Blue Dawn, 1994

The next time I stub my toe, I'd assume you are at the height of that conspiracy.
When I write complicated plots, I sometimes think 'nah, unlikely' but history is full of surprising later revelations where assumptions have been wrong. the details here are murky as hell and I'll bring that soon enough: once the shooting starts there will be revelations, so in a few days story-wise.
There will no doubt be resistance to occupation. 'We are here to free you' is not something easy to convince people of, especially I believe in a country like Russia! The Union is a multi-ethnic too with all sorts of people everywhere and plenty of local bad guys willing to emerge!

16 – Guilty


A well-armed team of FBI agents raid a motel in southern Pennsylvania. The state and local police are alerted and provide support, but it is the Hostage Rescue Team (the FBI’s SWAT-type force) which charge into the roadside establishment. Before he knows what has hit him, the identified target is in cuffs and being dragged to a waiting helicopter. Someone who has assisted in the Kerrey assassination is now in custody like the gunman himself. The motel room and the detainee’s car are both taken apart. There is evidence implicating him in the president’s murder found straight away. Out in West Virginia, the FBI is also looking for another suspected helper of the murder which had taken place several days before at Camp David. They have local, state and federal assistance (the latter being the US Marshals) as they hunt for their target who is reported to have taken to the mountains to evade capture. Finding him is going to be more difficult than a four a.m. snatch of a man sleeping in a warm bed but they are going to try. Anyone involved in killing Kerrey is going to be run to ground no matter what it will take.

All the hard work done in recent days is paying off. Where the US Intelligence Community has thrown everything at this case, they are getting results. They have identified people who helped with the assassination. Nothing is being provided by that lone gunman who still refuses to talk, but the painstaking investigation into everything concerning his time spent here in the United States has brought about excellent leads. Those who paved the way to get him to where he fired that shot from, providing him with what he needed, are either caught or being actively sought. Both of these two men – the man in the motel room and the other who has fled into the Appalachians – are, like the assassin himself, confirmed GRU intelligence operatives. They each are serving officers with the military intelligence service of Gromov’s Union who all came here to the United States to make the Kerrey assassination happen.


Irrefutable proof that Gromov is ultimately behind the killing of an American president is joined by a motive for that. President Robb had wanted to hear a reason why Gromov would do such a thing, something he could believe in but so too could the American people, before he would take his country to war. A motive has come. There is a defector from the Union’s military now in custody. He came over the border from Belarus into Poland a few days ago and was handed over by the Poles to the Americans. This defector is a Union Army general officer, the deputy commander of Western Military District. While not one of Gromov’s inner circle from the Arbat, he is still high-ranking and on the inside enough to matter. He’s told those who’ll listen to him – people from all those agencies with the acronyms – what he knows about the killing of Kerrey. While the exact operational details aren’t something he is aware of (he provided nothing to really help the two FBI operations), he knows the background of all of this. His commanding officer, whom the Americans know to be close to Gromov, was told a month ago that there was an assassination plot on standby. Generals at the highest levels within the Union were either supportive or opposed to what the GRU had been ordered by Gromov to keep ready to go with little notice. They’d feared word leaking out and once it had happened, this defecting general had believed that there would be a ‘clean up’ of those who had knowledge with his head on the chopping block (not metaphorically either) there. He’d run rather than be killed. He talks rather than be silenced from talking. Importantly for those listening to him, he has no connection to Primakov’s side in the Union’s civil war. There would be doubt in them had he been, but there is no link with Novosibirsk.

Why kill Kerrey?

Gromov has been taken with the belief that the United States has been supporting Primakov’s rebellion against him. This support isn’t to see Primakov installed in Moscow though. Instead, the idea that the Union’s leader is convinced of is that America wants to see the Union in a permanent state of civil war. A broken Union is best for the United States. Advantage can be taken so the pieces outside of Gromov’s control can be transformed into puppets for American interests. There will only be one superpower as long as the Union is divided and fighting itself. Gromov sees American troops in Eastern Europe and interventions such as Powell’s visit to Novosibirsk as proof of his own concoction. Gromov, the defector goes on, sought to have Kerrey killed to stop this grand strategic plan from reaching a successful outcome for the United States. Kerrey was the #1 enemy of the Union and no one – i.e. Robb – would be ready enough to step up and take that mantle. As to the timing of the assassination, when Gromov’s armies were making headway, it is said that Gromov struck then because he believed that Kerrey was likely to make a rash move to stop Primakov being defeated. By killing him, the Union will be able to finish off those in rebellion, re-establish itself and only then have to worry about a recovering United States left in chaos at the death of its leader.

Robb believes this when he hears it all. It makes sense given the situation. There is that separately gained proof that this was a state-sponsored terrorist action of the Union. Others at the top of his administration agree and certain allies abroad do as well when briefed. Just because the new president and others know that Gromov’s plan isn’t going to work, that doesn’t mean that Gromov hasn’t be foolish enough to have done this. They look at everything else the Union has done in light of these revelations. Everything adds up.

Gromov did this… and he has made a mistake on a magnitude he cannot imagine.

Robb decides that he has enough to go to war on. There are those who at once say that from the moment that shot was fired at Camp David, war with the Union was inevitable regardless of what has come in recent days. Maybe things might not have gone this way though. War was never certain, Robb says, but it is now. The new president says this when he is visited in the Oval Office by former President Bush. The latter requests to see him on an urgent matter and is granted an audience. Robb knows Bush well enough from his time in Washington and they have an established relationship. Bush also has one of those with the first leader of the Union: Gorbachev. The last Soviet premier and the first (for five weeks) president of the Union, has been in contact with America’s forty-first president through a trusted intermediary to pass on an urgent message. Gorbachev says that Gromov hasn’t done this. It is a frame-up, he added, with someone else responsible. What was asked by Bush is now asked of Bush: what makes Gorbachev say this? Does he have any proof? No, Gorbachev doesn’t. He has nothing but gut feeling and words from out of Gromov’s mouth when he spoke to him two days after Kerrey was killed. It is a third-hand denial. There is nothing more that Robb can do but thank Bush for his time and inform him that – with regret – he cannot act on such a thing. Kerrey’s death needs an answer and that answer has to be war. If Bush could provide him with something more, things could be different but a denial like this won’t do.


Robb addresses the American people on the evening of July 9th. Details have been released earlier in the day concerning the upcoming state funeral for Kerrey and it is thought by media commentators that Robb will be talking more about this in addition to possibly discussing who he will be selecting for his vice president: the media has been talking about the latter a great deal. Talking heads have been floating many names which have included Mario Cuomo, Al Gore and Bob Graham as the most prominent personalities.

Instead, once more, the new president surprises the country. He tells those at home in America, plus watching from around the world, who is responsible for the killing of his predecessor. Gromov’s Union is blamed and details (minus many secret matters, naturally) are provided to the public.

That general in Moscow is guilty of this, Robb tells America: Colonel-General Boris Gromov has had his GRU state terror group murder President Kerrey.

Domestic and global fireworks will erupt at this revelation.

I'd guess so. During his near two years in power, Lebed supported Serbia with UN games and arms shipments. A lot of that was to twist the tigers tail - infuriate the US - but there was appreciation for this. Gromov has had five months in power, all of internal war. The focus is almost entirely domestic yet Serbia will be likely one of few worldwide friends.

   James G ,

17 – REFORGER


From the Arbat, Gromov orders a halt to the ongoing successful offensive in the Urals. His stop order comes three days after the Kerrey assassination and is something that his field commanders object to on military grounds but which Gromov explains needs to be done due to politics. The Union of Sovereign States is increasingly looking like being blamed for the death of that American president. A temporary halt in the push against the remnants of Primakov’s forces is the wisest thing to do at a time like this. Gromov’s armies are entering the Western Siberian Plain… while the crazy Americans have troops in Eastern Europe with Moscow between the two. Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg both fall before the stop order is enforced with those Urals cities back under Union control. While there is no longer any forward movement eastwards into rebel-held territory, there is fighting in each of these. Soldiers fighting for Gromov battle those under Primakov – each side still claims they are the Union Ground Forces – who have been cut off in these urban areas along with civilians who side with the rebellion against Moscow too. The casualty count is higher in Yekaterinburg and there is a lot of damage done to the city too.

Once the formal allegation comes from Robb a couple of days later, charging Gromov and the Union with killing Kerrey, Gromov’s generals are more understanding of that halt order. They had been told that the Americans were believing what the Arbat says is a Primakov-backed scheme to frame Moscow for that murder but thought that common sense would eventually come to those in power in the United States. Alas, that is not to be. This Robb character – who is this fellow? – has fallen for such madness. His public accusation is followed up by military deployments announced by the Pentagon. The army group forming the Urals Front sees more than half of its combat forces (and much of the air & artillery) support given turnaround orders. Gromov’s subordinates act fast but are hampered in following those instructions by the terrible state of the Union Ground Forces. It took them months to organised to get here to fight and the about-turn is going to be no easy feat. Difficulties aside, they must do so though.

This is because the Americans have activated Operation REFORGER and they need to respond.


Secretary of Defence Nunn announces the beginning of REFORGER straight after Robb addresses the nation concerning Kerrey’s killer. From the Pentagon, he declares that there will be full mobilisation of the US Armed Forces and the mass deployment of them to Europe. REFORGER (REturn of FORces to GERmany) is a long-planned operation. The Soviet collapse and the emergence of the Union in its place have seen changes made to REFORGER but the core mission remains the same: deploy substantial forces overseas from the continental United States to Europe in an emergency. However, rather than see them head to battle positions in Germany, with the Iron Curtain gone and Moscow’s armies much further east, those sent across the Atlantic are tasked to assemble in Poland instead. The US Army and US Air Force will be going into Eastern Europe and joined there by reservists plus national guardsmen. Nunn announces the mobilisation of them too. In the previous days, there has been an alert in-place as well as an emergency ‘stop-loss’ order of personnel (no retirements, no leaves) and the selected movement of transport aircraft & military sea-lift which Robb authorised the day before, but that has been nothing as large as what is now underway. REFORGER comes alongside unmade announcements about movements of further troops and aircraft as well as the US Navy and the Marine Corps. Nunn doesn’t discuss those openly for the world to hear. Yet, he does make mention of the redeployment within Europe of American forces there. The US Army’s V Corps is soon on the move as they leave Germany. They are heading for Poland too, moving from garrisons in the western part of that recently reunified nation across the eastern side yet also going through the Czech Republic too on the way.

REFORGER is quite something.

Soldiers across America from scattered garrisons start to be airlifted to Europe to link up with equipment sitting in storage. There are all of those POMCUS sites where almost everything that they will need to fight is waiting upon them. Military aircraft as well as civilian ones being taken into service begin the process of that airlift. There are hundreds of thousands of men & women who are moving. Both the III Corps and the XVIII Airborne Corps are going to Europe while others are going elsewhere. With regards to the XVIII Corps, neither the equipment nor stores for them are at the POMCUS warehouses through Germany and the Low Countries. This will all have to be brought over on more aircraft as well as by sea. The Pentagon is prepared to see this done with speed and it is rapidly underway. Detailed contingency plans long-established are activated to allow it to happen. The same plans are followed for aircraft from Tactical Air Command units spread across the country which likewise have REFORGER assignments. The recent changes to the plans to see deployments to fighting stations in Eastern Europe – rather that Western Europe – are fast in effect. While those combat jets are getting airborne ready for ferry flights over the Atlantic, out ahead of them are transport aircraft laden with specialist personnel and equipment so that they will be able to operate from where they are going to. The US Army Reserve has some combat forces under command who receive REFORGER deployment orders but the majority of this organisation has supporting infrastructure. Off to Europe they are going too. The regulars will need them.

The US Navy and US Marines have their own deployment plans. They begin with those, generally out of the public eye too. There are carrier groups at sea soon to be joined in the coming days and weeks by several more. Ships and submarines begin the process of getting underway as fast as they can as well. There are assigned missions for all of them away from Poland. All three marine divisions, plus the Marine Corps Reserves, are mobilised to form up a trio of air-ground task forces with individual global deployments to be made. Furthermore, selected elements of the National Guard receive federalisation orders. Each and every state, plus several United States territories, have national guardsmen with ground and air units. Those with high readiness levels are given overseas taskings. The air units can move quicker than the soldiers but the latter are significantly larger. Unlike in 1991, now in ’94 the National Guard is going off to war rather than being left behind. There will be issues that crop up with this over politics and readiness, that is for sure, but the orders to begin deployments stand.

The full military might of the United States is being flexed ahead of seeing action.


It is argued that the state-sponsored assassination of Kerrey by foreign military operatives on American soil makes this an Article Five issue with regard to the United States’ role in NATO. This has been put to Robb several times, including back on Independence Day when it was known within hours who the captured assassin of the president was, that that part of the North Atlantic Treaty should come into effect. A call would thus be made to the members of the alliance to come to America’s aid because an attack on one of them is an attack upon them all. Leaders from NATO countries have been spoken to on this issue. There have come words of encouragement should such a measure be taken yet Robb hasn’t done it. Article Five will not come into play because Robb doesn’t feel it is necessary… and not all members of NATO are onboard with the idea too. No one is siding with the Union but there is hesitancy over the speed of events. While the blame apportioned to Gromov is widely believed, the idea of war with the Union over this just isn’t what the majority of the members of the sixteen-nation alliance are willing to commit to. Robb isn’t going to cause an open split in NATO over this because there is no need. A trio of NATO members come aboard with the need for war because they agree it has to be done after Kerrey was assassinated. Therefore, what will be done will be done outside of the alliance, due in part too to the support being given by Eastern European nations not part of NATO in all of this.

Britain, Canada and Norway are the NATO nations which begin mobilising their military forces in readiness for war alongside the United States. Their leaders had been with Kerrey is openly facing down Lebed’s aggression and they are with Robb now against Gromov. Large British and Canadian deployments begin while the smaller Norwegians make preparations at home. Outside of NATO, there is the Visegrád Group. Formed back in ’91 by Poland, Hungary & the then Czechoslovakia, there are now four members after the Velvet Divorce last year. Acting in concert, these countries which were once part of the Warsaw Pact, ‘kidnapped’ as Lech Wałęsa has long said, have been seeking NATO membership while also supporting American policy with regard to the Union. Poland is the leading member of the four and there have been some internal disputes among them often caused by Slovak actions. However, on the matter of stopping another kidnapping of Eastern Europe, they are together. It has been long agreed between them that they must act as one or all go down on their own. They invited – begged to be fair – Kerrey to deploy forces into Eastern Europe earlier in the year which caused Moscow’s outrage at the broken of the ‘pinky promise’ made back in ’90 over such a thing. The Visegrád Group are now members of what is being called the Coalition: the international alliance against Gromov post July 4th. Their countries are open to Coalition military forces arriving overseas from the West and they themselves begin fully mobilising (from an already high state of alert) their armed forces. A considerably large military force starts forming up from the Visegrád Group countries though there are many questions being asked over the dubious quality of it.


Robb has openly accused Gromov’s Union of assassinating his predecessor. The United States is mobilising its armed forces and there is the building of the Coalition of allies. This is done because the president believes that America must be prepared to go to war in response Gromov’s action. That there will be a war has not yet been officially announced but war there will be.

Why go to war?

Killing Kerrey is something that the United States cannot accept and will not leave unanswered. Robb has been thrust into this position he is in by the actions of Gromov. He intends to put an end to the ability of Gromov to do such a thing. Those allies who are joining the Coalition are spoken to by the new president on what this all means. America will lead, with them in support, an international effort to depose the current leader of the Union. That means attacking and invading the Union to destroy the illegal regime currently in power. Primakov will be supported with his government in Novosibirsk, the legitimate one, being installed in the place of that of Gromov: hopefully with his forces doing a significant part of the fighting too for both practical and political reasons. The Baltics will be freed from their long occupation with Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania once more independent nations. Efforts are already underway to secure support ‘elsewhere’ within the Union and that will mean that the Union will likely become only Russia at the end of all of this. That Russia will be a free, democratic nation without an arm of the state which reaches across oceans and murders an American president for internal political gain.

July goes on. REFORGER continues along with mobilisation within the United States and among allies. Gromov formally denies killing Kerrey and stands in defiance against what Moscow calls American efforts to ‘intimidate’ the Union. There are military preparations being made within the Union, many of them seen by the Coalition. The nuclear issue looms large too. Gromov has all of those nukes. While the Americans are moving troops about, so too is he, but with the Union being a nuclear-armed nation, with ICBMs and SLBMs, Gromov believes that war isn’t going to come because of them. He sees the matter as Robb trying to get him to either step down or encourage someone else to remove him all so that Primakov can come to Moscow. Gromov stands firm and doesn’t back down no matter how much pressure is applied. He moves about some conventional military forces and retains his nuclear arsenal. That is judged sufficient to make sure Robb doesn’t do anything silly. Only going this far is because he firmly believes that while an attack is being threatened, isn’t going to happen. Another Barbarossa, a Blue Dawn, is out of the question!

That is quick.

It is. I didn't want to go down the '100 updates ahead of war' route so recently seen.



Thanks.
Primakov is legitimately the Russian leader (sort of anyway: no public vote for his PM role) and he will be the 'Russian' face of the war. That is what is wanted: fellow Russians doing much fighting.
He will not be best pleased to see the Baltics gone nor what else is going to happen elsewhere within the Union too! But, as far as Washington sees it, he will have to deal with it!
It looks bad, that halt order. It is seen for what it isn't - guilt - but the mistake is made. So too is the one that the US is only posturing.
The assassination plot gets some answers given in the update after the one below: tomorrow.
A heck of a lot of domestic upheaval will be taking place financially in the US at this time. Much of the country is onboard with vengeance, but not all too.
Since the civil war started, Gromov's actions with exports but also full mobilisation have destroyed the Union economically.
There are some US forces going elsewhere, yes: to meet such possible threats too. Saddam and Kim are feared to seek an advantage and Robb doesn't want to be caught with his pants down.