[chico20854]

May 9, 1998

Nothing official for the day. Unofficially,

In the first of several "dirty tricks" inflicted on President Munson, power is cut to his personal quarters by an unexplained electrical fault.

The Nebraska corn and alfalfa crops begin to be planted, using carefully husbanded seed and fuel. Grae adds that there is not enough hybrid seed, and much of it never gets out of the seed warehouses. In many areas fuel is too scarce for use to cultivate and herbicide and pesticide chemicals are used sparingly as farmers realize there probably will not be more forthcoming; in the end there is not enough commercial fertilizer for all the new crop. What fertilizer and herbicide there is is allocated to the highest yielding fields and crops. In the western part of the state irrigation has ceased with the cutoff of electrical power, leaving much of the land to revert to rangeland. Likewise, irrigation-supported agriculture collapses in much of California and the desert southwest, except in areas that have transitioned to specialized (or long-forgotten) dry agricultural techniques. All around the nation, the spring planting is nearly entirely dedicated to food, with less than 5 percent of the 1997 acreage of cotton planted.

Fulfilling the Soviet command's decree that the offensive be launched on the anniversary of Germany’s surrender in the Second World War, Soviet troops of the 16th and 41st Armies launch a coordinated attack northwest of Munich, preceded by a brief but intense barrage that mixes smoke and chemical artillery shells, effectively neutralizing the thinly spread line of outposts in front of the main defensive line. In most cases the defenders are not able to raise the alarm, as the chemicals overcome them when their expired gas mask filters and chemical defense suits fail. Soviet motor-riflemen have infiltrated between and even behind the well dispersed defensive positions, isolating them from reinforcement. The Soviet offensive is intended to seize the remaining industrial sites and power stations of central Germany.

The American cruiser USS Virginia continues to steam southwest at flank speed, closing on the location of the Soviet fishing flotilla in the South Atlantic. Ashore, the South African Air Force readies its Canberra and Buccaneer strike fleets for an attack on the Soviets, while liaison officers coordinate for an overflight by American B-52 bombers from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, who are going to conduct a separate strike on the Soviets.

North of Moscow CIA Agent David Hudson stumbles on a remote dacha (country house) occupied by a minor party official from Moscow and his family, who had fled to the retreat to avoid the (easily foreseen) destruction of Moscow. Desperate for a quicker way out of the Soviet Union, he takes the official's wife hostage at gunpoint when she is outside tending the garden and forces the family to stock the family car, a Lada sedan, with food, blankets and all the fuel (both gasoline and homemade vodka) it can hold. He then races off to the west.

The Norwegian sail training ship Statsraad Lehmkuh departs Montevideo, Uruguay with a cargo of food for its home city aboard.