Winter Kill - War With China Has Already Begun by Gene Skellig

Author:Gene Skellig [Skellig, Gene]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Flea Circus Books
Published: 2011-05-08T04:30:00+00:00

19

KUGLUKTUK

20 May: Day of NEW

It was not until the early morning of 20 May that the weather finally broke. Ken had expected to see an improving trend in the 1800Z forecast, based on the outlook that he had read before going to bed the night before. By the time Ken’s copilot showed up in the small restaurant in the ramshackle hotel they had been confined to for nearly a week, Captain Ken Thompson had already filed the flight plan and printed off the weather for their flight to Resolute Bay.

“How’s it look, Skipper?” Kevin asked the pilot in command of “Vampire Five”, a small Canadian military transport aircraft, a military variant of the ubiquitous DHC-6 Twin Otter.

“Weather looks good. Strong southwesterly winds. We should be able to make it to Resolute tonight.”

“Too bad your computer’s fried, so Combat Quest is not an option. What are we going to do there tonight? The place sucks!”

“Maybe Ozzie will lend us one of his laptops. I've still got the disk. If worse comes to worst, I’ll have to work on your Performance Evaluation.”

“Very funny, Boss. Hey, did you hear about what happened in Russia two weeks ago?” Ken simply shook his head. “Those stupid Russians, they can’t organize a piss-up in a whorehouse! They put their strategic nuclear forces on high alert, as part of some cluster-fuck of an exercise.”

“What was screwed up about it?” Ken asked.

“Turns out there wasn't supposed to be an exercise, but some computer error ordered 57 batteries of Topol-M’s onto high alert status. Those are those new SS27 ‘Sicle-B’s’ with 550 Kiloton warheads, with up to 6 MIRVs and 2 or 3 dummies apiece,” Kevin explained, demonstrating that he had completed another block of the Air Force Officer Development Program.

“Anyhow, there was some confusion as you would expect with the Russians. The BBC reported that there was no order from Moscow. Apparently there’s some problem with command and control in the Russian Federation. They’re not supposed to increase their readiness postures without a confirmed order from Moscow. So then the Russians went through a series of computer exercises last week. They rotated each mobile battery, all the ground-based silos, and all 14 of the at-sea SSBNs through launch preparation drills. NATO sent some observers because of concerns about the readiness of perhaps 6,000 warheads being exercised in such a compressed timeframe without the normal degree of bilateral coordination. Both Russia and the US are saying that there is no increase in tension, but the BBC is reporting that the Europeans are concerned. Everybody's getting nervous because of what happened in Pakistan and Israel.” Kevin explained this, as though Ken had not been following the ongoing crises closely himself.

“Yeah, that sounds about right. It’s about what Casey Callaghan has been saying,” started Ken.

“That freak?” Kevin jumped in. “I’ve heard about that guy. I heard he went crazy, saying there’s going to be a war!” Kevin laughed. “I heard from some guys in Winnipeg that he quit the military and moved his family to BC, just two years away from a full pension! What a fool.

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