need to talk to the men.”
“Yes, sir!” Sergeant. Percy saluted and rode back down the small column.
“Duty Sergeant!” Riordan bellowed.
A large man swung down out of the first truck. His face bore scars and a nose broken many times over. “Yes, Major Riordan?” he said and saluted the smaller man.
“I want two pickets forward about two hundred yards. They are not to fire at anything until ordered.”
“Yes, sir.”
Captain Flars dropped out of the lead APC. He saluted in the French manner and narrowed his eyes. “What have we, Major Riordan? Perhaps an engagement?”
“Pass the word for assembly, Ren. We’re going to play nice and be friendly, until we see the lay of the land. At least until I whistle.”
“We are going to engage the Russian Army?”
“Now, Ren , don’t go all Gallic on me. We’re not going to do anything stupid, okay?”
“
68
Wing picked at her food and wondered what had happened to Grisha. For a week the Southern Army had heard nothing of its commander. Malagni stiffened the patrols, drilled the troops mercilessly, and stepped up training for the new recruits.
If asked, she wouldn’t have been able to explain the feeling in her gut, or the nervous twitch that ruled her left eyebrow. She felt a wrongness that magnified in proportion to the length of his absence.
In addition, two days ago Malagni went to Tanana to confer with the War Council and left her in charge. She shook her head and eased down on her cot. Maybe a nap would help.
Quick steps paused at her door long enough for someone to rap once before pushing it open. Sergeant Major Tobias poked his head in, eyes on the floor.
“Colonel Demoski, things are heating up.”
“Come in, Sergeant Major,” she said, sitting up. “What’s the situation?”
He closed the door and stood with his back to it.
“What are the Russians doing?” she asked in a hushed voice.
“There’s heavy fighting at Bridge and our scouts report a mechanized force moving toward us from St. Anthony.”
“How large a force?” Here was the genesis of her anxiety, why her thusfar infallible intuition nagged at her. She pulled on her boots and grabbed her jacket—April could be capricious.
“Big, at least twenty tanks and twice that many troop carriers, last I heard.”
“Sound the alarm. I want everybody into their bunkers. I’m amazed we haven’t been hit by aircraft already.”
“They’re afraid of our antiaircraft batteries,” Tobias said with a quick grin. “I’ll sound the alarm. By the way, we’ve intercepted radio transmissions from the south. The Canadians are building up their troops on the California border and we think they have launched a major offensive through the First People’s Nation into Minnesota in the United States.”
“They must be madmen. Anything about California?”
“Yes, ma’am. They have broken off diplomatic relations with Russia and said if the Czar’s forces attack the Dena, they’ll declare war.”
“Let’s hope they aren’t just posturing.” She followed Tobias into the situation room. “I want an officers’ meeting in five minutes. Radio Colonel Malagni of our actions.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
From the roof a klaxon broke the arboreal silence.
She paused at the radio room. Two women and a man sat at consoles with earphones clamped on their heads. All three scribbled madly on pads of paper. As they tore off the information-covered sheets a corporal collected them and hurried into the next room where a knot of people huddled around a map table.
Wing followed the corporal, a second cousin from downriver, and asked the room at large, “So what’re they doing out there?”
A large man Wing didn’t recognize straightened to attention.
“We were just going to send for you, colonel. I’m Captain Lauesen, U.S. Army Intelligence. I’ve been seconded to your command and am honored to be here. I also brought two enlisted men who should arrive momentarily.”
“Welcome, Captain, we need all the help we can get. What do we know?”
“All hell’s breaking loose here in Alaska, as well as the rest of North America.”
“Give me our situation first, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He cleared his throat and his face remained free of emotion. “Thirty Russian tanks are advancing from St. Nicholas at roughly forty-five kilometers per hour. Behind them are troop carriers, forty-five at the very least. Reports are still coming in from our scouts.”
“How far out are they?”
“There are some lead elements, three scout cars and a few motorcycles, ten klicks ahead of the rest who are approximately three hundred and fifty kilometers away. It will take them at least thirty hours to get here.
“Much closer to home we have a three part battle group moving up from Tetlin Redoubt, some of their armor was already in St. Anthony, twenty tanks and forty trucks, which will hit us first, probably in less than two hours.”
“They must not be too worried about mines and ambushes,” Wing said.
“They have an advance force of rangers who are moving very fast. Our people have picked off about ten of them and we’ve lost five effectives.”
“Two to one, not good enough,” she said.
“To beat the numbers they’re sending against us, we need to make it eight to one,” he said with a nod.
“What else?” A sudden numbness crept over her and she had to concentrate to make sense of his words.
“Our 77th Airborne parachuted into St. Michael and, in concert with your Northern Defense Force, are engaging the enemy at Bridge. Mobile antiaircraft batteries are en route as we speak. There’s so much happening down south that the only way to follow it is chronologically.”
He glanced down at the paper in his hand and pointed a long stick at the maps. “British Canadian armor has struck across the corner of the First People’s Nation, here”—he tapped the map—“and into the U.S., here. The town of Bemidji, Minnesota”—another tap—“is under siege. A second front at Detroit Lakes has bogged down and the town is under heavy artillery attack.”
“Where are you from in the United States, Major?”
“Iowa, ma’am, out west in ‘Confederacy Corner.’” His grin held no humor. “We’re east of the First People’s Nation and north of the Confederate States. We haven’t had trouble with the F.P.N. since we gave ’em back Kansas and signed the big treaty back in 1877. If anything they would be allies, but so far they’re just sittin’ quiet.”
More of her officers hurried into the room and stopped to listen.
“Will the United States lose to Canada?”
“Not likely. Our borders have been beefed up for decades, waiting for this.”
“What else is happening down there?”
“Well, the Confederates are trying for a second win at Harrisburg, but our boys are holding without too much trouble since we aren’t using muskets this time.”
“It seems that fighting a two-front war is the fashion these days,” Wing said.
A few in the room laughed-brittle, edgy barks lacking humor and evading release.
“Can anything down there change our situation one way or another?”
