Just went through the threadmarks today & yesterday. All in all, a very good read so far - the only discrepancy I can think of is that Indonesia is one of the least likely countries to have a Communist coup in the '80s, having completely destroyed its Communist Party (once the 3rd largest in the world behind only China's and the USSR's) in what was
the world's most thorough, and certainly one of the bloodiest, anti-Communist purges (leaving all of the surviving Communist Indonesian leaders stranded in places like Albania and China) and made Communism such a dirty word in its politics that
red-baiting is still a popular and somewhat effective tactic in Indonesian politics these days, 50-60 years after the purges. An Islamist coup would be much more likely than a Communist one in the Indonesia of the '80s - indeed, they had become the main opposition to Suharto's dictatorship by that time, and were subject to several arrest sprees & massacres.
That said, it's hardly the most significant detail in the story, so I'm not particularly fussed about it. And I can certainly understand that a Communist Indonesia would be one that's more involved with the plot of this story, since an Islamist one would be even less likely to work with the 'godless' Soviets than Suharto and thus be totally unimportant to a capitalist-communist WW3. Overall, I enjoyed the read and am looking forward to the next chapter. Keep up the good work!
Thank you!
First, I do need to thank some readers for adding input and ideas to the work I've added thus far:
CurtisLemay, hands down, and to be frank I probably wouldn't have written this without his help. Also,
LordSunHawk, Kujo, TraceCoburn, UrabraskRevealed (for the German translations), and the lively debates with
AaronFox. And of course, all the other readers who were willing to take their time to read, like and critique.
The Indonesian coup idea was, admittedly, a bit of a handwave. I wanted to make the Pacific theater a bit more interesting when the '88 War breaks out, and significantly raise the stakes for Australia and New Zealand. Having a shared mutual defense with the U.S. vs the Soviets is one thing....If Soviet-allied Communists took control of Indonesia right on Australia's doorstep? The Aussies and Kiwis might start hitting the panic button. Even more so when the Soviets brazenly and openly dock several warships in their ports alongside merchant vessels laden with weapons to sell to the new regime, probably have a few of their long range bombers fly into one of the airports, all as a form of intimidation against the Australia/New Zealand/U.S./UK defense pact, and it almost succeeds when New Zealand
almost goes neutral only to have the UK rather sternly dissuade the NZ Prime Minister from doing so. Plus, it gives additional impetus to reform the ANZACs for WW3, with Aussies and Kiwis boosted with a considerable sum of American military hardware with some potentially interesting scenarios in Papau New Guineau and the Korean peninsula.
Suworow belived that one soviet "sportsmen " /in fact elite GRU operator/ was fully capable of killing few normal Specnaz soldiers.
And they all - both mans and womans - loked harmless.
Well, the idea for the Black Widows in this universe was to move them along with Natasha Romanoff away a bit from the Marvel cheeziness, toward an unorthodox Soviet program that combined the classic espionage "honey pot" seductress with the ruthless skills of KGB Spetsnaz, alongside some of the more infamous Soviet psychological experiments (both true and urban legend) that involved brainwashing/conditioning, along with good old political indoctrination to produce utterly fanatical agents willing to do anything the Kremlin orders at the drop of a hat, one of the ultimate "boogeymen" (boogeywomen?
) of the covert/espionage world. Thankfully, there's not many of them, or so it's assumed. There is however as we'll see, another smaller experimental offshootof the Black Widows as well, which are a bit more of the
stranger variety, hint hint....
EDIT: The unorthodox methods of the Black Widows also partly works on what some might deem sexist, but in the eyes of others, works. Men tend to underestimate women, while often getting hopelessly distracted or becoming affectionate toward them. It causes men to lower their guard....which the Black Widows learn to ruthlessly manipulate, whether on the battlefield or in the boudoir.