“On the navy side, 6th Fleet has two destroyers conducting a port visit in Hamburg at the moment. They could be in the Gulf of Latvia in twenty-four hours. Land forces are more of a problem. It’ll take five days to get the personnel to man the brigade’s worth of vehicles we’ve got warehoused in Eastern Europe into the various countries the equipment is stored in. Then add at least another ten days to concentrate them in one place, as they’re spread real wide. So there’s not much we can do with them. My recommendation is to deploy the 82nd Airborne Division Global Response Force. That’s a Combat Team of around four hundred and fifty soldiers with the combat support and logistics to be able to operate on their own for several days. We can deploy the lead elements in eighteen hours.”

“Why can’t they operate for longer?” the President questioned.

“Airborne forces have to fight using what they land with, until they can link up with other ground troops or be resupplied by air. That means limits on their heavy weapons, mobility, logistics and stores. Once we’ve got them in, we’ll follow up with a brigade of air-landed ground troops, that’s around five thousand men, to reinforce them within a few days. But until the second wave are on the ground, the Global Response Force will be on its own. But that’s what they’re trained for.”

Satisfied, Dillon turned back to MacWhite. “What about other allies?”

MacWhite looked at his old friend McCann, a comrade whom he’d fought alongside in many campaigns. “Where do you think the Brits will stand, Marty? You know them well.”

“We’re getting close again after they messed up in Iraq. In actual fact, 82nd Airborne have been doing good work with the Brit 16th Air Assault Brigade. They put together a damn good exercise earlier this year—900 Brits from ‘3 Para Battlegroup dropping to secure an airfield alongside the All-Americans,” McCann replied, referring to the famous nickname of 82nd Airborne Division.

“That sounds like just what we need to make this a coalition operation,” interjected the President with interest. “We need our two closest allies in there with us and it’s worth slowing down a bit to achieve that. The question is: will the British political leadership will have the stomach for this . . . ? And the French?”