Maragana Girl P.S. 04

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Had the Mega-Town plan to attack Dukov's government gone as expected, the main target of the mercenaries would have been the Danubian National Police. Two of the primary physical targets of the attackers would have been the National Police Headquarters in Danube City and the National Police Academy. The plan focused on first hitting the buildings with nerve gas and then taking them, along with the National Parliament, by 200 heavily-armed men. Police stations in the provincial capitols would have been taken simultaneously by smaller groups of assailants and their occupants killed. The plan would have killed about half of the Danubian police force outright, with the anticipation that the survivors would be too scattered to mount a successful counterattack. The mercenaries anticipated later dispatching the primitive Danubian Army with ease, because they had a squadron of Blackhawk helicopters at their disposal.

To counter the invasion, Upper Danubia had a 5,000-member regular army, 5,000 army reservists, 10,000 civil defense volunteers, and about 15,000 police officers. The numerical superiority of the Danubian forces was off-set by their lack of modern combat equipment. The Danubians had some helicopters for their military, but they were old and equipped for disaster relief, not combat. Furthermore, many of those helicopters were grounded because they had been damaged during firefighting operations two years before and were lacking repair parts. As for fighter aircraft, the country had a single squadron of British jets that were nearly 30 years old. During a surprise attack the air force would not have been able to get the planes in the air in time to defend the country. However, the advanced warning allowed the Danubian Air Force to prepare the aircraft for use, and by the night of April 20th the squadron was ready for operations.

The Mega-Town plan had one serious vulnerability, one that the Danubians and their neighbors ultimately exploited to foil it. There were only enough mercenaries to attack one country at a time, which meant that the coup participants had to cross the border into Danubian territory from their initial staging areas. That involved moving about 800 men and their equipment north on the morning of April 21. Dukov's military advisors decided to arrest the mercenaries as they entered the country, with the intent of capturing as many as possible away from major Danubian population centers. The mercenaries would be scattered and in many cases separated from their heavy weapons. Of course no one in the Mega-Town operation knew that Dukov already had learned about the plot, and thus were not really prepared to engage in large-scale combat on the 21st.

On the night of April 20th, 4,000 police offers, 3,000 soldiers, and 3,000 reservists traveled in small groups to the southern border on buses, vans, and trains dressed in civilian clothing. They were told that they were to participate in a nighttime training exercise. It was not until they were deployed that they learned their true mission; to spread out along the border and intercept small groups of foreigners crossing into the country.

The arrests began about 3:00 in the morning. In a few cases there were firefights, and in other instances mercenaries managed to flee back south. In cases of mercenaries escaping the dragnet, the Danubians radioed their positions to their southern neighbors. By 6:00 am about 500 of the 800 mercenaries had been successfully intercepted and detained, about 350 by the Danubians, and about 150 immediately south of the border by the neighboring country.

There were three pitched battles between Danubians and Mega-Town mercenaries on April 21st. The biggest skirmish took place at sunrise 40 kilometers south of Danube City. The location was a clandestine airstrip being used as a supply drop and staging area for the pending attack on the Danubian capitol. The Danubians attacked the strip with 1,000 troops and their entire air force, confronting 300 mercenaries who were guarding and off-loading weapons. The battle on the ground was a serious engagement, because the Danubians, in spite of their superior numbers, were out-gunned.

The attack began with an aerial assault on the runway to strafe and disable the aircraft. The initial shootout caused the downing of two Danubian helicopters, but also disabled all but two of the mercenaries' Blackhawks. The surviving Blackhawks managed to get airborne, but the pilots then realized they were up against the entire decrepit Danubian Air Force. There was a dogfight that resulted in the downing of one of the Blackhawks and a Danubian fighter jet. The surviving Blackhawk managed to fly over the East Danube River and escape. That escape was the mercenaries' only victory that day.

The remaining Danubian aircraft continued to strafe and bomb the enemy positions while the 1,000 soldiers, now reinforced with nearly 500 police officers and reservists, slowly fought their way towards the airstrip. The commander of the airstrip operation desperately radioed for help, not knowing that most of his associates already had been arrested. The Danubians recorded the broadcasts and later used them as evidence during the trials. Finally, when it became evident no help was coming, the airstrip command surrendered. That battle cost 52 mercenaries and 79 Danubians their lives and was the most significant engagement of the coup.

While the battle for the airstrip was going on, Danubian police officers fought to dislodge about 70 armed foreigners who had taken the railroad station and nearby governor's palace in Rika Chorna. Unlike the airstrip fight, the Rika Chorna battle was never in doubt. Hundreds of National Police Officers surrounded the two buildings and after a couple of hours the mercenaries surrendered.

Dukov did not declare a National State of Emergency until sunrise, because he did not want to alert any foreigners still trying to cross the border that their plot had been compromised. However, as soon as he declared the emergency, the National Police quickly set up roadblocks around the capitol and began fortifying all important government buildings and bridges. Within a few minutes the capitol was completely ready for combat, which fortunately never came.

By noon the military operations were largely over. Danubian police vans were transporting foreign prisoners to Danube City and the National Police had roadblocks and patrols around the country manned by groups of reservists and volunteers. The entire country now was mobilized to defend itself. With the arrests of the foreigners largely completed, the National Police began securing the numerous arms caches around Danube City and arresting Danubian collaborators.

Late in the afternoon there was a third battle, long after the rest of the country had been secured. Of all the events of that traumatic day, the third battle was the one that captured the imaginations of the Danubians. A roadblock of manned by a group of farmers and two old police officers was set up in the eastern part of the country in a spot where no one expected any mercenaries to cross. They were surprised when four armored Humvees moving southward attacked their position in order to escape the country. With nothing more than hunting rifles and two police pistols the farmers held off the mercenaries until other volunteers from their village arrived to help. For nearly an hour the entire village battled the four Humvees, losing the two police officers and six of the volunteers. Finally a Danubian helicopter arrived and blew up two of the Humvees. The crews of the other two vehicles surrendered.

A small group of uneducated, terrified middle-aged farmers battling hardened mercenaries and winning gave the Danubian government and the enemies of Mega-Town Associates the image they needed to completely humiliate the company. The surviving villagers were invited to Danube City the week following the coup to meet Dukov and be formally honored. The international press picked up on the story and the soon the farmers became important symbols of global resistance to the goals of the Mega-Town CEO's.

The government decided the best place to keep the coup participants was in the basement of the heavily fortified National Police Station in Danube City. The mercenaries' weapons were stored there as well, but all ammunition for the coup was taken to the National Military Academy and later distributed to Danubian Army units.

The failed coup was a complete setback for long-term goals of Mega-Town Associates. Other coup attempts had failed, but none as spectacularly as the one against Upper Danubia and its southern neighbor. There was no way the company could keep anything secret about the coup because the Danubians had captured documents and communications equipment along with many of the prisoners. On top of the new documents were the original CD's and recordings provided earlier by Jason Schmidt that had alerted Dukov about the coup in the first place. When Jason volunteered to testify at the trials, there was nothing the company could do to refute what had happened or its role in the coup.

The documents, testimony, news coverage, and subsequent trials brought out many details about Mega-Town's plans to control the world through seizing its resources. The resulting scandal was a public relations disaster that ruined the careers of several executives and their contacts in the US State and Commerce Departments. The company was too large and influential to be destroyed by the crisis, but its CEO's did have to abandon many of their tactics and spend time and resources to rehabilitate their public image. From that point forward anything Mega-Town did was viewed with skepticism and suspicion, which forced its leaders to lie low for several years and temper their ambitions.

Even as prisoners and weapons continued to arrive at the National Police Station, Dukov's thoughts moved ahead to using the failed coup to Upper Danubia's advantage. Privately, he was furious at the mercenaries and shared the public's desire that they all be shot. However, he knew that the foreigners really no longer mattered now that they were detained and that executing them would be stupid.

What the Prime Minister needed to do instead was take advantage of the coup to create international sympathy for his county. He then would use that sympathy to obtain concessions in international agreements and treaties. During the weeks following the coup, Dukov's cabinet ministers quickly fanned out across Europe and approached other leaders to renegotiate several stalled treaties, demanding concessions in exchange for not executing mercenaries. With the international media sympathetic to the Danubians, Dukov pressed his advantage and obtained, among other things, much better conditions for Upper Danubia's entry into the European Union. The coup and Dukov's handling of the aftermath solidified the Prime Minister's control over his country and Upper Danubia's wider influence in Eastern Europe.

Vladim Dukov as Danubia's Prime Minister

During the first years of his government, the Prime Minister scored some huge foreign policy successes. The most significant success was to formalize and secure the nation's southern border and re-claim some small strips of territory still inhabited mostly by ethnic Danubians. The border treaty allowed the country to enter into a formal alliance with one of its neighbors for the first time in its history and ended its long-standing diplomatic isolation. Following the Mega-Town coup the Danubians pressed for international recognition and acceptance of the nation's judicial practices and social values. As revenue from electricity generation and tourism increased, Danubia built up its foreign reserves and eventually became an important regional banking center.

Living standards rapidly increased during Dukov's time in office, financed first by the road project in the east, and later by tourism, banking, and electricity. The Danubians did have to change, modernize, and become part of the world. The most significant change took place in the countryside. Agriculture became much less important and the decline of the traditional village economy became Danubia's most important social problem. Fortunately the government had the resources to fund schools and technical institutes throughout the rural areas, which reduced the need for young people to leave their homes to get education. Still, the egalitarian small farmer society of the villages began to disappear as the older farmers died off and their descendants moved on to other careers and sold their land. The farms consolidated and within a decade a way of life that had existed for 3000 years came to an end. It had to be that way, and fortunately many villages were able to transform without becoming depopulated. However, everyone, including the Prime Minister himself, lamented the loss.

The outward appearance and architecture of Danube City and Rika Chorna did not change much during Dukov's time in office. Any building constructed before 1920 was protected from demolition. However, while kept intact on the outside, most buildings were remodeled on the inside. During much of the administration the streets were torn up as new sewer and water supply projects were installed and the nation's electrical grid modernized. The construction did not cause as much chaos as it would have had the Danubians been reliant on cars. It was very easy for the bicyclists to ride around the torn-up streets and life continued as normal.

The prohibition on private cars remained in place throughout the Dukov years. By the time he left office the number of Danubian-registered vehicles had only risen slightly. There were more urban businesses that owned delivery vehicles, but that increase was off-set by the declining number of farmers eligible to own trucks to move their produce.

The Danubian policy against privately owned vehicles became a major source of conflict between the country's government and foreign interests. During the years immediately before Vladim Dukov became Prime Minister, the US and the EU were pressuring the Danubians to remove their restrictions against privately owned cars. During his negotiations with the EU Dukov's predecessor agreed to lift the ban and allow private cars to be sold in the Duchy. Dukov immediately re-imposed the ban upon entering office and refused to discuss the matter further. He cited plenty of reasons for the ban, which included pollution, traffic jams, the loss of peace and pedestrian safety in the capitol, and a loss of social equality on the streets. There were the issues of road construction, which the Danubian government could not afford, and the trade imbalance that would result from purchasing and maintaining hundreds of thousands of foreign-produced cars. There was the concern over handling and storing gasoline, as well as the issue of what to do with junked cars when their owners no longer wanted them.

To Dukov, the topic allowing cars into his country was forbidden. If anyone brought the subject up in treaty or trade negotiations, he and his ministers got into the habit of simply standing up and leaving the room. Throughout his 18-year tenure as Prime Minister, on that issue Dukov never budged or compromised.

The Dukov government launched an aggressive public relations campaign against privately owned cars as soon as his opponents began claiming that he was denying his citizens their rights. Danubians soon became familiar with pictures of oil spills, smoggy cities, huge dirty parking lots, massive auto graveyards, and injured pedestrians as Dukov waged his personal war against cars. The campaign convinced the public that Danubia would become a huge junkyard if privately owned cars were ever allowed. Dukov's scare tactics worked, because there was never much public demand for cars during the time he was in office.

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Dukov was well-aware of some of the new threats facing his country and acted aggressively to counteract them. One issue affecting most of Eastern Europe that never really affected the Danubians was drug abuse. Being such a closed society helped the Danubians control illegal drugs, but it also helped that the government took the threat very seriously.

Dukov did not relax his country's tough anti-drug laws during his administration. Quite the contrary, he instituted mandatory drug-testing for all high school and university students, as well as for the military, tourism operators, hotel employees, and anyone returning from a trip abroad. Drug testing became a routine part of clearing Customs; no one could get a re-entry stamp in his or her passport until urine and blood samples were collected. The country was heavily indoctrinated against both drugs and drug users through television ads, school programs, and Temple sermons. The media ran aggressive anti-drug ads and branded anyone selling drugs as an Enemy of the Ancients. The government made sure that there was a huge social stigma against drug use and counted with the full support of the Danubian Church.

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Dukov stayed in office a total of 18 years. Everyone agreed that his government had been the most successful since the reign of King Vladik. A generation of Danubians had grown up not remembering the times before he became Prime Minister, so his retirement shocked many younger citizens. However, after nearly two decades in office he was ready to retire and leave running the country to his younger subordinates. When they begged him to continue, he used a medical exam stating he was susceptible to a heart attack as justification to leave his post. When he left office he left politics completely, refusing even to attend conventions of the Party of the Duchy. He stated:

"I am not a politician. I never wanted to be a politician, but that was what the Ancients called upon me to do for a period of time. That time has ended. The Ancients now have given me the chance to rest, and that is the Path of my Life. I will rest, and others must lead."

Dukov did not rest, however. He fulfilled a lifetime goal by writing a detailed history of the development of Danubian law during the 20th Century. Upon finishing that project, he helped his wife Maritza write a history about Upper Danubia during the years following the death of King Vladik in 1531. He never wrote his own political memoirs, but made himself and his personal library available to assist anyone, Danubian or foreigner, conducting a serious research project about his government.

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Among the researchers helped by Vladim Dukov was a young professor by the name of Annette Dolkiv. The young woman was the daughter of Engineer Sergekt Dolkiv and Spokeswoman Kimberly Lee-Dolkivna.

Annette was 24 years old, a few years older than her mother had been when Dukov first saw her kneeling in his office. How quickly time goes by, he thought to himself. I've always thought of Kimberly as being so young, and yet, it won't be much longer before she retires. How quickly our lives pass us by...how quickly the time comes when we must present ourselves to the Creator and hold up our mirrors...

Dukov quickly pushed that thought from his mind. He sat down with Professor Dolkiv, looked over her research, and prepared to answer her questions.

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Gym52Gym52over 2 years ago

These four postscript give the reader a great overview of the historical,legal, historical and religious history of this fictitious country, by reading these many questions that appeared in the earlier chapters were answered and the background cleared.

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