Morris sipped at a Coke. It was a warm afternoon and he preferred his caffeine cold.
“Signal coming in from
Talbot,
sir,” the junior officer of the deck reported.
Morris rose and walked to the starboard bridge wing with his binoculars. He prided himself on being able to read Morse almost as quickly as his signalmen: REPORT ICELAND ATTACKED AND NEUTRALIZED BY SOVIET FORCES X EXPECT MORE SERIOUS AIR AND SUB THREAT X.
“More good news, skipper,” the OOD commented.
“Yeah.”
USS
NIMITZ
“How did they do it?” Chip wondered aloud.
“How don’t matter a damn,” Toland replied. “We gotta get this to the boss.” He made a quick phone call and left for flag country.
He almost got lost.
Nimitz
had over two
thousand
compartments. The Admiral lived in only one of them, and Toland had only been there once. He found a Marine sentry at the door. The carrier’s commander, Captain Svenson, was already there.
“Sir, we have a Flash message that the Soviets have attacked and neutralized Iceland. They may have troops there.”
“Do they have aircraft there?” Svenson asked at once.
“We don’t know. They’re trying to get a recon bird to take a look, probably the Brits, but we won’t have any hard information for at least six hours. The last friendly satellite pass was two hours ago, and we won’t have another one of those for nine hours.”
“Okay, tell me what you have,” the Admiral ordered.
Toland went over the sketchy data that had come in the dispatch from Norfolk. “From what we know, it was a pretty off-the-wall plan, but it seems to have worked.”
“Nobody ever said Ivan was dumb,” Svenson commented sourly. “What about our orders?”
“Nothing yet.”
“How many troops on Iceland?” the Admiral asked.
“No word on that, sir. The P-3 crew watched two relays of four hovercraft. At a hundred men per load, that’s eight hundred men, at least a battalion, probably more like a regiment. The ship is large enough to carry the equipment load for a full brigade and then some. It’s in one of Gorshkov’s books that this sort of ship is uniquely useful for landing operations.”
“That’s too much for a MAU to take on, sir,” Svenson said. A Marine Amphibious Unit consisted of a reinforced battalion of troops.
“With three carriers backing them up?” Admiral Baker snorted, then adopted a more thoughtful pose. “You could be right at that. What does this do to the air threat to us?”
“Iceland had a squadron of F-15s and a couple AWACS birds. That’s a lot of protection for us—gone. We’ve lost raid warning, attrition, and raid-tracking capabilities.” Svenson didn’t like this at all. “We should be able to handle their Backfires ourselves, but it would have been a lot easier with those Eagles running interference.”
Baker sipped at his coffee. “Our orders haven’t changed.”
“What else is going on in the world?” Svenson asked.
“Norway is being hit hard, but no details yet. Same story in Germany. The Air Force is supposed to have gotten a heavy hit in on the Soviets, again no details. It’s still too early for any substantive intel assessments of what’s happening.”
“If Ivan was able to suppress the Norwegians and fully neutralize Iceland, the air threat against this battle group has at least doubled,” Svenson said. “I have to get talking with my air group.”
The captain left. Admiral Baker was silent for several minutes. Toland had to stay put. He hadn’t been dismissed yet. “They just hit Keflavik?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Find out what else is there and get back to me.”
“Yes, sir.” As Toland walked back to the intelligence shack, he pondered what he’d told his wife:
The carrier is the best-protected ship in the fleet.
But the captain was worried . . .
HILL 152, ICELAND
They were almost thinking of it as home. The position was at least easily defensible. No one could approach Hill 152 without being seen, and that meant crossing a lava field, then climbing up a steep, bare slope. Garcia found a small lake a kilometer away, evidently filled with water from the winter snows that had only lately melted. Sergeant Smith observed that it would have made a good mixer for bourbon, if they had any bourbon.
They were hungry, but all had four days of rations along, and they feasted on such delicacies as canned lima beans and ham. Edwards learned a new and indelicate name for this item.
“Anybody here know how to cook a sheep?” Rodgers asked. Several miles south of them was a large herd of the animals.
“Cook with what?” Edwards asked.
“Oh.” Rodgers looked around. There wasn’t a tree in sight. “How come there ain’t no trees?”
“Rodgers only been here a month,” Smith explained. “Prive, you ain’t never seen a windy day till you been here in the winter. The only way a tree can grow here is if you set her in concrete. I seen wind strong enough to blow a deuce-and-a-half right off the road.”
“Airplanes.” Garcia had the binoculars. He pointed northeast. “Lots.”
Edwards took the field glasses. They were just dots, but they grew rapidly into shapes. “I count six, big ones, look like C-141s . . . that makes them IL-76s, I think. Maybe some fighters, too. Sergeant, get a pad and a pencil—we have to do a count.”
It lasted for hours. The fighters landed first, rolling off to the refueling area at once, then taxiing to one of the shorter runways. One aircraft came in every three minutes, and Edwards couldn’t help be impressed. The IL-76, code-named the Candid by the NATO countries, was an awkward, ungainly design, like its American counterpart. The pilots landed, stopped, and rolled their aircraft onto the taxiway off the main north-south runway as though they had practiced for months—as Edwards rather suspected they had. They unloaded at the airport terminal building, then rolled to the refueling area and took off, coordinating neatly with the landing aircraft. Those lifting off came very close to their hill, close enough that Edwards was able to copy down a few tail numbers. When the count reached fifty, he set up his radio.
“This is Edwards transmitting from Hill 152. Do you copy, over.”
“Roger, copy,” the voice came back at once. “From now on, your code name is Beagle. We are Doghouse. Continue your report.”
“Roger, Doghouse. We have a Soviet airlift in progress. We have counted fifty—five-zero—Soviet transport aircraft, India-Lima-Seven-Six type. They are coming into Reykjavik, unloading, and rolling back out to the northeast.”
“Beagle, are you sure, repeat are you sure of your count?”
“That is affirmative, Doghouse. The takeoff run brings them right over our heads, and we got a paper record. No shit, mister, five-zero aircraft”—Smith held up his pad—“make that five-three aircraft, and the operation is continuing. We also have six single-seat aircraft sitting at the end of runway four. I can’t make out the type, but they sure as hell look like fighters. You copy that, Doghouse?”
“I copy five-three transports and six possible fighters. Okay, Beagle, we gotta get this information upstairs fast. Sit tight and we’ll keep to the regular transmission schedule. Is your position safe?”
That’s a good question,
Edwards thought. “I hear you, Doghouse. We’re staying put. Out.” He took off the headset. “We safe, Sergeant’?”
“Sure, Lieutenant, I haven’t felt this safe since Beirut.”
HAFNARFJÖRDUR, ICELAND
“A beautiful operation, Comrade General.” The Ambassador beamed.
“Your support was most valuable,” the General lied through his teeth. The Soviet embassy to Iceland had over sixty members, almost all intelligence types of one sort or another. Instead of doing something useful, like seizing the telephone exchange, on donning their uniforms they had been rounding up local political figures. Most of the members of Iceland’s ancient Parliament, the Althing, had been arrested. Necessary, the General agreed, but too roughly done, with one of them killed in the process and two more shot.
Better to be gentle with them,
he thought. This was not Afghanistan. The Icelanders had no warrior tradition, and a gentler approach might have shown better returns. But that aspect of the operation was under KGB control, its control team already in place with the embassy personnel. “With your permission, there is much yet to be done.”
The General went back up the jacob’s ladder onto the
Fucik.
Problems had developed in off-loading the division’s missile battalion. The barges that contained that equipment had been damaged by the missile strike. The newly installed landing doors had jammed solid and had to be torched free. He shrugged. Up to now, Polar Glory had been a near textbook operation. Not bad for a scratch crew. Most of his rolling equipment—two hundred armored vehicles and many trucks—had already been mated with their troops and dispersed. The SA-11 battalion was all that remained.
“Bad news, Comrade General,” the SAM commander reported.
“Must I wait for it?” the General asked testily. It had been a very long day.
“We have three usable rockets.”
“Three?”
“Both these barges were ruptured when the American missile hit us. The shock damage accounted for several. The main damage came from the water used to fight the fire.”
“Those are mobile missiles,” the General objected. “Surely the designers anticipated that they might get wet!”
“Not with saltwater, Comrade. This is the army version, not the naval, and it is not protected against saltwater corrosion. The men who fought the fire did so with great gusto, and most of the rockets were soaked. The exposed control wiring and the radar seeker heads on the missile noses were badly damaged. My men have run electronic tests of all the rockets. Three are fully functional. Four more we can probably clean off and repair. The rest are ruined. We have to fly more in.”
The General controlled his temper. So, a small thing that no one had thought of. Aboard ship, fires are fought with saltwater. They should have asked for the naval variant of this rocket. It was always the small things.
“Divide your launchers as planned. Place all the usable missiles at the Reykjavik airport, and the ones you think you can fix at Keflavik. I’ll order the replacement rockets to be flown in. Is there other damage?”
“Apparently not. The radar antennae were covered with plastic, and the instruments inside the vehicles were safe because the vehicles themselves were sealed. If we get new rockets, my battalion is fully ready. We’ll be ready to travel in twenty minutes. Sorry, Comrade.”
“Not your fault. You know where you are to go?”
“Two of my battery commanders have already checked the routes.”
“Excellent. Carry on, Comrade Colonel.” The General climbed back up the ladder to the bridge to look for his communications officer. Within two hours a plane loaded with forty SA-11 surface-to-air missiles was rolling off Murmansk’s Kilpyavr airfield bound for Iceland.
20
The Dance of the Vampires
USS
NIMITZ
Toland had been a busy fellow for the past twelve hours. The data on Iceland came in slowly, one confusing piece at a time, and even now he didn’t have enough to call a clear picture. The group’s orders had been changed, though only after too many hours of indecision. The mission to reinforce Iceland was a washout. For the past ten hours the battle group had been heading due east toward friendly air cover from England and France. Someone had decided that if the Marines could not go to Iceland, then they might find useful employment in Germany. Bob had expected them to be diverted to Norway, where a Marine Amphibious Brigade was already in place, but getting them there could prove difficult. A furious air battle had been raging over northern Norway for almost twenty hours, with losses heavy on both sides. The Norwegians had started the war with scarcely a hundred modern fighters. They were screaming for help, but there was no help for anyone as yet.
“They’re not just chewing the Norwegians up,” Toland observed. “They’re driving them south. Most of the attacks are on the northern bases, and they’re not giving them any breather at all.”
Chip nodded. “That figures. Gives their Backfires a straighter shot at us. Briefing time.”
“Yeah.” Toland packed up his notes and walked again toward flag country. It was easier this time.
“Okay, Commander,” Admiral Baker said. “Start with the peripheries.”
“Nothing much seems to be happening in the Pacific as yet. The Soviets are evidently putting a lot of diplomatic pressure on Japan. The same story they’ve given the rest of the world—it’s all a German plot.”
“Horseshit,” Baker observed.
“True enough, Admiral, but it’s a plausible enough story that Greece is refusing to honor its treaty commitments, and a lot of neutral and third-world countries are buying it. Anyway, the Russians are making noises about giving the Sakhalin Islands back if they play ball—or pounding hell out of them if they don’t. Bottom line: Japan is not allowing any bases on its soil to be used for offensive strikes against the Soviet Union. What we have in Korea is needed there. The only carrier group we have in the Western Pacific is centered on
Midway.
They’re well out to sea at present, and they don’t have the moxie to go after Kamchatka alone. There’s some air activity in the South China Sea west of the Philippines, but nothing major yet. Cam Ranh Bay appears to be empty of Soviet shipping. So the Pacific is quiet, but that won’t last long.
“In the Indian Ocean, somebody launched a missile attack against Diego Garcia, probably a submarine. Not much damage—just about everything there was sent out to sea five days ago—but it got their attention. At last report, their IO squadron was at fifteen-north, ninety-east, a long way from our guys, and heading south.
“No activity at all on NATO’s southern flank. The Turks aren’t about to attack Russia on their own hook, and Greece is staying out of what they call ‘this German-Russian dispute.’ So Ivan has a secure southern flank, too, and so far it looks like he’s happy enough to keep it that way. So far the Russians are only fighting in Western Europe and against selected American installations elsewhere. They are telling anyone who’ll listen that they don’t even want to fight us. They’ve even guaranteed the safety of American tourists and businessmen in the Soviet Union. Supposedly, they’re flying them all out through India. We’ve underestimated the political dimension here, sir. So far it’s working for them.