April 5, 1998
Aboard the Soviet missile submarine Barrikada southeast of Svalbard, the surviving mutineers attempt to bring the boat's reactors back online. The sub has been operating on battery power since the reactor chief shut down the reactors at the outbreak of the mutiny.
Unofficially, Unfortunately, the mutineers' complement only include two reactor technicians, both junior sailors who regard the reactors almost as if they are demons barely contained by technology just short of magic. They (and the sole remaining, badly wounded and barely conscious junior reactor officer) struggle to safely get the demon to work.
The B-52G bomber of the 2nd Bomb Wing's 62nd Bomb Squadron, which took off yesterday from RAF Fairford in the UK and bombed Pact artillery sites in western Poland, lands at its dispersal site in the continental US, Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi following a long-distance repositioning flight that involved three high-priority aerial refueling missions.
The Eagle Brigade is formed from the various US military security units located in the United Kingdom. Most of the unit's troops are from Air Force security squadrons from the various RAF installations that hosted American aircraft as well as the Ground Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM) wings at RAF Greenham Common and RAF Molesworth. The unit also absorbs the Marine Corps' FAST Company Europe, with its 400 elite urban warfare experts, as well as miscellaneous embassy guards, liaison officers attached to British units and personnel in transit through or recovering from wounds in the UK. The unit's priority is to concentrate the remaining stockpile of US nuclear weapons in the UK into two locations - RAF Sculthorpe and aboard the USS Eisenhower in Portsmouth and protect them in the chaos that is post-nuclear Britain.
In northeastern Poland, Captain Krzysztof Czarny, a decorated veteran of the siege of Warsaw who has been recovering from his wounds in his hometown of Polutsk, takes command of the city's nascent militia as the town faces increasing numbers of armed deserters and stragglers passing through, robbing and killing.
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I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end...
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