“Save it for the MiGs, soldier!”
He climbed up the east bank and turned to look back. The American vehicles were digging into defensive positions. He ran to cover and stopped again to make a count before proceeding. There was a traffic-control point at Sack. Sergetov ran all the way.
After the first hour, things settled down. Lieutenant Mackall got out of his tank to inspect his platoon’s positions. One of the few ammunition carriers to accompany the troop stopped briefly at each tank, its crew tossing out fifteen rounds each. Not enough to replace what they’d fired, but not bad. The air attacks would be next. Crews were out chopping down trees and shrubs to camouflage their vehicles. The accompanying infantry set out their Stinger crews, and Air Force fighters were already circling overhead. Intelligence said that eight Russian divisions were on the west side of this river. Mackall was sitting on their supply route. That made it a very important plot of real estate.
USS
INDEPENDENCE
Quite a change from the last time,
Toland thought. The Air Force had an E-3 Sentry operating out of Sondrestrom to protect the fleet, and four of their own E-2C Hawkeyes were also up. There was even an Army-manned ground radar just coming up on Iceland. Two Aegis cruisers were with the carriers, and a third with the amphibious force.
“You think they’ll hit us first, or the ’phibs?” Admiral Jacobsen asked.
“That’s a coin-toss, Admiral,” Toland replied. “Depends on who gives the orders. Their navy will want to kill us first. Their army will want to kill the ’phibs.”
Jacobsen crossed his arms and stared at the map display. “This close, they can come in from any direction they want.”
They expected no more than fifty Backfires, but there were still plenty of the older Badgers, and the fleet was only fifteen hundred miles from the Soviet bomber bases: they could come out with nearly their maximum ordnance loads. To stop the Russians, the Navy had six squadrons of Tomcats, and six more of Hornets, nearly a hundred forty fighters in all. Twenty-four were aloft now, supported by tankers while the ground-attack aircraft pounded Russian positions continuously. The battleships had ended their first visit to the Keflavik area and were now in Hvalfjördur—Whale Bay—providing fire support to the Marines north of Bogarnes. The entire operation had been planned with the likelihood of a Russian air-to-surface missile attack in mind. There would be more vampires.
The loss of northern Norway had eliminated the utility of Realtime. The submarine was still on station gathering signal intelligence, but the task of spotting the outbound Russian bomber streams passed on to British and Norwegian patrol aircraft operating out of Scotland. One of the latter spotted a three-plane Vic of Badgers heading southwest and radioed a warning. The Russian aircraft were roughly seventy minutes from the fleet.
Toland’s station in CIC was immediately below the flight deck, and he listened to the roar of jet engines overhead as the fighters catapulted off. He was nervous. Toland knew that the tactical situation was very different now from that on the second day of the war, but he also remembered that he was one of the two men who’d escaped alive from a compartment just like this. A flood of information came into the room. The land-based radar, the Air Force E-3, and the Navy E-2s all linked their data to the carriers. There was enough electromagnetic energy in the sky to cook the birds in flight. The display showed the fighters proceeding to their stations. The Tomcats reached out to the northern Icelandic shore, curving into loitering circles as they awaited the Russian bombers.
“Ideas, Toland. I want ideas!” the Admiral said quietly.
“If they’re after us, they’ll approach from the east. If they’re going for the ’phibs, they’ll come straight in. There’s just no percentage in deceptive tactics if they’re heading for Stykkisholmur.”
Jacobsen nodded. “That’s how I see it.”
The pounding on the flight deck continued overhead as strike aircraft landed to rearm for new bombing strikes. Aside from the expected material effect, they hoped to wreck the morale of the Soviet paratroopers by violent and continuous air attacks. Marine Harriers were also in action, along with attack helicopters. Initial progress was somewhat better than expected. The Russians did not have their troops as widely dispersed as they’d thought, and the known concentrations were being subjected to a hurricane of bombs and rockets.
“Starbase, this is Hawk-Blue-Three. I’m getting some jamming, bearing zero-two-four . . . more jamming now.” The data was linked directly to the carrier, and the thick yellow strobes came up on the electronic display. The other Hawkeyes quickly reported the same information.
The fleet air-ops officer smiled thinly as he lifted his microphone. His units were fully in place, and this gave him several options.
“Plan Delta.”
Hawk-Green-One carried
Independence’s
air-wing commander. A fighter pilot who would have much preferred riding his Tomcat for the mission, he directed two fighters from each Tomcat squadron to seek out the Russian jamming aircraft. The converted Badgers were spread on a wide front to cover the approach of the missile-armed bombers and advanced at five hundred knots, three hundred miles now from the line of radar-picket aircraft. The Tomcats homed in on them at five hundred knots as well.
Each jammer created a “strobe,” an opaque wedge shape on the U.S. radar screens, so that they looked like the spokes of a wagon wheel. Since every such spoke was particular to each of the radar transmitters, the controllers were able to compare data, triangulate, and plot the position of the jammers. The Tomcats closed in quickly while the radar-intercept officers in the back seat of each fighter flipped the Phoenix missile seekers to home-on-jam guidance mode. Instead of depending on the aircraft’s own radar for guidance, the missiles would seek out the noise transmitted from the Badgers.
Twenty jamming aircraft were plotted. Eighteen fighters headed for them, targeting at least two missiles at each.
“Delta—execute!”
The Tomcats launched on orders forty miles from their targets. Once more, Phoenix missiles streaked through the air. Flight time was a mere fifty-six seconds. Sixteen of the Badger jammers went off the air. The surviving four all switched off when they saw the smoke trails of missiles and dove for the deck with Tomcats in pursuit.
“Numerous radar contacts. Raid One is fifty aircraft, bearing zero-zero-nine, range three-six-zero, speed six hundred knots, altitude three-zero thousand. Raid Two—” the talker went on as the enemy aircraft were plotted.
“We have the main raid, probably Badgers going for the ’phibs. This one will be Backfires. They’ll try to launch on us, probably far out to draw our fighters off,” Toland said.
Jacobsen spoke briefly to his operations officer. Hawk-Green-One would control the defense of the amphibious force. Hawk-Blue-Four from
Nimitz
would defend the carrier groups. The fighters divided according to plan and went to work. Toland noted that Jacobsen was leaving control of the air action to the officers in the control aircraft. The fleet air-defense officer on USS
Yorktown
controlled the SAM ships, all of which went to full alert but left their radar transmitters on standby.
“The only thing that worries me is they might try that drone crap again,” Jacobsen murmured.
“It worked once,” Toland agreed. “But we didn’t have them this far out before.”
The Tomcats divided into four-plane divisions, each controlled by radar. They, too, had been briefed about the drones that had fooled
Nimitz.
The fighters kept their radars off until they were within fifty miles of their targets, then used the radars to locate targets for their on-board TV systems.
“Hawk-Blue-Four,” one called. “Tallyho, I got eyeballs on a Backfire. Engaging now. Out.”
The Russian plan of attack had anticipated that the American fighters would try to burn through the jamming aircraft to the north, then be caught off balance by the appearance of the Backfires to the east. But the jammers were gone, and the Backfires did not yet have the American carrier fleet on radar and could not launch their missiles on the basis of hours-old satellite photographs. Neither could they run away. The supersonic Russian bombers went to afterburner and activated their radars in a contest with time, distance, and American interceptors.
Again it was like watching a video game. The symbols designating the Backfires changed as the planes switched on their own protective jammers. The jamming reduced the effectiveness of the Phoenix missiles, but Russian losses were already serious. The Backfires were three hundred miles away. Their radars had an effective range of only half that, and already fighters swarmed over their formations. “Tallyho” calls cluttered the radio circuits as the Tomcats converged to engage the Russian bombers, and the symbols started dropping off the radar screens. The Backfires closed at seventeen miles per minute, their radars searching desperately for the American fleet.
“Going to get some leakers,” Toland said.
“Six or eight,” Jacobsen agreed.
“Figure three missiles each.”
By now the Tomcats had fired all of their missiles, and drew off for the Hornets to join the action with Sparrows and Sidewinders. It wasn’t easy for the fighters to keep up with their targets. The Backfires’ speed made for difficult pursuit curves, and the fighters were notoriously short on fuel. Their missiles continued to score, however, and no amount of jinking and jamming could defeat all of them. Finally one aircraft got a surface radar contact and radioed a position. The seven remaining Backfires fired their missiles and turned north at Mach 2. Three more fell to missiles before the fighters had to turn away.
Again the Vampire call came in, and again Toland cringed. Twenty incoming missiles were plotted. The formation activated jammers and SAM systems, with a pair of Aegis cruisers on the threat axis. In seconds they were launching missiles, and the other SM2-equipped SAM ships added their own missiles to the “basket,” allowing their birds to be guided by the Aegis computer systems. The twenty incoming missiles had ninety SM2s targeted on them. Only three got through the SAM cloud, and only one of them headed for a carrier.
America’s
three-point-defense guns tracked the AS-6 and destroyed it a thousand feet from the ship. The other two missiles both found the cruiser
Wainwright
and exploded her four miles from
Independence.
“Damn.” Jacobsen’s face took a hard set. “I thought we had that one beat. Let’s start recovering aircraft. We got some dry fighters up there.”
Everyone’s attention turned to the Badgers. The northern Tomcat groups were just coming within range of the older bombers. The Badger crews had expected to follow their jammers in, reversing earlier tactics. Some were slow to realize that they had no electronic wall to hide behind, but none had a choice. They detected incoming fighters while still five minutes from their launch points. The Badgers held course and increased to full speed to lessen their time of vulnerability while their crews looked anxiously for missiles.
The Tomcat pilots were surprised that their incoming targets were not altering course, which made the possibility of drones seem even more likely. They closed to get visual identification of their targets for fear of being tricked again into shooting at drones.
“Tallyho! Badger at twelve o’clock and level.” The first Tomcat loosed a pair of missiles from forty miles out.
Unlike the Backfires, the Badgers had a location fix for their targets, which enabled them to launch their AS-4s from maximum range. One by one, the twenty-year-old bombers launched and turned as tight as their pilots dared to escape. Their escape mancuvers allowed half to survive, since the Navy fighters were unable to pursue. Aboard the radar aircraft, kills were being tallied even as the missiles flew toward Stykkisholmur. Soviet Naval Aviation had just taken fearful losses.
USS
NASSAU
Edwards was still in the twilight of anesthesia when he heard the electronic gonging of the General Quarters alarm. He was only vaguely aware of where he was. He seemed to remember the helicopter ride, but his next impression was that of lying in a bunk with needles and tubes stuck in various parts of his body. He knew what the alarm meant, and knew intellectually that he should be afraid. But he couldn’t quite work his emotions up through the drug-induced haze. He succeeded in raising his head. Vigdis was sitting on a chair next to his bed, holding his right hand. He squeezed it, not knowing that she was asleep. A moment later he was, too.
Five levels up,
Nassau’s
captain was standing on the bridge wing. His normal battle station was in CIC, but the ship was not moving, and he figured that this was as good a place as any to watch. Over a hundred missiles were inbound from the northeast. As soon as raid warning had been received an hour earlier, all of his boat crews had set to lighting off the smoke pots set on the rocks in this so-called anchorage. That was his best defense, he knew, hardly believing it himself. The point-defense guns at the corners of the flight deck were in automatic mode. Called R2D2s for their shape, the Close-In-Weapons-System Gatling guns were elevated twenty degrees, pointing off to the threat axis. That was all he could do. It had been decided by the air-defense experts that even firing off their chaff rockets would do more harm than good. The captain shrugged. One way or another, he’d know in five minutes.
He watched the cruiser
Vincennes
to the east, steaming in slow circles. Suddenly four smoke-trails erupted from her missile launchers, and the missile-firing cycle began. Soon the north-eastern sky was a solid mass of gray smoke. Through his binoculars he began to pick out the sudden black puffs of successful intercepts. They seemed to be coming closer, and he noticed that the missiles were, too. And the Aegis cruiser could not get them all.
Vincennes
emptied her magazines in four minutes, then bent on full speed to race between a pair of rocky islands. The captain was amazed to see it. Someone was taking a billion-dollar cruiser into a rock garden at twenty-five knots! Even off Guadalcanal—