[chico20854]

April 27, 1998

Nothing official for today. Unofficially,

After two days of talks, the representative of the Wisconsin state government and the chief of the Ho-Chunk Nation, Henry Red Cloud, agree to release the two captured state troopers (less their weapons and equipment) and the bodies of the three killed in exchange for recognition of the tribe's sovereignty and an agreement to not interfere in the tribe's territory.

In Alaska, the scouts from the 2nd Infantry Brigade (Arctic Recon) are in place near the lone road supplying the 110th Guards Motor-Rifle Division but the weather is too bad for the bush planes available to X Corps to locate the drop zones. (The requisitioned civilian aircraft are largely reliant on visual navigation, lacking military navigational equipment).

The 81st Tactical Fighter Wing, an A-10 Warthog unit that fought throughout the 1996 and 1997 campaigns in Central Europe, launches its first sorties in many months from its new station of Neubrandenburg, (former East) Germany. The wing (down to eight operable aircraft) launches two aircraft to attack suspected Polish Army artillery positions identified by US Marines southeast of Szczecin.

The USS Virginia, operating independently in the South Atlantic, encounters the Soviet trawler "Star of Crimea" fishing some 375 miles southwest of Capetown, South Africa. A short chase results in the capture of the Soviet craft (the crew being wise enough not to scuttle the ship, knowing how slim their chances of survival in this remote patch of ocean are). The crew are taken prisoner, the trawler's catch of frozen fish transferred to the cruiser's depleted freezers and the ship's officers interrogated, its logs examined, communications gear seized and ship's conditions examined by US navy engineers. The logs are encoded and the trawler's crypto gear was destroyed before the boarding party arrived, but the crew confirms that there is a largely idle fishing flotilla extant in the southern Atlantic, providing support to Soviet Navy raiders and submarines. The engineering crew notes that the trawler has been burning fish oil and that two of its fish meal tanks are carrying oil instead; they speculate that the fishing fleet is relying on the catch to provide oil to keep the ships operating. The Virginia takes the fish oil aboard to run its emergency generators if needed, then the boarding party opens the seacocks and sends the trawler to the bottom.

David Hudson, a CIA agent who has been operating undercover in the outskirts of Moscow (reporting on scientific developments in the many research institutes and high-tech production centers) since he was infiltrated in during 1996, requests permission to evacuate. He reports to his supervisor (operating from Camp Peary, Virginia) that he has been evacuated to a collective farm northeast of Moscow and that following the nuclear attacks on Moscow he has been unable to re-establish contact with any sources and he doubts that the research institutes are operating. His handler agrees that the information Hudson can gather is unlikely to be of sufficient value to justify his continued presence and authorizes him to evacuate to friendly territory as he best sees fit.

In Australia, the Ned Kelly gang launches another raid, this one on a remote farm near the town of Goombargana in southern New South Wales. They make off with several cattle, a generator and two farm trucks loaded with feed and fuel. The station manager calls for help from the Main Force Patrol, but the police force is currently engaged in an extended struggle to capture a motorcycle gang leader known as "The Night Rider".