“Enough.” Morris looked away for a moment. “How’s the helicopter complement?”
“Only one flight crew for the bird. My copilot’s pretty green, but our on-board systems operator’s a first-class petty officer who’s been around the block a few times. The maintenance guys are a pickup bunch, mostly from the readiness group at Jax. I’ve talked to them, they should do just fine.”
“We got berths for them all?” Morris asked.
Ernst shook his head. “Not hardly. We’re packed pretty tight.”
“O’Malley, is your copilot deck-qualified?”
“Not on a frigate. I am—hell, I did some of the first systems trials back in ’78. We’ll have to do workups on the way to New York, both day and night to get my ensign in the groove. Scratch team, skipper. The bird doesn’t even belong to an operational squadron.”
“You sounded confident a minute ago,” Morris objected.
“I
am
fairly confident,” O’Malley said. “My people know how to use the tools they got. They’re sharp kids. They’ll learn fast. And we even get to make up our own call signs.” A wide grin. Certain things are important to aviators. There was one other unspoken message: when O’Malley referred to the aviation department as “my people,” he meant that he didn’t want any interference in how he ran his shop. Morris ignored it. He didn’t want an argument, not now.
“Okay, XO, let’s look around. O’Malley, I expect we’ll rendezvous off the capes.”
“The helo’s ready to launch right now, Captain. We’ll be there when you want us.”
Morris nodded and went forward. The captain’s personal ladder to the bridge was a bare three feet from the CIC door, and his own. He trotted up—or tried to, his legs rubbery with exhaustion.
“Captain on the bridge!” a petty officer announced.
Morris was not impressed. He was appalled to see that the ship’s “wheel” was only a brass dial about the size of a telephone’s. The helmsman actually had a seat, offset from the centerline, and to his right was a clear plastic box containing the direct-control throttle to the ship’s jet-turbine engines. A metal rod suspended from the overhead ran completely from one side of the pilothouse to the other at a height that allowed it to be grabbed easily in heavy seas, an eloquent comment on this ship’s stability.
“Have you served on a ‘fig’ before, sir?” the XO asked.
“Never been aboard one,” Morris answered. The heads of the four men on bridge watch each turned a hair at that. “I know the weapons systems; I was part of the design team at NAVSEA back a few years ago, and I know more or less how she handles.”
“She handles, sir. Like a sports car,” Ernst assured him. “You’ll especially like the way we can turn the engines off, drift as quiet as a log, then be up to thirty knots in two minutes flat.”
“How quickly can we get under way?”
“Ten minutes from your say-so, Captain. The engine lube oil is already warmed up. There’s a harbor tug standing by to assist us away from the dock.”
“NAVSURFLANT, arriving,” boomed the announcing system. Two minutes later, the Admiral appeared in the pilothouse.
“I have a man bringing your gear up. What do you think?”
“XO, will you see to the provisioning?” Morris said to Ernst, then, “Shall we discover my stateroom together, Admiral?”
A steward was waiting for them below with a tray of coffee and sandwiches. Morris poured himself a cup, another for the Admiral, and ignored the food.
“Sir, I’ve never handled one of these before. I don’t know the engines—”
“You’ve got a great chief engineer and she’s a dream to handle. Besides, you have your conning officers. You’re a weapons and tactics man, Ed. All your work is done in CIC. We need you out there.”
“Fair enough, sir.”
“XO, take her out,” Morris ordered two hours later. He watched Ernst’s every move, embarrassed that he had to depend on another to do it.
But it was amazingly easy. The wind was off the pier, and the frigate had a huge sail area that invited help. As the mooring lines were slackened off, the wind and the auxiliary power units located on the hull directly under the bridge pushed
James’s
bow into the clear, then the gas-turbine engines moved her forward into the channel. Ernst took his time, though he was clearly capable of doing it faster. Morris took careful note of this, too. The man didn’t want to make his captain look bad.
From there on it was easy, and Ed Morris watched his new crew at work. He’d heard stories about the California Navy
—like, okay, man—
but the quartermasters at the chart table updated the position with crisp assurance, despite the unfamiliar harbor. They glided noiselessly past the piers of the navy yard. He saw empty berths that would not soon be filled, and not a few ships whose sleek gray hulls were marred with scorched holes and twisted steel.
Kidd
was there, her forward superstructure wrecked by a Russian missile that had gotten past her multilayered defenses. One of his sailors was looking that way, too, a boy still in his teens, puffing on a cigarette which he flicked over the side. Morris wanted to ask what he was thinking, but could scarcely describe his own thoughts.
It went quickly after that. They turned east at the empty carrier berthings, over the Hampton bridge-tunnel, then past the crowded amphibious basin at Little Creek. Now the sea beckoned them, forbiddingly gray under the cloudy sky.
HMS
Battleaxe
was already out there, three miles ahead, a subtly different shade on her hull, and the White Ensign fluttering at her mast. A signal light started blinking at them.
WHAT THE DEVIL IS A REUBEN JAMES,
Battleaxe
Wanted to know.
“How do you want to answer that, sir?” a signalman asked.
Morris laughed, the ominous spell broken. “Signal, ‘At least we don’t name warships for our mother-in-law. ’ ”
“All right!” The petty officer loved it.
STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND
“The Blinder isn’t supposed to be able to carry missiles,” Toland said, but what he saw gave the lie to that intelligence assessment. Six missiles had gotten through the defending fighters and landed inside the perimeter of the RAF base. Two aircraft were burning, half a mile away, and one of the base’s radars was wrecked.
“Well, now we know why their activity has been light the past few days. They were refitting their bombers to deal with our new fighter force,” Group Captain Mallory said, surveying the damage to his base. “Action, reaction. We learn, they learn.”
The fighters were returning. Toland counted them off in his head. He came up short by two Tornados and one Tomcat. As soon as the landing rolls were completed, each fighter taxied to its shelter. The RAF did not have enough permanent ones. Three of the American fighters ended up in sandbag revetments where ground crews immediately refueled and rearmed their aircraft. The crews climbed down their ladders to waiting jeeps and were driven off for debriefing.
“Bastards used our own trick on us!” one Tomcat pilot exclaimed.
“Okay, what did you run into?”
“There were two groups, about ten miles apart. Lead group was MiG-23 Floggers with the Blinders behind them. The MiGs launched before we did. They really knocked our radars back with white noise, and some of their fighters were using something brand new, a deceptive jammer we haven’t run across yet. They must have been at the edge of their fuel, ’cause they didn’t try to mix it up with us. I guess they just wanted to keep us off the bombers until they launched. Damn near worked. A flight of Tornados came around them on the left and bagged four of the Blinders, I think. We got a pair of MiGs—no Blinders—and the boss vectored the rest of the Toms onto the missiles. I splashed two. Anyway, Ivan’s changed tactics on us. We lost one Tomcat, I don’t know what got him.”
“Next time,” another pilot said. “We go up with some of our missiles pre-set to go after the jammers. We didn’t have enough time to set that up. If we can get the jammers first, it’ll be easier to handle the fighters.”
And then the Russians will change their tactics again,
Toland thought.
Well, at least we have them reacting to us for a change.
FÖLZIEHAUSEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
After eight hours of vicious fighting that saw artillery fire dropping on the forward command post, Beregovoy and Alekseyev stopped the Belgian counterattack. But stopping them wasn’t enough. They’d advanced six kilometers before running into a solid wall of tanks and missiles, and the Belgian artillery was laying heavy intermittent fire on the main road supporting the Russian advance toward Hameln. Certainly they were preparing for another attack, Alekseyev thought.
We have to hit them first
—
but with what?
He needed his three divisions to advance on the British formations standing before Hameln.
“Every time we break through,” Major Sergetov observed quietly, “they slow us down and counterattack. This was not supposed to happen.”
“A splendid observation!” Alekseyev snarled, then regained his temper. “We expected that a breakthrough would have the same effect as in the last war against the Germans. The problem is these new light antitank missiles. Three men and a jeep”—he even used the American title for it—“can race along the road, set up, fire one or two missiles, be gone before we can react, then repeat the process a few hundred meters away. Defensive firepower was never so strong before, and we failed to appreciate how effectively a handful of rear-guard troops can slow down an advancing column. Our security is based on movement”—Alekseyev explained the basic lesson from tank school—“a mobile force under these conditions cannot afford to be slowed down. A simple breakthrough is not enough! We must blast a massive hole in their front and race at least twenty kilometers to be free of these roving missile-crews. Only then can we switch over to true mobile doctrine.”
“You say we cannot win?” Sergetov had begun to have his own doubts, but did not expect to hear them from his commander.
“I say what I did four months ago, and I was correct: this campaign of ours has become a war of attrition. For the moment, technology has defeated the military art, ours and theirs. What we’re doing now is seeing who runs out of men and arms first.”
“We have more of both,” Sergetov said.
“That is true, Ivan Mikhailovich. I have many more young men to throw away.” More casualties were arriving at the field hospital. The line of trucks running in and out never stopped.
“Comrade General, I received a message from my father. He wishes to know how things progress at the front. What should I tell him?”
Alekseyev walked away from his aide for a minute to ponder that.
“Ivan Mikhailovich, tell the Minister that NATO opposition is far more serious than we expected. The key now is supplies. We need the best information we can get on NATO’s supply situation and a determined effort to worsen that situation. We have received little information on how well the naval operations to kill NATO convoys are going. I need that in order to evaluate NATO’s endurance. I don’t want analyses out of Moscow. I want the raw data.”
“You are unhappy with what we get from Moscow?”
“We were told that NATO was politically divided and militarily uncoordinated. How would you evaluate that report, Comrade Major?” Alekseyev asked sharply. “I can’t go through military channels with that sort of request, can I? Write up your travel orders. I want you back here in thirty-six hours. I’m sure we’ll still be here.”
ICELAND
“They should be there in half an hour.”
“Roger that, Doghouse,” Edwards replied. “Like I said, no Russians visible. We haven’t seen any aircraft all day. There was some movement on the road west of us six hours ago. Four jeep-type vehicles. Too far off to tell what was in them, and they were southbound. The coast is clear. Over.”
“Okay, let us know when they get there.”
“Will do. Out.” Edwards killed the radio. “People, we got some friends coming in.”
“Who and when, skipper?” Smith asked at once.
“Didn’t say, but they’ll be here in half an hour. Must be an air drop.”
“They come take us out?” Vigdis asked.
“No, they can’t land a plane here. Sarge, you got any opinions?”
“Same as yours, I ’spect.”
The plane was early, and for once Edwards saw it first. The C-130 Hercules four-engine transport skimmed down from the northwest, only a few hundred feet over the eastern slope of the ridge they were on. A stiff breeze blew from the west as four small shapes emerged from the aft cargo door and the Hercules turned abruptly north to leave the area. Edwards concentrated on the descending parachutes. Instead of drifting down into the valley below them, the parachutists were coming straight down to a rock-filled slope.
“Oh, shit, he misjudged the wind! Come on!”
The parachutes dropped below them as they ran downhill. One by one they stopped, losing their shape in the semidarkness as the men landed. Edwards and his party moved rapidly, trying to remember where the men had landed. Their camouflage ’chutes turned invisible as soon as they touched the ground.
“Halt!”
“Okay, okay. We’re here to meet you,” Edwards said.
“Identify yourself!” The voice had an English accent.
“Code name Beagle.”
“Proper name?”
“Edwards, first lieutenant, U.S. Air Force.”
“Approach slowly, mate.”
Mike went forward alone. At length he saw a vague shape half-hidden by a rock. The shape held a submachine gun.
“Who are you?”
“Sergeant Nichols, Royal Marines. You picked a bloody poor place to receive us, Lieutenant.”
“I didn’t do it!” Edwards answered. “We didn’t know you were coming until an hour ago.”
“Balls-up, another bloody balls-up.” The man stood and walked forward with a pronounced limp. “Parachuting’s dangerous enough without coming into a fucking rock garden!” Another figure came up.