bayeux. 

  Part of the trigger was you hear the phase fire at will and I was listening to a ME2 TW Youtube video a couple of nights back which started things incubating.  Its actually rather inappropriate before the firearms period as I was frequently reminded ~25 years back when I was playing a tabletop Warhammer campaign with some friends and used it a lot with my High Elf archers.

  Steve

[James G]

Target: UK

NATO and Russia have gone to war over the Baltic. Thirty-six hours in, Russia decides to up the ante and turn the limited regional conflict into something much bigger. Military attacks are made away from the Baltics and Poland. The UK is the target.

The first strike is conducted overnight with the use of air-launched cruise missiles. Flying over the Norwegian Sea, a pair of huge Russian bombers, Tupolev-95MS16 Bears, escape the attention of NATO air defences including those of Britain and launch thirty plus missiles southwards. These missiles are Kh-555 Kents. There are a couple of launch failures but the majority lance across the sky and begin to slam home into targets across Britain. RAF air defence radars spot them and a pair of Typhoon FGR4 fighters on airborne alert manage to take shots at a few but this is all the defence that Britain can muster. Fantastic explosions rock the night-time UK. Radar sites, command-&-communication posts and the RAF Lossiemouth airbase in Scotland are struck. Hundreds of casualties are caused and Britain looks almost impotent in the face of Russian air power.

The next morning, a Russian Navy submarine makes its own strike. Again, it is cruise missiles which are employed. They are fired from the Norwegian Sea with NATO anti-submarine efforts unable to locate the launching boat neither before nor after it makes the attack. There are eighteen of the 3M14K Kalibr Sizzlers which hit more military targets across the country after launch from the submarine Novosibirsk. Once more, there is a major casualty count and no defences which Britain has can touch these incoming weapons fired from a platform which gets away clean. Military barracks for the British Army and the Royal Marines around which there is much activity are blasted with explosives and subsequently engulfed in fire.

An evening missile attack for strike #3 is made by air-launched weapons again. These aren’t subsonic cruise missiles such as the Kents and the Sizzlers but instead, supersonic ballistic missiles launched from bombers this time above the Baltic Sea. A trio of heavily-loaded Tupolev-22M3M Backfires fire off Kh-47 Kinzhals. On a true ballistic arc despite the airborne firing, eleven of them slam into British targets at speeds of Mach 10. The devastation is immense. There are few military airbases in Britain after decades of defence cuts followed by defence cuts. In the East of England, RAF Coningsby and RAF Marham are struck just as the American-operated RAF Lakenheath is too. A US Army Patriot battery at Lakenheath attempts to defend the base and fails to get any of the four Kinzhals which tear apart the base in the Suffolk countryside.

The fourth and fifth strikes against the UK are made a few hours apart on the second night of the UK being targeted. Novosibirsk makes seventeen more successful shots as the Sizzler missiles from her vertical launch tubes ‘service’ three more airbases. RAF Brize Norton is the RAF’s transport hub, RAF Waddington is where support aircraft are flown from and RAF Fairford is seeing the arrival of American aircraft arriving. The casualty count is huge and the damage done is immense. That submarine will once more escape from her new firing position without return fire being directed her way. No one can find her to wipe out this submarine which now has empty missile tubes but is still laden with torpedoes and on a hunt for a surface kill.

Russian bombers are back over the Norwegian Sea once more. They come nowhere near Britain and instead launch missiles again from distance. US Navy fighters from a carrier present – a vessel which faces an attack itself later on – engage and destroy two of those bombers ahead of launch but other Bears & Backfires get their Kents and Kinzhals away. The targets this time for the dozens upon dozens of missiles are spread across Britain. PJHQ Northwood command centre north of London is flattened. GCHQ Cheltenham goes up in flames as the headquarters of Britain’s signals interception service is struck at. The Royal Navy bases at Devonport and Portsmouth on the South Coast come under attack with hits made against ships in port too. Further military communications sites across the nation for British and United States use are blown apart.

The sixth, and ultimately, final Russian attack comes the next morning, just after sunrise. Launching from above Poland, Tupolev-160M Blackjack bombers are in what should be NATO controlled skies but over a country from where ground-launched Russian missiles have spent several days smashing into. There are no enemy fighters to oppose them and their missiles fly across Western Europe and towards the UK. These are more Kents, a final barrage of sixteen of them from three bombers who all return home unharmed. Fairford and the Americans there in the West of England get another hammering and there is also the impact of cruise missiles into selected targets in the middle of London. The MOD Main building on Whitehall is hit and so too is MI-6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross. No effective defence of the British capital is mounted.

A diplomatic solution ends the war. This comes about due to the situation on the battlefield with one side emerging the winner and the other incurring a defeat. Both victory and defeat are relative though. NATO and Russia (plus its allies in Belarus and Kazakhstan) have each spent four days engaged in a full scale war with everything short of weapons of mass destruction used. When the shooting is over, Britain is left reeling from the attacks made. Targeting the UK, Russia has caused immense military damage and also hurt the country in other ways too. Civilian casualties are very few but the nation has been walloped. Defence of the country failed miserably and everyone knows it. The government will fall and the destruction suffered physically will be matched afterwards both politically and diplomatically. An impotent Britain failed to hit back against any individual attacker and the world knows this.

[lordroel]

May 17, 2020 0:45:10 GMT James G said:

Target: UK

NATO and Russia have gone to war over the Baltic. Thirty-six hours in, Russia decides to up the ante and turn the limited regional conflict into something much bigger. Military attacks are made away from the Baltics and Poland. The UK is the target.

The first strike is conducted overnight with the use of air-launched cruise missiles. Flying over the Norwegian Sea, a pair of huge Russian bombers, Tupolev-95MS16 Bears, escape the attention of NATO air defences including those of Britain and launch thirty plus missiles southwards. These missiles are Kh-555 Kents. There are a couple of launch failures but the majority lance across the sky and begin to slam home into targets across Britain. RAF air defence radars spot them and a pair of Typhoon FGR4 fighters on airborne alert manage to take shots at a few but this is all the defence that Britain can muster. Fantastic explosions rock the night-time UK. Radar sites, command-&-communication posts and the RAF Lossiemouth airbase in Scotland are struck. Hundreds of casualties are caused and Britain looks almost impotent in the face of Russian air power.

The next morning, a Russian Navy submarine makes its own strike. Again, it is cruise missiles which are employed. They are fired from the Norwegian Sea with NATO anti-submarine efforts unable to locate the launching boat neither before nor after it makes the attack. There are eighteen of the 3M14K Kalibr Sizzlers which hit more military targets across the country after launch from the submarine Novosibirsk. Once more, there is a major casualty count and no defences which Britain has can touch these incoming weapons fired from a platform which gets away clean. Military barracks for the British Army and the Royal Marines around which there is much activity are blasted with explosives and subsequently engulfed in fire.

An evening missile attack for strike #3 is made by air-launched weapons again. These aren’t subsonic cruise missiles such as the Kents and the Sizzlers but instead, supersonic ballistic missiles launched from bombers this time above the Baltic Sea. A trio of heavily-loaded Tupolev-22M3M Backfires fire off Kh-47 Kinzhals. On a true ballistic arc despite the airborne firing, eleven of them slam into British targets at speeds of Mach 10. The devastation is immense. There are few military airbases in Britain after decades of defence cuts followed by defence cuts. In the East of England, RAF Coningsby and RAF Marham are struck just as the American-operated RAF Lakenheath is too. A US Army Patriot battery at Lakenheath attempts to defend the base and fails to get any of the four Kinzhals which tear apart the base in the Suffolk countryside.

The fourth and fifth strikes against the UK are made a few hours apart on the second night of the UK being targeted. Novosibirsk makes seventeen more successful shots as the Sizzler missiles from her vertical launch tubes ‘service’ three more airbases. RAF Brize Norton is the RAF’s transport hub, RAF Waddington is where support aircraft are flown from and RAF Fairford is seeing the arrival of American aircraft arriving. The casualty count is huge and the damage done is immense. That submarine will once more escape from her new firing position without return fire being directed her way. No one can find her to wipe out this submarine which now has empty missile tubes but is still laden with torpedoes and on a hunt for a surface kill.

Russian bombers are back over the Norwegian Sea once more. They come nowhere near Britain and instead launch missiles again from distance. US Navy fighters from a carrier present – a vessel which faces an attack itself later on – engage and destroy two of those bombers ahead of launch but other Bears & Backfires get their Kents and Kinzhals away. The targets this time for the dozens upon dozens of missiles are spread across Britain. PJHQ Northwood command centre north of London is flattened. GCHQ Cheltenham goes up in flames as the headquarters of Britain’s signals interception service is struck at. The Royal Navy bases at Devonport and Portsmouth on the South Coast come under attack with hits made against ships in port too. Further military communications sites across the nation for British and United States use are blown apart.

The sixth, and ultimately, final Russian attack comes the next morning, just after sunrise. Launching from above Poland, Tupolev-160M Blackjack bombers are in what should be NATO controlled skies but over a country from where ground-launched Russian missiles have spent several days smashing into. There are no enemy fighters to oppose them and their missiles fly across Western Europe and towards the UK. These are more Kents, a final barrage of sixteen of them from three bombers who all return home unharmed. Fairford and the Americans there in the West of England get another hammering and there is also the impact of cruise missiles into selected targets in the middle of London. The MOD Main building on Whitehall is hit and so too is MI-6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross. No effective defence of the British capital is mounted.

A diplomatic solution ends the war. This comes about due to the situation on the battlefield with one side emerging the winner and the other incurring a defeat. Both victory and defeat are relative though. NATO and Russia (plus its allies in Belarus and Kazakhstan) have each spent four days engaged in a full scale war with everything short of weapons of mass destruction used. When the shooting is over, Britain is left reeling from the attacks made. Targeting the UK, Russia has caused immense military damage and also hurt the country in other ways too. Civilian casualties are very few but the nation has been walloped. Defence of the country failed miserably and everyone knows it. The government will fall and the destruction suffered physically will be matched afterwards both politically and diplomatically. An impotent Britain failed to hit back against any individual attacker and the world knows this.

So not attack by which nuclear sub the British have out there.

[stevep]

May 17, 2020 7:03:32 GMT lordroel said:

May 17, 2020 0:45:10 GMT James G said:

Target: UK

NATO and Russia have gone to war over the Baltic. Thirty-six hours in, Russia decides to up the ante and turn the limited regional conflict into something much bigger. Military attacks are made away from the Baltics and Poland. The UK is the target.

The first strike is conducted overnight with the use of air-launched cruise missiles. Flying over the Norwegian Sea, a pair of huge Russian bombers, Tupolev-95MS16 Bears, escape the attention of NATO air defences including those of Britain and launch thirty plus missiles southwards. These missiles are Kh-555 Kents. There are a couple of launch failures but the majority lance across the sky and begin to slam home into targets across Britain. RAF air defence radars spot them and a pair of Typhoon FGR4 fighters on airborne alert manage to take shots at a few but this is all the defence that Britain can muster. Fantastic explosions rock the night-time UK. Radar sites, command-&-communication posts and the RAF Lossiemouth airbase in Scotland are struck. Hundreds of casualties are caused and Britain looks almost impotent in the face of Russian air power.

The next morning, a Russian Navy submarine makes its own strike. Again, it is cruise missiles which are employed. They are fired from the Norwegian Sea with NATO anti-submarine efforts unable to locate the launching boat neither before nor after it makes the attack. There are eighteen of the 3M14K Kalibr Sizzlers which hit more military targets across the country after launch from the submarine Novosibirsk. Once more, there is a major casualty count and no defences which Britain has can touch these incoming weapons fired from a platform which gets away clean. Military barracks for the British Army and the Royal Marines around which there is much activity are blasted with explosives and subsequently engulfed in fire.

An evening missile attack for strike #3 is made by air-launched weapons again. These aren’t subsonic cruise missiles such as the Kents and the Sizzlers but instead, supersonic ballistic missiles launched from bombers this time above the Baltic Sea. A trio of heavily-loaded Tupolev-22M3M Backfires fire off Kh-47 Kinzhals. On a true ballistic arc despite the airborne firing, eleven of them slam into British targets at speeds of Mach 10. The devastation is immense. There are few military airbases in Britain after decades of defence cuts followed by defence cuts. In the East of England, RAF Coningsby and RAF Marham are struck just as the American-operated RAF Lakenheath is too. A US Army Patriot battery at Lakenheath attempts to defend the base and fails to get any of the four Kinzhals which tear apart the base in the Suffolk countryside.

The fourth and fifth strikes against the UK are made a few hours apart on the second night of the UK being targeted. Novosibirsk makes seventeen more successful shots as the Sizzler missiles from her vertical launch tubes ‘service’ three more airbases. RAF Brize Norton is the RAF’s transport hub, RAF Waddington is where support aircraft are flown from and RAF Fairford is seeing the arrival of American aircraft arriving. The casualty count is huge and the damage done is immense. That submarine will once more escape from her new firing position without return fire being directed her way. No one can find her to wipe out this submarine which now has empty missile tubes but is still laden with torpedoes and on a hunt for a surface kill.

Russian bombers are back over the Norwegian Sea once more. They come nowhere near Britain and instead launch missiles again from distance. US Navy fighters from a carrier present – a vessel which faces an attack itself later on – engage and destroy two of those bombers ahead of launch but other Bears & Backfires get their Kents and Kinzhals away. The targets this time for the dozens upon dozens of missiles are spread across Britain. PJHQ Northwood command centre north of London is flattened. GCHQ Cheltenham goes up in flames as the headquarters of Britain’s signals interception service is struck at. The Royal Navy bases at Devonport and Portsmouth on the South Coast come under attack with hits made against ships in port too. Further military communications sites across the nation for British and United States use are blown apart.

The sixth, and ultimately, final Russian attack comes the next morning, just after sunrise. Launching from above Poland, Tupolev-160M Blackjack bombers are in what should be NATO controlled skies but over a country from where ground-launched Russian missiles have spent several days smashing into. There are no enemy fighters to oppose them and their missiles fly across Western Europe and towards the UK. These are more Kents, a final barrage of sixteen of them from three bombers who all return home unharmed. Fairford and the Americans there in the West of England get another hammering and there is also the impact of cruise missiles into selected targets in the middle of London. The MOD Main building on Whitehall is hit and so too is MI-6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross. No effective defence of the British capital is mounted.

A diplomatic solution ends the war. This comes about due to the situation on the battlefield with one side emerging the winner and the other incurring a defeat. Both victory and defeat are relative though. NATO and Russia (plus its allies in Belarus and Kazakhstan) have each spent four days engaged in a full scale war with everything short of weapons of mass destruction used. When the shooting is over, Britain is left reeling from the attacks made. Targeting the UK, Russia has caused immense military damage and also hurt the country in other ways too. Civilian casualties are very few but the nation has been walloped. Defence of the country failed miserably and everyone knows it. The government will fall and the destruction suffered physically will be matched afterwards both politically and diplomatically. An impotent Britain failed to hit back against any individual attacker and the world knows this.

So not attack by which nuclear sub the British have out there.

  James G,

  Very nasty and apart from the military casualties I would expect substantial civilian ones because of the size of the missiles, the fact some of the targets are in urban areas and that some will go off course.

  Going to be huge political repercussion from this and hopefully will finally end the Thatcher reaction.  However the costs, human, economic, social and diplomatic are going to be huge and long lasting.

  Steve

[James G]

May 17, 2020 7:03:32 GMT lordroel said:

May 17, 2020 0:45:10 GMT James G said:

Target: UK

NATO and Russia have gone to war over the Baltic. Thirty-six hours in, Russia decides to up the ante and turn the limited regional conflict into something much bigger. Military attacks are made away from the Baltics and Poland. The UK is the target.

The first strike is conducted overnight with the use of air-launched cruise missiles. Flying over the Norwegian Sea, a pair of huge Russian bombers, Tupolev-95MS16 Bears, escape the attention of NATO air defences including those of Britain and launch thirty plus missiles southwards. These missiles are Kh-555 Kents. There are a couple of launch failures but the majority lance across the sky and begin to slam home into targets across Britain. RAF air defence radars spot them and a pair of Typhoon FGR4 fighters on airborne alert manage to take shots at a few but this is all the defence that Britain can muster. Fantastic explosions rock the night-time UK. Radar sites, command-&-communication posts and the RAF Lossiemouth airbase in Scotland are struck. Hundreds of casualties are caused and Britain looks almost impotent in the face of Russian air power.

The next morning, a Russian Navy submarine makes its own strike. Again, it is cruise missiles which are employed. They are fired from the Norwegian Sea with NATO anti-submarine efforts unable to locate the launching boat neither before nor after it makes the attack. There are eighteen of the 3M14K Kalibr Sizzlers which hit more military targets across the country after launch from the submarine Novosibirsk. Once more, there is a major casualty count and no defences which Britain has can touch these incoming weapons fired from a platform which gets away clean. Military barracks for the British Army and the Royal Marines around which there is much activity are blasted with explosives and subsequently engulfed in fire.

An evening missile attack for strike #3 is made by air-launched weapons again. These aren’t subsonic cruise missiles such as the Kents and the Sizzlers but instead, supersonic ballistic missiles launched from bombers this time above the Baltic Sea. A trio of heavily-loaded Tupolev-22M3M Backfires fire off Kh-47 Kinzhals. On a true ballistic arc despite the airborne firing, eleven of them slam into British targets at speeds of Mach 10. The devastation is immense. There are few military airbases in Britain after decades of defence cuts followed by defence cuts. In the East of England, RAF Coningsby and RAF Marham are struck just as the American-operated RAF Lakenheath is too. A US Army Patriot battery at Lakenheath attempts to defend the base and fails to get any of the four Kinzhals which tear apart the base in the Suffolk countryside.

The fourth and fifth strikes against the UK are made a few hours apart on the second night of the UK being targeted. Novosibirsk makes seventeen more successful shots as the Sizzler missiles from her vertical launch tubes ‘service’ three more airbases. RAF Brize Norton is the RAF’s transport hub, RAF Waddington is where support aircraft are flown from and RAF Fairford is seeing the arrival of American aircraft arriving. The casualty count is huge and the damage done is immense. That submarine will once more escape from her new firing position without return fire being directed her way. No one can find her to wipe out this submarine which now has empty missile tubes but is still laden with torpedoes and on a hunt for a surface kill.

Russian bombers are back over the Norwegian Sea once more. They come nowhere near Britain and instead launch missiles again from distance. US Navy fighters from a carrier present – a vessel which faces an attack itself later on – engage and destroy two of those bombers ahead of launch but other Bears & Backfires get their Kents and Kinzhals away. The targets this time for the dozens upon dozens of missiles are spread across Britain. PJHQ Northwood command centre north of London is flattened. GCHQ Cheltenham goes up in flames as the headquarters of Britain’s signals interception service is struck at. The Royal Navy bases at Devonport and Portsmouth on the South Coast come under attack with hits made against ships in port too. Further military communications sites across the nation for British and United States use are blown apart.

The sixth, and ultimately, final Russian attack comes the next morning, just after sunrise. Launching from above Poland, Tupolev-160M Blackjack bombers are in what should be NATO controlled skies but over a country from where ground-launched Russian missiles have spent several days smashing into. There are no enemy fighters to oppose them and their missiles fly across Western Europe and towards the UK. These are more Kents, a final barrage of sixteen of them from three bombers who all return home unharmed. Fairford and the Americans there in the West of England get another hammering and there is also the impact of cruise missiles into selected targets in the middle of London. The MOD Main building on Whitehall is hit and so too is MI-6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross. No effective defence of the British capital is mounted.

A diplomatic solution ends the war. This comes about due to the situation on the battlefield with one side emerging the winner and the other incurring a defeat. Both victory and defeat are relative though. NATO and Russia (plus its allies in Belarus and Kazakhstan) have each spent four days engaged in a full scale war with everything short of weapons of mass destruction used. When the shooting is over, Britain is left reeling from the attacks made. Targeting the UK, Russia has caused immense military damage and also hurt the country in other ways too. Civilian casualties are very few but the nation has been walloped. Defence of the country failed miserably and everyone knows it. The government will fall and the destruction suffered physically will be matched afterwards both politically and diplomatically. An impotent Britain failed to hit back against any individual attacker and the world knows this.

So not attack by which nuclear sub the British have out there.

Its a non-nuclear, four day war. Tridents aboard subs have no role.

May 17, 2020 10:49:40 GMT stevep said:

  James G,

  Very nasty and apart from the military casualties I would expect substantial civilian ones because of the size of the missiles, the fact some of the targets are in urban areas and that some will go off course.

  Going to be huge political repercussion from this and hopefully will finally end the Thatcher reaction.  However the costs, human, economic, social and diplomatic are going to be huge and long lasting.

  Steve

There would be civilian casualties but my thinking is that not. Plymouth and Portsmouth are probably where the most risks are.
The conflict is a 2021 fight too, so long after Thatcher.

[stevep]

May 17, 2020 15:57:46 GMT James G said:

May 17, 2020 7:03:32 GMT lordroel said:

So not attack by which nuclear sub the British have out there.

Its a non-nuclear, four day war. Tridents aboard subs have no role.

May 17, 2020 10:49:40 GMT stevep said:

  James G,

  Very nasty and apart from the military casualties I would expect substantial civilian ones because of the size of the missiles, the fact some of the targets are in urban areas and that some will go off course.

  Going to be huge political repercussion from this and hopefully will finally end the Thatcher reaction.  However the costs, human, economic, social and diplomatic are going to be huge and long lasting.

  Steve

There would be civilian casualties but my thinking is that not. Plymouth and Portsmouth are probably where the most risks are.
The conflict is a 2021 fight too, so long after Thatcher.

  True but her legacy unfortunately continues to infest much of Britain. I called it the Thatcher reaction because its basically the supporting of the failed ideas of the late 19thC because they favour those in positions of wealth and priviledge at considerable costs to the country as a whole.  Most especially the rejection of any social identity, which of course includes a national one regardless of what its supporters pretend.  Those policies failed in the 19thC and early 20thC just as their failed since 1979.  Hopefully a shock like this might finally force much needed reform and a will to look to what the country needs rather than what the powerful want to protect their positions.

[forcon]

The Interrogation Room

The door opened with an uncanny creaking sound. Radiance from the hallway light fulgurated briefly through the gap in the doorway, illuminating the darkened interrogation room, and Marcus Ellison observed as the two agents entered,bringing with them a bearing of conviction. The demeanour of agent on the left,recognised by Ellison as Hank Goodman, the same agent who had arrested him the month before, was not merely self-assured but comprehensively self-satisfied. Ellison tried to project authority in his voice, but the same assertive figure that had walked out of the FBI building last week with twenty-six felonious charges against him dropped, was drowning in a rising tide of trepidation.

“You come to set me free?” Ellison queried. Something about their bearing was different from the last interrogation. There was no urgency, no determination.

“You’ll be leaving soon,” Goodman replied in a steady, almost bored tone.

“So I can go home?”

“So you can go to death row.” Ellison shivered in his seat. The lawyer, the smirking little shit, gave him a commanding look, telling him in silence not to rise to the bait. “Agent Goodman,I object to the blatant intimidation attempt. Even when you did have enough evidence to seek an indictment for my client, none of those charges were capital crimes under federal law.” A chatoyant glimmer crept into the corner of Goodman’s eye as though he were a cat toying sadistically with an accosted rodent.

“Actually, son, we aren’t just seeking an indictment on the trafficking and kiddie porn charges anymore. We know you putout a hit on Maria Estevez to stop her from testifying in front of the grand jury. Killing a witness gets you a last meal and a priest.”

“Bullshit!”Ellison blurted. “Who told you that? Was it Haines?”

“Shut up, Marcus!”The attorney barked, unleashing his words with vigour and a surprising authority that contrasted sharply with his wiry, bespectacled presence. “You can’t charge my client with Murder One on the word of a co-conspirator. If Mister Haines did tell you that information, he lied to reduce his own sentence.”

“We have a corroborating witness. And CCTV footage from your meeting with Fin O’Daly. And there’s no question that he was Maria’s murderer. Now we can prove that he killed that little girl on your behalf.”

A muteness so abundant you could have choked on it hung in the air. The attorney turned to his client, allowing Ellison to hear a sentence whispered in his ear. Tears began to well up in Ellison’s eyes and his lip quavered pathetically. He was almost a pitiful sight. With resignation dripping from his words as clearly as the teardrops running down his cheeks, he said, “I want to make a deal. Take the death penalty off the table. I know people-”

“No,”Goodman replied sincerely. “No deals. Not this time.” He leaned close to Ellison, so much so that he could smell the coffee and tobacco that lingered weightily on Goodman’s breath. His voice emanated repugnance, utter hatred, so much so that it seemed to Ellison that a violent demon was squeezing Goodman’s throat as he spoke. “I just wanted to ask you for a favour, Ellison. When your last appeal is denied, and they come to stick the needle in your arm, do me one last favour.” Yet closer he leaned. “Tell them how you like it.” 

[stevep]

May 27, 2020 19:09:37 GMT forcon said:

The Interrogation Room

The door opened with an uncanny creaking sound. Radiance from the hallway light fulgurated briefly through the gap in the doorway, illuminating the darkened interrogation room, and Marcus Ellison observed as the two agents entered,bringing with them a bearing of conviction. The demeanour of agent on the left,recognised by Ellison as Hank Goodman, the same agent who had arrested him the month before, was not merely self-assured but comprehensively self-satisfied. Ellison tried to project authority in his voice, but the same assertive figure that had walked out of the FBI building last week with twenty-six felonious charges against him dropped, was drowning in a rising tide of trepidation.

“You come to set me free?” Ellison queried. Something about their bearing was different from the last interrogation. There was no urgency, no determination.

“You’ll be leaving soon,” Goodman replied in a steady, almost bored tone.

“So I can go home?”

“So you can go to death row.” Ellison shivered in his seat. The lawyer, the smirking little shit, gave him a commanding look, telling him in silence not to rise to the bait. “Agent Goodman,I object to the blatant intimidation attempt. Even when you did have enough evidence to seek an indictment for my client, none of those charges were capital crimes under federal law.” A chatoyant glimmer crept into the corner of Goodman’s eye as though he were a cat toying sadistically with an accosted rodent.

“Actually, son, we aren’t just seeking an indictment on the trafficking and kiddie porn charges anymore. We know you putout a hit on Maria Estevez to stop her from testifying in front of the grand jury. Killing a witness gets you a last meal and a priest.”

“Bullshit!”Ellison blurted. “Who told you that? Was it Haines?”

“Shut up, Marcus!”The attorney barked, unleashing his words with vigour and a surprising authority that contrasted sharply with his wiry, bespectacled presence. “You can’t charge my client with Murder One on the word of a co-conspirator. If Mister Haines did tell you that information, he lied to reduce his own sentence.”

“We have a corroborating witness. And CCTV footage from your meeting with Fin O’Daly. And there’s no question that he was Maria’s murderer. Now we can prove that he killed that little girl on your behalf.”

A muteness so abundant you could have choked on it hung in the air. The attorney turned to his client, allowing Ellison to hear a sentence whispered in his ear. Tears began to well up in Ellison’s eyes and his lip quavered pathetically. He was almost a pitiful sight. With resignation dripping from his words as clearly as the teardrops running down his cheeks, he said, “I want to make a deal. Take the death penalty off the table. I know people-”

“No,”Goodman replied sincerely. “No deals. Not this time.” He leaned close to Ellison, so much so that he could smell the coffee and tobacco that lingered weightily on Goodman’s breath. His voice emanated repugnance, utter hatred, so much so that it seemed to Ellison that a violent demon was squeezing Goodman’s throat as he spoke. “I just wanted to ask you for a favour, Ellison. When your last appeal is denied, and they come to stick the needle in your arm, do me one last favour.” Yet closer he leaned. “Tell them how you like it.” 

  forcon,

  I'm guessing that's what he forced victims to say when 'playing' with them?

  Steve

[forcon]

Something along those lines; I tried not to put too much thought into it.

The idea was for an Epstein-type figure (Ellison) to be trafficking in kids as his own victims, with Haines as his right hand man. I was thinking Ellison used threats of deportation to keep his victims quite, but Maria Estavez came forward to the FBI. Ellison subsequently put out a hit on her (carried out by O'Daly) to prevent her from testifying to the grand jury. At some point in the story, however, the Feds are able to flip Haines for a lesser sentence and protective custody when in prison, resulting in the scene I wrote: Ellison being nabbed for killing Estavez and going to death row.

[James G]

The Chinese Solution

Erich Mielke, East Germany’s Minister for State Security – the head of the Stasi and whom the West German media gave the sobriquet ‘The Master of Fear’ –, has himself a terrible nightmare. In the early hours of October 8th 1989, he wakes up with a fright and drenched in sweat. The mob had been beating down the doors of the regime during his dream with nothing standing in their way to stop them. The German Democratic Republic was falling to the forces of reactionaries hell bent on making his country a lackey of the Americans with himself and other regime figures sure to be lynched. It was only a dream but it had been so real! Mielke doesn’t go back to sleep afterwards. He decides that it wasn’t just a nightmare but is a sign of what was sure to come. Events yesterday have pointed to his night-time imaginations becoming a reality. East Germany’s fortieth anniversary celebrations had been marred by members of the crowd calling upon the visiting head of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, who was in East Berlin with Mielke and the leadership, to come to their aid: ‘Gorby, help us’ had been the chant. The people are ready to rise up in revolt and only he can see how that was going to go if he doesn’t make a move to stop it. Recalling conversations during the day during the embarrassment, Mielke considers what Brünner and Krenz had both said. The former is the head of the East German military’s intelligence service (the PHV) while the latter serves as the regime’s deputy leader under Honecker. Brünner had told Mielke that especially loyal military units are ready to do what was needed come what may and wouldn’t be influenced by outside forces; Krenz has recently been in Beijing attending meetings with Deng to congratulate him on how the Chinese had found a ‘solution’ to their domestic protesters. Mielke begins to formulate a plan to forestall what he knows is coming.

The following day, Plan X goes into action. It has been something in the planning stages for a long time with the Stasi having prepared for the worst possible situation with East Germans in revolt and their counter to that ready. Mielke orders Plan X to go ahead before the streets are full of counter-revolutionaries but the end goal is the same: to crush opposition to the regime and secure the future of the German Democratic Republic. Nationwide arrests are made of identified ‘enemies of the state’ and the list is wide-ranging. This includes activists and troublemakers at the lowest level yet also goes all the way to the top with Mielke having the Stasi arrest fellow members of the regime including both Honecker and Krenz (Mielke distrusts the man Honecker has long been grooming to succeed him). Thousands of detainees begin to fill pre-selected holding sites. There is violence nationwide in response. It is at its worst in the city of Leipzig where a planned illegal demonstration later that day is something that the Stasi know about and those behind it are arrested. In scenes not witnessed since 1953, East German civilians oppose the authorities in number and come out onto the streets to try and stop Plan X. Mielke has the support of Brünner though and through him, orders are sent to military units to support the mass arrests and control the growing crowds where the police have failed to do this. Mielke is in East Berlin now at the helm of the ship of state. He has taken Honecker’s position as General Secretary with the Soviets and other allies finding out after the fact. Gorbachev, arriving back in Moscow with those chants from the East German people still fresh in his mind, is aghast at what Mielke has done. He will not support the Stasi chief’s actions in any way. The Brezhnev Doctrine is long dead when it comes to Soviet interference in the internal affairs of other nations.

Plan X is a pre-emptive strike but it’s implementation on October 9th brings about the uprising it is meant to prevent. Mielke’s rule is challenged by the mob. The PHV cannot keep the military under control. Certain units called out to maintain domestic order refuse to act with commanders securing their garrisons and cutting communications to the outside world. Stasi arrest teams are forced into retreat with deaths and injuries occurring when they try to go after people to be detained further down their lists. Day #2 of Mielke’s rule sees extensive violence in cities and towns nationwide. West German media broadcasts reporting on events for their own citizens are watched by East Germans who react to the images of violence in their own country by going out onto the streets to join that. Emergency orders are cut for the arrest and eviction of foreign media; the regime is responding to events now, no longer setting the agenda. Mielke is watching his country fall apart but he believes that it can still be saved. In East Berlin, there is calm here giving him that belief. This side of the divided city that sits at the heart of a divided country is under lockdown with loyal soldiers on the streets instead of the mob. Late this evening that changes though. The people come out and gather together. They begin to march directly against Mielke and his centre of power. Brünner goes silent: Mielke is unable to contact him with the military intelligence chief suddenly abandoning him. The protesters in the city are in their tens of thousands, many of them armed too with weapons. Across East Germany, there are paramilitary units organised for use in wartime with industrial workers meant to form ‘Combat Groups of the Working Class’ and having weapons (securely) stored at their places of work. The guns are in the hands of the working class now and they are coming to bring down the regime.


Soldiers in East Berlin are from several organisations. There are East German Army paratroopers from the 40th Air Assault Regiment as well as the riflemen & tankers from the 1st Motorised Infantry Division. The Stasi’s own armed unit, the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guard Regiment (at full-strength, the size of a division despite the designation of a regiment), is also in East Berlin. Border guards with the Grenztruppen, including those manning the Berlin Wall, have nine full regiments of men available too. This is a large show of strength and one that has cowed any resistance before this Tuesday evening. Those people who come out onto the streets believe though that those in uniform will not fight. West German media broadcasts – which Mielke’s regime cannot stop people viewing – have told them that soldiers in Dresden, Rostock and Weimar have today not fired upon protesters. Moreover, Soviet forces in East Germany numbering half a million men are also reported to be staying in their barracks on Gorbachev’s orders due to the Soviet Union at odds with Mielke’s forceful assumption of power. The people are emboldened into action, they no longer have the fear of the organs of the state that Mielke has assembled against them. Mielke’s Chinese Solution where the military will crush protesters and even civil war on the streets of East Berlin looks imminent if those foreign media reports are wrong…

…which they aren’t.

Brünner has the PHV issue orders for the paratroopers and the Potsdam Division to stand down. The Grenztruppen’s chief has left East Berlin for Dresden but before he flies out of the capital in a helicopter to where anti-Mielke political forces are assembling, he too sends instructions for a stand down of the border guards which surround West Berlin yet also have that large pool of trained manpower. Three-quarters of the armed soldiers in East Berlin walk away from their established defensive positions and head back to barracks. The Felix Dzerzhinsky Regiment stands on its own. There are still ten thousand plus Stasi soldiers on East Berlin’s streets but they are outnumbered. The ranks of protesters on the city’s streets contain women and children alongside armed & unarmed men. No one wants to give the order to fire. The regimental commander is to whom the headquarters staff look to but he will not act without explicit permission from Mielke himself. There are communications problems with East Germany’s head and, at the crucial moment, the masses of people reach the centre of East Berlin. They keep on marching past the Stasi soldiers, threw their lines as if they are the sand trying to stop the incoming sea. Too late, Mielke sends word: ‘Kill the pigs!’. But the Felix Dzerzhinsky Regiment doesn’t, not with all of those people everywhere now fatally compromising their positions even more so than the abandonment of everyone else with them earlier did. The crowds of people move towards the Palast der Republik where the Volkskammer (parliament) sits, the Stasi’s headquarters and the State Council Building where Mielke is believed to be. The protesters invade these buildings, seeking to bring down the regime just as Mielke had dreamt of a few nights beforehand.

Mielke is gone. He has escaped from East Berlin, racing away from the city up to the residential complex north of East Berlin at Waldsiedlung where there is usually security and safety. It is somewhere that he has long lived in luxury with detachments of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guard Regiment not in East Berlin tonight supposed to be there guarding the complex. However, instead of his Stasi soldiers, Mielke finds East German Army men there. They are troops from another elite unit, this time the Hugo Eberlein Guard Regiment: orders for their deployment to Waldsiedlung have come from Brünner and they seek to detain Mielke. Shooting occurs between Mielke’s bodyguards and those soldiers. With his regime collapsing in spectacular fashion, Mielke makes a run for it with a few aides joining him diving into the woods tonight. An ultimate destination is not something planned yet there is a desire to escape from those soldiers.

Mielke doesn’t get far. The pursing soldiers and his bodyguards exchange fire and, in the confusion of battle, Mielke is shot dead. Those soldiers sent on the instructions of Brünner had orders to take him alive but The Master of Fear who fell victim to the fear his is infamous for creating, is no longer alive to see the justice envisioned for him. The German Democratic Republic will not survive much longer either. The Chinese Solution couldn’t save it and nor will post-Mielke efforts to try to salvage what is left.

[lordroel]

Jun 12, 2020 15:56:36 GMT James G said:

The Chinese Solution

Erich Mielke, East Germany’s Minister for State Security – the head of the Stasi and whom the West German media gave the sobriquet ‘The Master of Fear’ –, has himself a terrible nightmare. In the early hours of October 8th 1989, he wakes up with a fright and drenched in sweat. The mob had been beating down the doors of the regime during his dream with nothing standing in their way to stop them. The German Democratic Republic was falling to the forces of reactionaries hell bent on making his country a lackey of the Americans with himself and other regime figures sure to be lynched. It was only a dream but it had been so real! Mielke doesn’t go back to sleep afterwards. He decides that it wasn’t just a nightmare but is a sign of what was sure to come. Events yesterday have pointed to his night-time imaginations becoming a reality. East Germany’s fortieth anniversary celebrations had been marred by members of the crowd calling upon the visiting head of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, who was in East Berlin with Mielke and the leadership, to come to their aid: ‘Gorby, help us’ had been the chant. The people are ready to rise up in revolt and only he can see how that was going to go if he doesn’t make a move to stop it. Recalling conversations during the day during the embarrassment, Mielke considers what Brünner and Krenz had both said. The former is the head of the East German military’s intelligence service (the PHV) while the latter serves as the regime’s deputy leader under Honecker. Brünner had told Mielke that especially loyal military units are ready to do what was needed come what may and wouldn’t be influenced by outside forces; Krenz has recently been in Beijing attending meetings with Deng to congratulate him on how the Chinese had found a ‘solution’ to their domestic protesters. Mielke begins to formulate a plan to forestall what he knows is coming.

The following day, Plan X goes into action. It has been something in the planning stages for a long time with the Stasi having prepared for the worst possible situation with East Germans in revolt and their counter to that ready. Mielke orders Plan X to go ahead before the streets are full of counter-revolutionaries but the end goal is the same: to crush opposition to the regime and secure the future of the German Democratic Republic. Nationwide arrests are made of identified ‘enemies of the state’ and the list is wide-ranging. This includes activists and troublemakers at the lowest level yet also goes all the way to the top with Mielke having the Stasi arrest fellow members of the regime including both Honecker and Krenz (Mielke distrusts the man Honecker has long been grooming to succeed him). Thousands of detainees begin to fill pre-selected holding sites. There is violence nationwide in response. It is at its worst in the city of Leipzig where a planned illegal demonstration later that day is something that the Stasi know about and those behind it are arrested. In scenes not witnessed since 1953, East German civilians oppose the authorities in number and come out onto the streets to try and stop Plan X. Mielke has the support of Brünner though and through him, orders are sent to military units to support the mass arrests and control the growing crowds where the police have failed to do this. Mielke is in East Berlin now at the helm of the ship of state. He has taken Honecker’s position as General Secretary with the Soviets and other allies finding out after the fact. Gorbachev, arriving back in Moscow with those chants from the East German people still fresh in his mind, is aghast at what Mielke has done. He will not support the Stasi chief’s actions in any way. The Brezhnev Doctrine is long dead when it comes to Soviet interference in the internal affairs of other nations.

Plan X is a pre-emptive strike but it’s implementation on October 9th brings about the uprising it is meant to prevent. Mielke’s rule is challenged by the mob. The PHV cannot keep the military under control. Certain units called out to maintain domestic order refuse to act with commanders securing their garrisons and cutting communications to the outside world. Stasi arrest teams are forced into retreat with deaths and injuries occurring when they try to go after people to be detained further down their lists. Day #2 of Mielke’s rule sees extensive violence in cities and towns nationwide. West German media broadcasts reporting on events for their own citizens are watched by East Germans who react to the images of violence in their own country by going out onto the streets to join that. Emergency orders are cut for the arrest and eviction of foreign media; the regime is responding to events now, no longer setting the agenda. Mielke is watching his country fall apart but he believes that it can still be saved. In East Berlin, there is calm here giving him that belief. This side of the divided city that sits at the heart of a divided country is under lockdown with loyal soldiers on the streets instead of the mob. Late this evening that changes though. The people come out and gather together. They begin to march directly against Mielke and his centre of power. Brünner goes silent: Mielke is unable to contact him with the military intelligence chief suddenly abandoning him. The protesters in the city are in their tens of thousands, many of them armed too with weapons. Across East Germany, there are paramilitary units organised for use in wartime with industrial workers meant to form ‘Combat Groups of the Working Class’ and having weapons (securely) stored at their places of work. The guns are in the hands of the working class now and they are coming to bring down the regime.


Soldiers in East Berlin are from several organisations. There are East German Army paratroopers from the 40th Air Assault Regiment as well as the riflemen & tankers from the 1st Motorised Infantry Division. The Stasi’s own armed unit, the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guard Regiment (at full-strength, the size of a division despite the designation of a regiment), is also in East Berlin. Border guards with the Grenztruppen, including those manning the Berlin Wall, have nine full regiments of men available too. This is a large show of strength and one that has cowed any resistance before this Tuesday evening. Those people who come out onto the streets believe though that those in uniform will not fight. West German media broadcasts – which Mielke’s regime cannot stop people viewing – have told them that soldiers in Dresden, Rostock and Weimar have today not fired upon protesters. Moreover, Soviet forces in East Germany numbering half a million men are also reported to be staying in their barracks on Gorbachev’s orders due to the Soviet Union at odds with Mielke’s forceful assumption of power. The people are emboldened into action, they no longer have the fear of the organs of the state that Mielke has assembled against them. Mielke’s Chinese Solution where the military will crush protesters and even civil war on the streets of East Berlin looks imminent if those foreign media reports are wrong…

…which they aren’t.

Brünner has the PHV issue orders for the paratroopers and the Potsdam Division to stand down. The Grenztruppen’s chief has left East Berlin for Dresden but before he flies out of the capital in a helicopter to where anti-Mielke political forces are assembling, he too sends instructions for a stand down of the border guards which surround West Berlin yet also have that large pool of trained manpower. Three-quarters of the armed soldiers in East Berlin walk away from their established defensive positions and head back to barracks. The Felix Dzerzhinsky Regiment stands on its own. There are still ten thousand plus Stasi soldiers on East Berlin’s streets but they are outnumbered. The ranks of protesters on the city’s streets contain women and children alongside armed & unarmed men. No one wants to give the order to fire. The regimental commander is to whom the headquarters staff look to but he will not act without explicit permission from Mielke himself. There are communications problems with East Germany’s head and, at the crucial moment, the masses of people reach the centre of East Berlin. They keep on marching past the Stasi soldiers, threw their lines as if they are the sand trying to stop the incoming sea. Too late, Mielke sends word: ‘Kill the pigs!’. But the Felix Dzerzhinsky Regiment doesn’t, not with all of those people everywhere now fatally compromising their positions even more so than the abandonment of everyone else with them earlier did. The crowds of people move towards the Palast der Republik where the Volkskammer (parliament) sits, the Stasi’s headquarters and the State Council Building where Mielke is believed to be. The protesters invade these buildings, seeking to bring down the regime just as Mielke had dreamt of a few nights beforehand.

Mielke is gone. He has escaped from East Berlin, racing away from the city up to the residential complex north of East Berlin at Waldsiedlung where there is usually security and safety. It is somewhere that he has long lived in luxury with detachments of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guard Regiment not in East Berlin tonight supposed to be there guarding the complex. However, instead of his Stasi soldiers, Mielke finds East German Army men there. They are troops from another elite unit, this time the Hugo Eberlein Guard Regiment: orders for their deployment to Waldsiedlung have come from Brünner and they seek to detain Mielke. Shooting occurs between Mielke’s bodyguards and those soldiers. With his regime collapsing in spectacular fashion, Mielke makes a run for it with a few aides joining him diving into the woods tonight. An ultimate destination is not something planned yet there is a desire to escape from those soldiers.

Mielke doesn’t get far. The pursing soldiers and his bodyguards exchange fire and, in the confusion of battle, Mielke is shot dead. Those soldiers sent on the instructions of Brünner had orders to take him alive but The Master of Fear who fell victim to the fear his is infamous for creating, is no longer alive to see the justice envisioned for him. The German Democratic Republic will not survive much longer either. The Chinese Solution couldn’t save it and nor will post-Mielke efforts to try to salvage what is left.

Nice James G, only the ASB could have help East Germany survive longer than it did OTL>

[stevep]

Jun 12, 2020 16:00:34 GMT lordroel said:

Jun 12, 2020 15:56:36 GMT James G said:

The Chinese Solution

Erich Mielke, East Germany’s Minister for State Security – the head of the Stasi and whom the West German media gave the sobriquet ‘The Master of Fear’ –, has himself a terrible nightmare. In the early hours of October 8th 1989, he wakes up with a fright and drenched in sweat. The mob had been beating down the doors of the regime during his dream with nothing standing in their way to stop them. The German Democratic Republic was falling to the forces of reactionaries hell bent on making his country a lackey of the Americans with himself and other regime figures sure to be lynched. It was only a dream but it had been so real! Mielke doesn’t go back to sleep afterwards. He decides that it wasn’t just a nightmare but is a sign of what was sure to come. Events yesterday have pointed to his night-time imaginations becoming a reality. East Germany’s fortieth anniversary celebrations had been marred by members of the crowd calling upon the visiting head of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, who was in East Berlin with Mielke and the leadership, to come to their aid: ‘Gorby, help us’ had been the chant. The people are ready to rise up in revolt and only he can see how that was going to go if he doesn’t make a move to stop it. Recalling conversations during the day during the embarrassment, Mielke considers what Brünner and Krenz had both said. The former is the head of the East German military’s intelligence service (the PHV) while the latter serves as the regime’s deputy leader under Honecker. Brünner had told Mielke that especially loyal military units are ready to do what was needed come what may and wouldn’t be influenced by outside forces; Krenz has recently been in Beijing attending meetings with Deng to congratulate him on how the Chinese had found a ‘solution’ to their domestic protesters. Mielke begins to formulate a plan to forestall what he knows is coming.

The following day, Plan X goes into action. It has been something in the planning stages for a long time with the Stasi having prepared for the worst possible situation with East Germans in revolt and their counter to that ready. Mielke orders Plan X to go ahead before the streets are full of counter-revolutionaries but the end goal is the same: to crush opposition to the regime and secure the future of the German Democratic Republic. Nationwide arrests are made of identified ‘enemies of the state’ and the list is wide-ranging. This includes activists and troublemakers at the lowest level yet also goes all the way to the top with Mielke having the Stasi arrest fellow members of the regime including both Honecker and Krenz (Mielke distrusts the man Honecker has long been grooming to succeed him). Thousands of detainees begin to fill pre-selected holding sites. There is violence nationwide in response. It is at its worst in the city of Leipzig where a planned illegal demonstration later that day is something that the Stasi know about and those behind it are arrested. In scenes not witnessed since 1953, East German civilians oppose the authorities in number and come out onto the streets to try and stop Plan X. Mielke has the support of Brünner though and through him, orders are sent to military units to support the mass arrests and control the growing crowds where the police have failed to do this. Mielke is in East Berlin now at the helm of the ship of state. He has taken Honecker’s position as General Secretary with the Soviets and other allies finding out after the fact. Gorbachev, arriving back in Moscow with those chants from the East German people still fresh in his mind, is aghast at what Mielke has done. He will not support the Stasi chief’s actions in any way. The Brezhnev Doctrine is long dead when it comes to Soviet interference in the internal affairs of other nations.

Plan X is a pre-emptive strike but it’s implementation on October 9th brings about the uprising it is meant to prevent. Mielke’s rule is challenged by the mob. The PHV cannot keep the military under control. Certain units called out to maintain domestic order refuse to act with commanders securing their garrisons and cutting communications to the outside world. Stasi arrest teams are forced into retreat with deaths and injuries occurring when they try to go after people to be detained further down their lists. Day #2 of Mielke’s rule sees extensive violence in cities and towns nationwide. West German media broadcasts reporting on events for their own citizens are watched by East Germans who react to the images of violence in their own country by going out onto the streets to join that. Emergency orders are cut for the arrest and eviction of foreign media; the regime is responding to events now, no longer setting the agenda. Mielke is watching his country fall apart but he believes that it can still be saved. In East Berlin, there is calm here giving him that belief. This side of the divided city that sits at the heart of a divided country is under lockdown with loyal soldiers on the streets instead of the mob. Late this evening that changes though. The people come out and gather together. They begin to march directly against Mielke and his centre of power. Brünner goes silent: Mielke is unable to contact him with the military intelligence chief suddenly abandoning him. The protesters in the city are in their tens of thousands, many of them armed too with weapons. Across East Germany, there are paramilitary units organised for use in wartime with industrial workers meant to form ‘Combat Groups of the Working Class’ and having weapons (securely) stored at their places of work. The guns are in the hands of the working class now and they are coming to bring down the regime.


Soldiers in East Berlin are from several organisations. There are East German Army paratroopers from the 40th Air Assault Regiment as well as the riflemen & tankers from the 1st Motorised Infantry Division. The Stasi’s own armed unit, the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guard Regiment (at full-strength, the size of a division despite the designation of a regiment), is also in East Berlin. Border guards with the Grenztruppen, including those manning the Berlin Wall, have nine full regiments of men available too. This is a large show of strength and one that has cowed any resistance before this Tuesday evening. Those people who come out onto the streets believe though that those in uniform will not fight. West German media broadcasts – which Mielke’s regime cannot stop people viewing – have told them that soldiers in Dresden, Rostock and Weimar have today not fired upon protesters. Moreover, Soviet forces in East Germany numbering half a million men are also reported to be staying in their barracks on Gorbachev’s orders due to the Soviet Union at odds with Mielke’s forceful assumption of power. The people are emboldened into action, they no longer have the fear of the organs of the state that Mielke has assembled against them. Mielke’s Chinese Solution where the military will crush protesters and even civil war on the streets of East Berlin looks imminent if those foreign media reports are wrong…

…which they aren’t.

Brünner has the PHV issue orders for the paratroopers and the Potsdam Division to stand down. The Grenztruppen’s chief has left East Berlin for Dresden but before he flies out of the capital in a helicopter to where anti-Mielke political forces are assembling, he too sends instructions for a stand down of the border guards which surround West Berlin yet also have that large pool of trained manpower. Three-quarters of the armed soldiers in East Berlin walk away from their established defensive positions and head back to barracks. The Felix Dzerzhinsky Regiment stands on its own. There are still ten thousand plus Stasi soldiers on East Berlin’s streets but they are outnumbered. The ranks of protesters on the city’s streets contain women and children alongside armed & unarmed men. No one wants to give the order to fire. The regimental commander is to whom the headquarters staff look to but he will not act without explicit permission from Mielke himself. There are communications problems with East Germany’s head and, at the crucial moment, the masses of people reach the centre of East Berlin. They keep on marching past the Stasi soldiers, threw their lines as if they are the sand trying to stop the incoming sea. Too late, Mielke sends word: ‘Kill the pigs!’. But the Felix Dzerzhinsky Regiment doesn’t, not with all of those people everywhere now fatally compromising their positions even more so than the abandonment of everyone else with them earlier did. The crowds of people move towards the Palast der Republik where the Volkskammer (parliament) sits, the Stasi’s headquarters and the State Council Building where Mielke is believed to be. The protesters invade these buildings, seeking to bring down the regime just as Mielke had dreamt of a few nights beforehand.

Mielke is gone. He has escaped from East Berlin, racing away from the city up to the residential complex north of East Berlin at Waldsiedlung where there is usually security and safety. It is somewhere that he has long lived in luxury with detachments of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guard Regiment not in East Berlin tonight supposed to be there guarding the complex. However, instead of his Stasi soldiers, Mielke finds East German Army men there. They are troops from another elite unit, this time the Hugo Eberlein Guard Regiment: orders for their deployment to Waldsiedlung have come from Brünner and they seek to detain Mielke. Shooting occurs between Mielke’s bodyguards and those soldiers. With his regime collapsing in spectacular fashion, Mielke makes a run for it with a few aides joining him diving into the woods tonight. An ultimate destination is not something planned yet there is a desire to escape from those soldiers.

Mielke doesn’t get far. The pursing soldiers and his bodyguards exchange fire and, in the confusion of battle, Mielke is shot dead. Those soldiers sent on the instructions of Brünner had orders to take him alive but The Master of Fear who fell victim to the fear his is infamous for creating, is no longer alive to see the justice envisioned for him. The German Democratic Republic will not survive much longer either. The Chinese Solution couldn’t save it and nor will post-Mielke efforts to try to salvage what is left.

Nice James G , only the ASB could have help East Germany survive longer than it did OTL>

  Agree.  Without Soviet support the regime was dead in the water.

  When I 1st read the title I was thinking it referred to the one nation, two systems method that Beijing is now junking.  Which I thought would be totally impractical so was puzzle.  But then China had just massacred its protesters so this makes a lot more sense.  Just good it went down without many innocents dying.

[James G]

Snowfall

The first shots exchanged were those in the Persian Gulf in mid-1988 between American and Soviet deployed forces with each blaming the other. Soon enough, there were more deadly clashes in the Indian Ocean and then the Med. too. Global war rapidly became increasingly likely as tensions rose to an extraordinary high with more shooting despite many efforts to have the world’s superpowers take a step back.

Operation REFORGER began on December 19th; the West was unaware that Soviet mobilisation had started two days previously in secret. The day after the Americans began to transfer forces to Europe (alongside partial NATO mobilisation), on the snowy morning of December 20th, an attack was made westwards across the Inner-German Border. There was fighting on the frontlines and deep in the rear as the middle of the long-divided Germany, like many other places in the world, was the scene of full-scale warfare. In the Fulda Gap, the Hessian countryside between the border with East Germany and Frankfurt & the Rhine, American and Soviet forces clashed at the very start of the war. The Soviet Army’s 119th Independent Tank Regiment came over the frontier out ahead of a much stronger following force to engage the US Army’s 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the famous Blackhorse Cav’.

Each side had close air support.


Captain Tony Ramirez, call-sign ‘El Jefe’, brings his A-10A Thunderbolt attack-fighter into the Fulda Gap fight just over an hour after it begins. The morning is only just now starting to get light – Soviet forces had started moving in the darkness – and low clouds are dropping snow aplenty. It is nearly white everywhere below him though he can see fires raging in many places leading to columns rising of black smoke to break that up. The flight for El Jefe and his wingman – Rusty; another pilot with the 511th Tactical Fighter Squadron – takes them southwards over the battlefield below where they literally skim the treetops of the German forests underneath them. The A-10s (affectionately known as Warthogs, or just the plain ‘Hog) isn’t a high-performance jet fighter and so El Jefe is able to fly slow and low while keeping control. Painted white in winter-camouflage before leaving their base in England to come over to West Germany, the A-10 he’s flying should be difficult to see by those on the ground… he hopes so anyway!

The voice of Beaver One-Niner comes over the radio. El Jefe is in contact not with the Blackhorse Cav’ on the ground below but another ‘Hog pilot – flying an OA-10A variant; not much difference to the standard model but with extra communications and outfitted for the forward air control role – who is nearby directing El Jefe and Rusty towards the enemy. Beaver One-Niner is orbiting closer to the frontlines, dodging enemy anti-air efforts, and talking to those directly engaged in the fight. The Blackhorse Cav’ are calling for the air support promised and it is now sent where they want it. Guidance and targeting is provided to El Jefe and, as flight leader, he takes himself and Rusty towards it. They turn left, above down a valley through which there are flashes of gunfire on the ground and then over a small river. The enemy is right ahead.

El Jefe and his A-10 are taken under fire on the approach. He comes towards the Soviet tanks below him from their flank but their air defence gunners are on alert. 23mm shells from a mobile multi-barrelled gun fill the sky and El Jefe does his best to try to avoid them while lining-up that platform for his gun. Beaver One-Niner has warned of the anti-air threat from ZSU-23-4 guns but said that those on the ground are trying to silence them. They’ve failed and it is now up to El Jefe to take it out. He launches a Maverick at it, a short-range anti-armour missile. Beaver One-Niner is firing smoke rockets to mark the targets for El Jefe and Rusty to go after but that Maverick slams home first. There is an immense explosion with El Jefe certain that is stored ammunition in that tracked anti-air vehicle going up. Around the now-destroyed gun, there are tanks: lots of them.

Heavyweight T-64BV tanks fill the gun-sight. El Jefe sees more than a dozen of them, just where Beaver One-Niner said they are. Artillery supporting the Blackhorse Cav’ is firing anti-tank mines in dispersal patterns to join ones laid by engineers in the past couple of days and the tanks down there are held up while caught in an unexpected minefield. They are sitting ducks. A huge cannon sits beneath El Jefe in the belly of his aircraft. He has another Maverick on his wing and also rockets too, but the GAU-8 Avenger rotary cannon is what he puts to use against those Soviet tanks. Uranium-tipped shells explode out from the Avenger’s barrel tip. El Jefe directs them into half a dozen T-64s before he is above the trees on the other side of the open ground from where the Soviet tanks are out in the open. Rusty brakes left to loop around while El Jefe goes to the right. Soon together again, back into action El Jefe leads his wingman less than a minute later as they come in from a different direction. Hydra-70 rockets fly away first from when the ‘Hogs are over the trees before the cannons are used once more. El Jefe fires on tanks not hit before and flies through the smoke rising from those struck on the first pass. A missile coming upwards, probably a man-portable SAM, shoots into the sky but comes nowhere near the two American aircraft. Into the clouds and away El Jefe goes, his aircraft unscathed by enemy action.

On the way back to the squadron’s temporary wartime base at Norvenich Airbase over in the Rhineland, El Jefe notes how much ammunition he’s used. Apart from the lone missile, he’s fired more than seventy rockets towards those tanks as well as nearly six hundred shells. His A-10 flies faster due to being lighter and he makes good time in getting himself and Rusty back to Norvenich. The airbase is full of more smoke than there was over that battlefield in the Fulda Gap but El Jefe is able to put his aircraft down: Soviet Scud missile strikes haven’t knocked this place out of action for ‘Hog operations despite their clear best attempts. Re-fuelled and re-armed his aircraft soon is, from ground crews working in full NBC gear, before he and Rusty are ready to go back out again. El Jefe will return to tank-hunting in the Fulda Gap.


Home-based in the Eastern Ukraine, the 452nd Separate Assault Aviation Regiment is a Fourteenth Air Army combat unit flying Sukhoi-25 attack-fighters: what NATO calls the Frogfoot. Senior Lieutenant Ivan Nikolayevich Pavlov has never heard that name used for the Su-25. To Soviet Air Force personnel like him, it is the Grach (English: Rook). The Grach is a turbojet attack-fighter rolled for close air support tasks and Ivan’s regiment has brought them to East Germany starting the day before yesterday. There is a forward air-strip in the Thuringenwald where part of the 452nd Regiment is flying from, a location unmolested by enemy action so far in the first few hours of the war. Ivan is now on his second flight of the morning. He and his wingman Yuri take their Grach aircraft over the border into West Germany flying down a safe travel lane through which no one below is supposed to fire upon them. Shot at ineffectively by his own side before dawn on the first flight, that unpleasant experience isn’t repeated this time around. Enemy fighters are what Ivan fears rather than anyone on the ground, friendly or NATO. The Americans and West Germans have theirs up and they are getting through the supposed invincible air defence network established by Soviet SAMs and interceptors. Ivan has his eyes open for F-4s and F-16s as he flies towards the fight raging in the Fulda Gap.

The mission is ground attack against American armour though. Ivan and Yuri are under orders to target what tanks and armoured vehicles they can find on the ground with the Soviet Army unit on West German soil having ground controllers close to the ever-moving frontlines. Direction towards where the Americans are reported to be brings the camouflaged aircraft they fly towards a hillside with green smoke erupting from several points. Ivan can see that but not the enemy. That is where they are supposed to be though… if the marking mortar rounds are on target. Tracers light up the sky yet Ivan flies his Grach through them – it is an armoured aircraft after all – and lines-up his main weapon. His Grach has a GSh-30-2 twin-barrelled autocannon and Ivan squeezes the trigger on his control stick. 30mm shells race towards the Americans who are supposed to be there and hidden yet whom Ivan doesn’t see.

Yuri, the flight leader, takes them away to the north and above a valley. Ivan is tucked in behind his wingman with each of them just above the trees and flying through the falling snow. There is another targeted group of the enemy up ahead with Yuri calling for them to use their rockets this time: the S-8s from the wing-mounted pods. Gunfire from below is directed upwards on the way in with Ivan feeling his Grach rocked by the impact of several rounds. Nothing fatal is done as far as he could tell, though he’s certainly been hit . Who it was who fired at him, from where too, Ivan doesn’t know either. He worries that, once more, his own side has mistaken him for the enemy and chosen to engage him where he is here to aid them. Yuri calls out when the enemy is in sight, bringing Ivan’s concentration back. The Americans are ahead with their M-3 Bradley armoured scout vehicles!

Ivan sees the enemy this time. The box-like tracked vehicles with short-barrelled cannons are racing into some trees. They are camouflaged themselves but their shape and movement gives them away. His rockets are ready and, on command from Yuri, who is constantly in contact with the ground controllers while flying dangerously low like this, Ivan fires half his war-load of the S-80s. They shoot away with the projectiles exploding moments later. Ivan sees what he is sure are multiple hits upon those vehicles though he realises too that others have gotten into the cover of the trees in time. There is no second pass with his Grach making another attack here because Yuri is receiving new instructions. They are going back after tanks again.

There are more rockets, a pair of short-range anti-armour missiles and a third of his ammunition for the GSh-30-2 left. Ivan still has plentiful weapons to take on the enemy yet it is to be a third attack within a short space of time, over a small area, and he doesn’t like it, not one bit. The Americans are alert. There is more gunfire coming up, this time missing him, and he also thinks he sees a missile blazing away skywards too. Yuri takes them back into the fight though, flying the two of them around a hill and over the trees towards the slopes of another hillside where the Americans are supposed to be. Contact with the enemy doesn’t come though. Yuri screams ‘enemy fighters’ into the radio before there is silence from him. An explosion in the sky above Ivan shakes his aircraft as he turns away to the left. His wingman is gone. A Hero of the Soviet Union, Yuri will be, but a dead one. Ivan can’t see who’d killed his comrade and has to concentrate on survival at the moment rather than shooting at those below. His radar warning receiver wails as sometime lines him up for a shot but Ivan quickly breaks the attempt to get a radar lock on him. He goes low, lower than he would ever usually dare, and increases speed while racing between two hills. Up above him, somewhere in those clouds still dropping snow all over the German countryside below, whoever has killed Yuri still is but they aren’t going to get him. West and then north, Ivan flies before finally turning back east for home. His Grach is carrying battle damage from the earlier enemy action and he’s lost his wingman. A return back to base is called for. He’d be back though.

[forcon]

This piece is fanfiction; it is set as a sequel to C.K. Walker's excellent story 'Borrasca' on Reddit's NoSleep Forum. 

"Prosecutor's seek death penalty in Missouri trafficking ring case" 

Federal prosecutors assigned to the case of the ‘Borrasca’ trafficking ring, which was exposed last month in rural Missouri, have announced that they are seeking the death penalty for Mr. James Prescott, the leader of the trafficking operation. The trafficking ring, which operated for over four decades, reportedly kidnapped young women and girls from across the Midwestern United States, raped them until they were pregnant, and then sold the babies on the black market to ensure that the ailing former mining town of Drisking, Missouri, maintained a functioning economy. In addition, the trafficking ring allegedly sold dozens of babies to couples living in Drisking, a town which has suffered from long-lasting infertility caused by iron ore leaking into the water supply. On the orders of Mr. Prescott, the kidnapped girls and women were murdered after they became too old to bear children, or became sick and thus became a burden to the criminal enterprise. The operation had apparently been in effect since the 1970s, after the population of Drisking became infertile due to the leaking of iron ore into its water supply. Thomas Prescott, father of Mister Prescott, along with former County Sheriff Killian Cleary, were responsible for the creation of the criminal enterprise and its prominent role in Disking’s economy. The trafficking ring was exposed last month in a daring operation by a pair of vigilantes who were reportedly at one time victims of the criminal organisation. Drisking County Sheriff Walker was shot dead in self-defence during the effort. Following the trafficking ring’s exposure, the FBI and the Missouri State Police launched a massive investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Derek Graves, the chief prosecutor assigned to the case, told the New York Times “This is the most heinous criminal enterprise that has ever existed in the United States. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women have been victims of kidnapping, rape, and murder over the course of two generations.” It is reported that Mr. Prescott, along with one of his close sidekicks, former Chief Deputy Sheriff Edward Ramirez, have been charged with 167 counts of first degree murder as well as almost three hundred counts of kidnapping and rape, and twenty-two separate violations of the Racketeering Influence & Corrupt Organisations Act.

Indictments have also been brought against fifty-three other defendants, although Mr. Graves has stated that he is not seeking the death penalty for anyone other than Mr. Prescott and Mr. Ramirez for their roles in the murders of the women who had outgrown their usefulness to the organisation. It is speculated that this is because a former officer of the Drisking County Sheriff’s Department, Mr. Kevin Myles, accepted a plea bargain in order to avoid capital punishment, informing investigators of the Sheriff’s Department’s role in the trafficking ring. The other defendants named in the indictment each face dozens of charges including kidnapping, rape, and RICO violations, and could face prison terms of up to three hundred years. The Missouri District Attorney’s Office is also seeking indictments of fifty-seven individuals involved in the trafficking ring, most of whom are already in federal custody. The FBI arrested Mr. Prescott as he attempted to flee Missouri. After the trafficking ring was exposed through records held secretly within the intranet system of Drisking High School, Mr. Prescott reportedly surrendered when his car was surrounded by armed agents on the Arkansas border. Shortly thereafter, the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team raided the offices of the Drisking Sheriff’s Department. During the raid, one officer was shot dead after apparently drawing his gun, while twenty-nine others were arrested. Amongst the other defendants are Doctor Lewis Johnson, who allegedly delivered the babies that were later sold, former State Senators Richard Connery and Thomas Winters, and current State Senator Harry Barnes, along with numerous prominent local figures in Drisking and the surrounding area. Speculation has also been raised that last week’s FBI raid against a travel company located in Chicago is a part of the investigation, with a source who did not wish to be named claiming that the company was being used by the trafficking ring to launder money raised from the sale of babies.