Chapter One

Jarmen Kell looked through night-vision goggles from his perch on a boulder at the end of a shelf towards Lake Geneva for the inbound flight. Only half his mind was on this, however, as looking for incoming aircraft had become second nature to him over the past decade. The other half was thinking about the events that had led up to the meeting that was about to happen.

He and his comrades, he had decided long ago, had been fools. The imams had promised that the Global Liberation Army would shatter the decadent Americans and arrogant Chinese, bring the Caliphate back into being and unify all Islam, and then go forth into the House of War and bring it into the House of Peace. And so young men had flocked to training camps from Morocco to Sichuan, ready to liberate their people from Western and Chinese oppression.

Even he, hard-headed mercenary that he was, had joined the GLA's cause, for he had owed the Americans and Chinese a debt—the Americans, his parents, killed in an airstrike in Pashtia, and the Chinese, his bride, gunned down in Urumqi during the disturbances there. He had gone to the leadership and offered his services at half his usual rates, for the duration of the war, and the leaders accepted, knowing his reputation.

He had smiled when he heard of the destruction in Beijing, and though the Chinese response there had been swift, it had not significantly damaged the GLA. But then the leaders had grown arrogant, and moved openly into Hong Kong, only to be shattered by an up-and-coming Chinese commander who they had no intelligence on, thinking him not of high enough rank. That same commander, a General Wu Tsien, had shattered GLA forces at the Battle of the Three Gorges, at the Tanggula anthrax factory, and at Balykychy. He had then capped it all of by shattering their supply lines at Bishkek and destroying the GLA headquarters at Dushband in a battle that had put him in the hospital for months.

That was the result of his first encounter with the Chinese mistress of electronic warfare, Black Lotus. He, at least, could say that he had actually shot her, unlike anyone else, though unfortunately it had not been fatal and he had come within a hair of being roasted when a MiG had dropped its payload on his former position. As it was they had had to evacuate him, as he was covered in first- and second-degree burns.

The new battle commander, Alp Arslan, had been far wiser than his predecessor. He had operated as a guerrilla should operate, and dealt the Chinese stunning reverses at the Symkent DMZ and Astana before turning and smashing the United Nations peacekeeping efforts in the Almaty region, after which Arslan had been sent to bring down the Americans' airbase at Incirlik. Kell had finally recovered from his wounds by then, and was sent to assist the assault, which succeeded beyond all expectations. The seizure of the bioweapons facility at the Aral Sea had been one of the best days of his life, as he had then understood the plan to bring the United States to its knees. There had been a brief stopover to deal with a group of traitors near Lenger, and then they had seized the Baikonur Cosmodrome from the Americans and Chinese and fired the missile. What a glorious day that had been, until they found out that the missile had not succeeded.

Then things began to go wrong. Baghdad had fallen after only three days of fighting, and the last-ditch effort to stop the American advance by firing a SCUD Storm at it had failed catastrophically. It was there he had begun to wonder, as the sum total of the casualties caused by that attack had been several hundred civilians. The American commander at Baghdad, a General George Thomas, had then masterfully extracted three elite American pilots captured in Yemen, and then had pulled out American forces that had been trying to fall back from Baikonur. Then the American general had been sent on the offensive, and he took the training camps by the Aral Sea in an amphibious attack that had startled even the GLA's intelligence services. Kell had not been there, nor was he there for the utter debacle at Kabara, as he was setting up contacts with a Chinese general who wanted to be a warlord. When the Americans struck at that general, he was there, and had faced off against Colonel Burton, a man with a reputation equal to his. The two of them had dueled through the city that lay between the two armies, and between them had blown half of it down before Burton had finally gotten a good shot in and nearly crippled him. This was fortunate, as it not only meant that he missed Akmola, but he was given time to think.

The GLA had then, after determining that the missile had failed to detonate due to interception by American anti-missile defenses, fired one at an American military base in Northern Europe—this had succeeded, but it also caused the Americans to send General Thomas to Baikonur and seize it. The American general had then shattered an attempt to use Somalia as a resource base, used Colonel Burton to drop a hundred tons of snow on Dr. Thrax's lab in Russia, seized the immensely lucrative Amisbad oil fields, nearly killing Kell in the process, and, finally, had killed Dr. Thrax with the help of some GLA "traitors"—he had been in that group, actually, assigned to ensure that the madman did not survive. Thomas had then, fortunately, been assigned to an advisory mission to Argentina by the Americans, as their President was up for re-election rather soon, and wanted to avoid the specter of a war hero challenging him for the office.

The GLA had fragmented yet further from its already disorganized state after this defeat, until General "Deathstrike" Mohmar, with Arslan as his battle commander, came in and unified the factions by force, guile, and charisma, finishing by destroying Prince Kassad's army in Cairo. He had then solidified his position as leader by sending Arslan to seize Cyprus and use the Particle Cannons there to shatter the Americans' fleet in the Mediterranean. He had then been sent, along with Kell, to the Pacific coast of the United States to seize some toxic waste facilities, a plan that had succeeded beautifully. Finally, as the Americans fell back from Europe and the rest of the world to protect their shores, Arslan had led an army that used captured Chinese weapons in addition to their own to overrun the American base at Stuttgart. The GLA had begun to build the Caliphate in Europe, as the Europeans had had few military forces of their own.

He had advised against this step, and, along with Arslan, had actually urged Mohmar to assault the Chinese before tying the GLA down in Europe. Mohmar, however, full of arrogance and fervor, for he believed himself to be the man who would finish what Suleiman the Magnificent had started, did not listen to either, and, while retaining Kell, sent Arslan off to North Africa to recruit. As a result, Chinese forces under General Wu were free to destroy the base at Stuttgart with a nuclear strike and then mop-up behind. Then the assault on the nuclear plant at Yencheng had failed catastrophically after he took command of the security force. After this, he had seized Coburg quickly to establish an airhead, had cut off the GLA from its bases in Central Asia by seizing Haberstadt, and, finally, had killed General Mohmar when he finished off the GLA's last stronghold in Hamburg. He had also thought that he had killed Jarmen Kell. He hadn't killed either man, actually, although he had come close to killing Kell. Wu hadn't even come close to killing Mohmar—that had been Kell, who had pulled off the best shot he had ever fired when he dropped him from two thousand yards.

After Hamburg he had withdrawn deep into the Alps with a group of men he had hand-picked for three things. They hated the Chinese government, they were at least ambivalent about Westerners, and they were not fanatical Muslims. When the Chinese began cracking down in Europe and placing areas under military control, his men began to spread throughout Europe, mostly through the mountains and forests. Men, and some women, soon began to flock to the banner his men raised of a Europe freed from Chinese oppression. And Arslan had come too, having come across the Mediterranean in a fishing boat, and Kell had gladly given up command to him.

They had begun to build an army in Europe's mountain fastnesses, its dense forests, and its inaccessible marshes. An army that did not rely on anthrax and suicide bombers, but on skill and stealth. An army built not to destroy the West and restore the Caliphate, but to liberate a continent.

To truly liberate a continent.

He had had enough of revenge. It was sweet in the mouth, but it was very sour in the stomach. Perhaps now it was time to seek…justice.

He was rapidly brought from his musings by the sight of the aircraft he was waiting for.

It was an American Chinook helicopter, doubtless flown in through the gap between radar coverage from Fai's and Kwai's areas of responsibility in Italy and France, and then by flying in the nape of the earth through the mountains. There had been several shipments like this over the past three years, and they had been sent ever since Kell, at the behest of General Arslan, had, on the behalf of the ELA—the Eurasian Liberation Army—put out feelers to the Americans, who were the leaders of the covert alliance opposing the Eurasian Unity League. They had brought precious materials, mostly certain parts for armored vehicles that were very difficult to find these days; with the suppliers in the Middle East and Central Asia being either defunct or cut off, only the Balkans remained among their former sources.

As the helicopter settled onto the shelf, Kell jumped down from his boulder and prepared to call out his men to come out of the tunnel system and pick up supplies. He was rather surprised when the back opened and only a single man stepped out. The two men instinctively whipped their weapons to their shoulders and took aim at each other, laughed softly, and lowered their guns to resting position. It was a ritual they'd developed since their first peaceful meeting together, when each had thought the other was a Chinese agent.

"Hello, Colonel Burton. It's good to see that you haven't fallen out of practice since Casablanca."

"You haven't either," Burton replied. "Being on the run from the Chinese doesn't seem to have taken much of a toll on you."

Kell waved dismissively.

"They are much clumsier than you are in these matters. What to do when found is a much greater problem than what to do to avoid being found. They are also, shall we say, more reasonable in certain matters than you Americans."

Burton grunted. "Sounds about right. I've come with news for the General."

"Right this way, Colonel," Kell responded, and was about to tell his men to bring the Chinook into the tunnels when Burton stopped him and gave a signal to the pilot, who lifted off with some alacrity.

When Kell could hear himself think again, he gave Burton a questioning look. Burton chuckled. "I'm here for the duration, Kell. Things are about to get rolling."

Kell smiled. Excellent.


Generals Thomas and Townes were exchanging annoyed glances with each other over the main planning table at the Pentagon as Generals Granger and Alexander hashed out yet another rendition of their never-ending, never-changing argument over which one had the better tactics.

"Perhaps," Granger said quietly but fiercely, "if you'd get your head out of your technical schematics you'd be able to see that what's needed isn't fancy defenses, what's needed is the ability to take the fight to the enemy quickly."

"No," Alexander replied, with equal iron, "what is needed is steady build-up until you can strike your opponent with overwhelming force from a position that he cannot attack without exposing himself to taking even more losses."

"Which," Granger rejoined, "sounds all well and good until you realize that this 'slow, steady build-up' is ridiculously easy to interrupt. At least my method keeps the opponent off-balance constantly. All yours does is allow him to build up his troops until he can hit you before your fancy weapons are built."

"Your methods result in more men dying…"

Thomas, the current temporary chair of the committee, finally lost patience. "Enough, you two," he said flatly as he glared at both parties to the previous discussion. "We've had this discussion time and again, and I for one am tired of it. Now, if we could get back to going over our parts for the current plans?"

Granger and Alexander, though still glaring at each other, nodded. Townes simply looked relieved.

"Now, as I was saying. General Alexander, do you understand your part in phase one?"

"Yes, General Thomas. I will provide Particle Cannon and Aurora support from Britain for the European assault forces, and we liberate Europe I will begin shifting my forces into Brittany, Normandy, Scandinavia, and eventually parts further to the southeast."

"General Granger, do you understand your part in this?"

"Move airborne forces to link up with ELA troops in Scandinavia and the Pyrenees, then provide air support for the Iberian and Scandinavian forces."

"General Townes?"

"Take Iberia and France, then link up with ELA Alpine forces."

"And my part," Thomas concluded, "will be to drive through Scandinavia and into Germany and Poland. Are there any questions?"

No one moved.

"Good. Dismissed. I will see all of you in Nottingham in two weeks."

As Thomas left, he considered what had happened over the past three years. When the Eurasian Unity League had come into existence, commentators and pundits with an anti-American bent had predicted that, with a freer than it had been, enlightened, China as the new world leader instead of the hidebound and self-absorbed United States, the world would enter a utopia of economic justice and environmental awareness. This did not come to pass in any way, shape, or form.

The Chinese had had the rest of the world recognize what they always knew—namely, that they were the Middle Kingdom—and had begun treating the rest of the world, particularly the parts reachable by its army, as vassal states. The Eurasian Unity League had started being referred to as the Chinese Empire in Europe by more and more people. Then, a year and a half after Hamburg, the Chinese had pulled a Tiananmen Square on a protest held at the Champs d'Elysees, and initiated a general crackdown and military occupation of Europe when the Europeans did not react like good little barbarians and kowtow.

He remembered his surprise when an organization that called itself the ELA hijacked a Chinese propaganda broadcast with a message revealing itself to the world, stating that there would be vengeance for Paris. Five minutes afterward, the general who had led the tanks and Red Guards in was shot as he was moved to a secure location. The ELA, in an effort to forestall comparisons to the GLA, had then delivered fifty wanted GLA war criminals—high-level malefactors, not just foot soldiers—to London. After this, they embarked on a sabotage and assassination campaign that reached from Lisbon to Mosul, one that had exclusively targeted soldiers, military bases and equipment, and particularly odious civilian administrators.

Then he had been the recipient of a message from General Arslan, asking him to send a man to meet Jarmen Kell in Casablanca. With the President's approval, he had sent Colonel Burton. The two former enemies had been able to put aside their differences, and, as the ELA had demonstrated that they were a guerrilla army, not a terrorist organization, the President had authorized arms shipments to them.

Then the President had begun to organize a group to counterbalance the Chinese and their allies, which were nations like Burma, Venezuela, and South Africa. The first nations approached were the maritime Commonwealth states with effective militaries—Britain, Canada, Australia. All of them agreed to oppose China in the Port Moresby Protocol; South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Israel had signed on as a group in the Nairobi Accords; while the Southern Cone nations, Central America, Colombia, and most of the Caribbean joined with the Kingston Treaty. Egypt had agreed to stay out of the war at least, and perhaps roll down into Sudan. The Kurds and the ELA had come to an agreement by some manner of secret meeting.

This had left the Russians, who had not been approached at the beginning due to their excellent relationship with China. However, the two empires had had something of a falling-out over China's arrogance, as manifested by an attempt to turn Siberia into a de facto Chinese colony, and the alliance against the Chinese, which was beginning to be called the League of Free Nations by those who knew of it, gained another member. Admittedly, "free" in this case meant not being subject to China's whims, but still.

The leaders had waited for months for a reason to go to war before China managed to quash the ELA and assimilate Europe, and then they got a casus belli that was almost perfect. An assault on the NORAD mainframe that had come perilously close to hijacking America's strategic weapons arsenal had been backtracked to a major server farm located in the Chinese headquarters in Florence after three weeks of hunting through the myriad labyrinths of the Internet. Similar assaults on Russia and Britain in the same week had also been backtracked to that area.

The timing of the attacks had probably, Thomas suspected, been a warning to the United States and Britain not to get too frisky with their upcoming naval exercises. Thomas smiled to himself. The thing about barbarians is that they do not take kindly to being told what they can and cannot do, and tend to react…poorly.

As China, Lord willing, would discover in two weeks' time.


General "Anvil" Shin Fai gave an excellent imitation of paying attention as the four commanders of occupied Europe endured listening to yet another interminable teleconference lecture by General Leang about the importance of demonstrating Chinese superiority to the European barbarians by finding and quashing this upstart group called the ELA. The woman, he had concluded after the fourth or fifth lecture she had given them on the subject, clearly had a very tenuous grasp of the reality of counter-insurgency warfare. Did she not understand that the ELA, in many respects, followed Mao's dictum to swim like fish through the ocean of the general population, and that they not only swam through that ocean, but through the ocean of Europe's forests and mountains? Failing that, did she not understand that the policies that she was ordering that they implement, like the orders that she had given for the Champs d'Elysees, would simply make the problem worse?

The answer, he suspected, was no. Despite her undoubted brilliance—she had to be, to be a woman and in command of the Occupied Zone of what was privately referred to as "The Greater Kingdom"—she had not been in the field for anything like a sustained period, unlike him and the three men with him.

Admittedly, her decisions for splitting up command responsibilities had not been outside the realm of reason, Shin thought. Placing him in command of those lands most inhospitable to tanks—Iberia, Italy, the Alpine lands, the Scandinavian Peninsula, the Netherlands, Greece, and the former Yugoslavian states—had been wise, though it did have him running around from his Florentine headquarters quite often. General Ta Hun Kwai, unsurprisingly, had been given those areas where his tanks could be put to use—France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, the Baltic States, Belarus, and Ukraine, an area he commanded from his headquarters in Poznan. General Tsing-Shi Tao had been placed in charge of providing power to all Chinese forces in Europe, which was overseen from his headquarters in Vienna, which was also the central power node, though there were several others throughout the Occupied Zone. General Wu, in the meantime, had been given the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Turkey, Armenia, and Georgia to oversee, which function he discharged from Bucharest.

However, the orders she was giving them were, quite simply, madness. Arrest every tenth man and woman of military age? How were they to do that? He suspected that they would begin to make the arrests, and then the order would be countermanded publicly, in order to arrest the decline in China's popularity. However, the orders given that five years in prison would be the penalty for being out after curfew had not helped matters, along with most of the other repressive measures he had been ordered to take that had not been rescinded. The orders for dealing with political protests had been exceedingly bloody-minded—he believed in the ultimate rightness of China's cause, but starting by firing live ammunition into the crowd was a bit much.

Fortunately, she appeared to be wrapping up.

"And finally," she said, "Remember, China shall have its destiny to enlighten all. You are dismissed." And with that, the screen went black.

Shin leaned forward. "Now that that particular bit of business is over, does anyone have any business to discuss? General Ta."

"I am concerned about these Anglo-American military exercises. Their timing is rather close to our attempt to disable their strategic weapons systems."

Tsing spoke up. "First, they have been planning these exercises for almost a year. What does it matter if they move them up a week? They may simply want to provide a bit of practice for preparing faster than previously expected."

Ta leaned back, clearly unsatisfied, but it did not appear that he would press the issue.

General Tsing had nothing to report out of the ordinary, and since it was customary for the man at whose headquarters the meeting was to both chair it and speak last at it, it was then Wu's turn.

"There seems to be an increase in activity in the Tatra and Carpathian mountains. I don't know what to make of it, but I believe that it may presage some sort of assault. I was curious as to whether any of you have experienced the same thing."

"There has been an increase in activity in certain areas under my control, as well," Ta admitted, "particularly in the cities and the Pripet area."

"There have been reports of prowlers near our power stations," Tsing said, "but this has happened before. Doubtless they are simply trying to scare us."

Shin nodded. "While I, also, have had such an upsurge in activity, General, recall that has happened before. While we all appreciate your vigilance, please do not remind us of such matters until there is something more concrete to report."

Wu looked stung, but nodded.

Shin looked around. "Now, for my business. There is little of note in those areas directly under my control. However, there is a report from the cyber front."

This brought all the officers to attention. China was the acknowledged master of cyberspace, in almost all respects—while the American core systems were well defended, they had only been able to do this at the expense of their other systems. Any news on this front should be good. Shin thought it was an excellent thing that they did not know what was about to be said.

"Black Lotus insisted on presenting this news herself," he continued, pressing a button on his desk that activated the buzzer outside the back conference room door.

As the door opened and she walked in, Fai was impressed by the grace of her movements—she walked rather like one of the many cats his mother kept. She halted and braced to attention.

"Black Lotus, you may present your report."

"Generals," she spoke crisply, "as you all know, our assault on NORAD was entirely unsuccessful—while we did some superficial damage, we were not able to succeed in our goal of taking over the Americans' strategic weapons systems.

"Unfortunately, it appears that they have not just developed the capacity to defeat us on their home ground, they can now move outward as well. They traced the attack back to Florence."

None of the other three generals, even Wu, the youngest of the group, visibly reacted, Shin noted with approval. He turned to Black Lotus, and said simply, "Thank you. You may return outside."

She nodded, and turned and walked back out. When the door shut, Shin turned to the others.

"This changes matters."

"Agreed. This does not portend well for the future," Tsing said quietly.

"Which is why, gentlemen, I recommend that your computerized sections be placed on highest alert as we absorb the ramifications of this news."

"Does General Leang know?" Wu inquired.

"She knows."

"That would explain her unhappiness."

"It probably would," Shin allowed, "but rather than discuss General Leang's motivations, I would rather have us adjourn this meeting and reconvene next week so that we may discuss the nature of this new threat. Are there any objections?"

There were none.

"Excellent. I will see you next week."

The other three generals gave their farewells, and walked out of the room to go to the airfield, and from thence to their respective headquarters.

Shin pressed the button again. It was time to discuss what should be done next.