[chico20854]

April 7, 1998

The mutineers aboard the Soviet boomer Barrikada are forced to surface the boat through the ice, as the batteries have been exhausted and the fresh air has run out. The sailors, most of whom have been below decks since the 48,000-ton ship left harbor outside Murmansk in July, rush out on deck to get fresh air and a sight of the sky, clouded as it is.

Unofficially,

Following an unexplained accident at Camp Edwards on Cape Cod and the very substantial loss of facilities and equipment, the 301st Port Security Unit moves its base of operations to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

RainbowSix reports that 44-year old Brigadier Richard Woodley, a Regular Army officer of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, who was assigned to the Regional Government Headquarters at Swynnerton a few miles outside Stoke in Staffordshire, finds himself the senior officer in the region. He claims authority over the whole area on behalf of His Majesty's Government. He is supported by a small group of soldiers and civilians, most notably a man named Ian Price, a former Civil Servant who held the position of Director of Communications at the RGHQ.

Despite the bomb damage inflicted by a B-52 strike earlier in the week, Pact artillery units along the length of the Polish-German border launch a coordinated series of artillery strikes on NATO defensive positions on the western bank of the Oder River. While intended to inflict damage, the attacks are also used to provoke NATO counterbattery fire, revealing the extent of surviving NATO artillery force, their ammunition availability and the speed of its response. Soviet officers are dismayed to discover that the Americans and their German allies have spent the winter months carefully emplacing counterbattery radars and planning counterfire strikes. Within minutes, eight Soviet and Polish artillery batteries that revealed their positions by opening fire are recipients of nuclear-tipped ATCAMS missiles fired by American MLRS batteries behind the lines.