“Go away,” Mike rasped through his grinning teeth.
“My father loves to fish,” the senior lieutenant said, manipulating the flight controls to Hover.
“Shit on the fish,” the gunner snapped back. “I want to catch one of those. Look where that young bastard has his hand!”
They probably don’t even know what’s going on, he thought. Or if they know, they have sense enough not to do anything about it. Nice to see that some people are untouched by the madness that’s sweeping the world . . . The pilot looked down at his fuel gauges.
“They look harmless enough. We’re down to thirty minutes’ fuel. Time to return.”
The chopper settled at the tail, and for a terrible moment Edwards thought it might be landing. Then it pivoted in midair and moved to the southwest. One of the soldiers riding in the back waved at them. Vidgis waved back. They stood there as it fiew off. Their hands came down, and her left arm held his tight against her. Edwards had not realized that Vigdis didn’t wear a bra. He was afraid to move his hand, afraid to appear to make an advance. Why had she done that? To help fool the Russians—to reassure him, or herself? That it had in fact worked seemed unimportant. The Marines were still concealed. They stood there quite alone, and his left hand seemed to burn as his mind stumbled over what he ought to do.
Vigdis acted for him. His hand slid away as she turned to him and buried her head against his shoulder. Here I am holding the prettiest girl I ever met in one hand, Edwards thought, and a Goddamned fish in the other. That was easily solved. Edwards dropped the fish, wrapped both arms around her, and held on tight.
“Are you all right?”
She looked up at his face. “I think yes.”
There was only one word for what he felt toward the girl in his arms. Edwards knew this wasn’t the time, and wasn’t the place, but the look and the word remained. He kissed her gently on the cheek. The smile that answered him counted more than all the passionate encounters of his life.
“Excuse me, folks,” Sergeant Smith said from a few feet away.
“Yeah.” Edwards disengaged himself. “Let’s get moving before they decide to come back.”
USS CHICAGO
Things were going well. American P-3C Orions and British Nimrods were scouting the route to the icepack. The submarines had been forced to detour east around one suspected Russian submarine, but that was all. Ivan was sending most of his boats south, it seemed, confident that the Norwegian Sea was under his control. Another six hours to the pack.
Chicago was drifting now, finished with her turn at the head of the “freight train” procession of submarines. Her sonar gear searched the black water for the telltale noise of a Russian submarine. They heard nothing but the distant growling of the icepack.
The tracking team plotted the position of the other American submarines. McCafferty was glad to see they had trouble doing so, even with America’s best sonar equipment. If they had trouble, so would the Russians. His crew looked to be in good shape. Three days on the beach had counted for a lot. The beer supplied by the Norwegian skipper, plus word on what their Harpoon had done in Chicago’s one real engagement, had counted for even more. He’d already briefed the crew on their current mission. The information was accepted quietly, with a couple of jokes about going back home—to the Barents Sea.
“That was Boston, skipper,” the XO said. “Now we’re the caboose.”
McCafferty walked back to examine the chart. Everything looked okay, but he checked everything carefully. With so many submarines running the same course track, the risk of collision was real. A quartermaster ran down the list of the sister subs that had passed Chicago. The skipper was satisfied.
“All ahead two-thirds,” he ordered. The helmsman acknowledged the order and twisted the annunciator dial.
“Engine room answers all ahead two-thirds.”
“Very well. Left ten degrees rudder. Come to new course three-four-eight.”
Chicago accelerated to fifteen knots, taking her station at the end of the column as the freight train raced to the Arctic.
31
Demons
VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA
“Left full rudder!” Morris screamed, pointing at the torpedo’s wake.
“Right full rudder, aye!” the helmsman replied, spinning the wheel right, then left, then centering it.
Morris stood on the port bridge wing. The sea was flat calm, and the torpedo’s wake was clearly visible, following every turn and maneuver the frigate made. He even tried reversing, and that didn’t work—the torpedo appeared to go sideways. It stopped dead in the water and rose to the surface where he could see it. It was white, with what seemed to be a red star on the nose . . . and it had eyes, like all homing torpedoes. He ordered flank speed, but the torpedo stayed with him on the surface now, skimming along like a flying fish, clearly visible to all who could see—but only Morris saw it.
It closed ever so slowly as the frigate maneuvered. Fifty feet, thirty, ten . . .
“Where did my daddy go?” the little girl asked. “I want my daddy!”
“What’s the problem, skipper?” the exec asked. This was very strange, because he didn’t have a head—
Sweat poured from Morris’s face as he bolted upright in his bed, his heart racing. The digital clock on the headboard said 4:54. Ed got up and walked shakily into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. The second time tonight, he thought. Twice more during the tow back to Boston the nightmare had come, robbing him of the few hours of rest he allowed himself. Morris wondered if he had screamed in his sleep.
You did everything you could have done. It’s not your fault, he told the face in the mirror.
But you were the captain, it replied.
Morris had gotten through five homes when he’d had to stop. It was one thing to talk to wives and parents. They understood. Their sons and husbands were sailors, and had taken a sailor’s risk. But the four-year-old daughter of Gunner’s Mate Second Class Jeff Evans had not understood why her daddy would never come home again. A second-class petty officer didn’t make much, Morris knew. Evans must have worked like a madman on that little house to make it as neat as it was. A good man with his hands, he remembered, a good gunner’s mate. Every wall was newly painted. Much of the interior woodwork had been replaced. They’d been in the house only seven months, and Morris wondered how the petty officer had found the time to get all that work done. He had to have done it himself. No way he could have afforded contractors. Ginny’s room had been a testimony to her father’s love. Dolls from all over the world had stood on handmade shelves. As soon as he’d seen Ginny’s room, Morris had had to leave. He’d felt himself on the verge of breaking down, and some absurd code of conduct wouldn’t allow him to do that in front of strangers. So he’d left and driven home, with the rest of the list tucked back in his wallet. Certainly the fatigue that had enveloped him would allow him a night’s sleep . . .
But now he stood in front of the mirror, looking at a man with hollow eyes who wished his wife were there.
Morris went out to the kitchen of his one-story house and went mindlessly through the process of making coffee. The morning paper was on the doorstep, and he found himself reading stories about the war that he knew to be inaccurate or out of date. Things were happening much too fast for reporters to keep up. There was an eyewitness account from an unnamed destroyer about a missile that had leaked through her missile defenses. An “analysis” piece explained how surface warships were obsolete in the face of determined missile attacks and asked where the fleet’s vaunted carriers were. That, he thought, was a pretty good question.
Morris finished his coffee and returned to the bathroom for a shower. If he had to be awake, he thought, he might as well be at work. He had one set of undress whites in the closet. He donned them a few minutes later and walked out to his car. It was already first light when he drove to the Norfolk Navy Base.
Forty minutes later he was in one of several operatio
ns rooms, where the positions of convoys and suspected submarine locations were plotted. On the far wall the threat board listed estimated Russian assets and the numbers and types of kills accumulated to date. Another wall showed losses. If the intel guys were right, he thought, the war at sea had the look of a draw—but for the Russians a draw was the same as a win.
“Good morning, Commander,” COMNAVSURFLANT said. Another man who had not slept very much. “You look a little better.”
Better than what? Morris wondered.
“We have some good news for a change.”
NORTH ATLANTIC
The B-52 crews were nervous despite the heavy fighter escort. Five thousand feet above them, a full squadron of F-14 Tomcats flew top cover, having just refueled from KC-135 tankers. The other squadron was tanking now for their part in the mission. The sun was just peeping above the horizon, and the ocean below them was still dark. It was 0300 local time, when human reaction times are at their worst.
KEFLAVIK, ICELAND
The alarm klaxon jolted the sleeping Russian pilots off their cots. Their ground crews took fewer than ten seconds to begin preflight procedures as the airmen climbed the steel ladders into their cockpits and plugged in their helmet radios to learn what the emergency was.
“Heavy enemy jamming activity to the west,” the regimental commander announced. “Plan Three. Repeat: Plan Three.”
In the control trailer, radar operators had just seen their radar screens turn to a cluttered nightmare of white-noise jamming. An American raid was coming in—probably B-52s, probably in force. Soon the American aircraft would be so close that the ground-based radars could burn through the jamming. Until then, the fighters would try to engage as far out as they could to reduce the number of bombers before they could strike their target.
The Soviet pilots had been well drilled in their time on Iceland. Within two minutes the first pair of MiG-29s was rolling; in seven all were in the air. The Soviet plan left a third of the fighters over Keflavik while the others charged west toward the jamming, their own missile-targeting radars on, seeking targets. They were ten minutes out when the jamming stopped. A single MiG got a radar contact off a retreating jamming aircraft and radioed Keflavik, only to learn from his ground controllers that nothing was on the scopes out to a range of three hundred kilometers.
A minute later, the jamming began again, this time from the south and east. More cautiously this time, the MiGs flew south. On orders, they kept their radar systems shut down until they were a hundred miles offshore, but when they switched on they found nothing. Whoever was jamming was doing it from a great distance. The ground controllers reported that three jammers had been involved in the first incident and four in the second. Quite a lot of jammers, the regimental commander thought. They’re trying to run us around, trying to make us use up our fuel.
“Come east,” he ordered his flight leaders.
The B-52 crews were really nervous now. One of the escorting Prowlers had picked up the voice radio orders from the MiGs, and another had caught a flash of their air-intercept radars to the southwest. The fighters eased south also. They were now one hundred fifty miles from Keflavik, crossing the Icelandic coast. The mission commander evaluated the situation and ordered the bombers to turn slightly north.
The B-52s carried no bombs, just the powerful radar jammers designed to allow other bombers to reach targets within the Soviet Union. Below them, the second squadron of Tomcats was heading for the deck, the eastern slopes of the Vatna glacier. With them were four Navy Prowlers for additional protection against air-to-air missiles in case the MiGs got too close.
“Starting to get some airborne radars, bearing two-five-eight. Seems to be closing,” one Prowler reported. Another copied the same signal and they triangulated the range to fifty miles. Close enough. The mission commander was flying a Prowler.
“Amber Moon. Say again, Amber Moon.”
The B-52s turned back east and dove, opening their bomb bays to disgorge tons of aluminum chaff that no radar signal could penetrate. As soon as they saw that, the American fighters all dropped their external fuel tanks, and the Prowlers broke off from the bombers to orbit just west of the chaff. Now came the tricky part. The fighters of both sides were closing at a combined speed of over one thousand miles per hour.
“Queer check,” the mission commander radioed.
“Blackie check,” acknowledged the skipper of VF-41.
“Jolly check,” replied the commander of VF-84. Everyone was in position.
“Execute.” The four Prowlers flipped on their antimissile jamming gear.
The twelve Tomcats of the Jolly Rogers were strung on a line at thirty thousand feet. On command they activated their missile-guidance radars.
“American fighters!” shouted a number of Russian pilots. Their threat receivers instantly told the pilots that fighter-type radars were locked on their aircraft.
The Soviet fighter commander was not surprised. Surely the Americans would not risk their heavy bombers again without a proper escort. He’d ignore these and bore in for the B-52s, as his training dictated. The MiG radars were heavily jammed, their ranges cut in half and as yet unable to track any targets at all. He ordered his pilots to be alert for incoming missiles, confident that they could avoid those that they saw, and had all his aircraft increase power. Next, he ordered all but two of his reserve force to leave Keflavik and come east to support him.
The Americans needed only seconds to lock onto targets. Each Tomcat carried four Sparrows and four Sidewinders. The Sparrows went first. There were sixteen MiGs in the air. Most had at least two missiles targeted, but the Sparrows were radar-guided. Each American fighter had to remain pointed at its target until the missile hit. This ran the risk of closing within range of Soviet missiles, and the Tomcats were not equipped with protective jammers.
The Americans had taken position up-sun from the Russians. Just as their radars began to burn through the American jamming, the Sparrows arrived, the first directly from the sun, exploding its MiG in midair and warning everyone in its flight. The Soviet aircraft began radical jinks up and down, some pilots breaking into hard turns as they saw the seven-inch wide missiles racing in, but four more found their targets, and in moments there were three hard kills and one severely damaged aircraft that turned to limp for home.
The Jolly Rogers turned as soon as their missiles were spent and ran northeast with the Soviets in pursuit. The Russian commander was relieved that the American missiles had performed so poorly, yet still enraged at the loss of five aircraft. His remaining aircraft bore in on afterburner as their targeting radars began to defeat the American jamming. The American fighter escort had had its turn, he knew. Now it was his turn. They ran northeast, their visored eyes alternating between squints into the sun and quick looks at their radarscopes to pick out targets. They never looked down. The lead MiG finally had a target and launched two missiles.
Twenty thousand feet below them, shielded from ground radar by a pair of mountains, twelve Tomcats of the Black Aces went to afterburner, their radars shut off as the twin-engined fighters rocketed skyward. Within ninety seconds the pilots began to hear the growling signal that indicated their Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles were tracking targets. Seconds later, sixteen missiles were fired from a range of two miles.
Six Russian pilots never knew what hit them. Of the eleven MiGs, eight were hit in a matter of seconds. The commander’s luck remained briefly as he jerked his fighter around, causing a Sidewinder to break lock and fly into the sun, but now what could he do? He saw two Tomcats running south, away from his remaining fighters. It was too late to organize an attack—his wingman was gone, and the only friendly aircraft he could see was to his north—so the colonel reefed his MiG into an eight-g turn and dove at the American, oblivious to the warning buzz of his threat receiver. Both Sparrows launched from the second group of Black Aces struck his wing. The MiG came apart around him.
The Americans had no time to gloat.
The mission commander reported a second group of MiGs heading their way and the American squadrons regrouped to meet them, forming a solid wall of twenty-four aircraft, their radars shut down for two minutes as the MiGs raced into the cloud of jamming. The Russian second-in-command was making a serious error. His fellow pilots were in danger. He had to go to their rescue. One group of Tomcat volleyed off its remaining Sparrows; the other fired Sidewinders. A total of thirty-eight missiles closed in on eight Soviet aircraft who had no clear picture of what they were running into. Half of them never did, blotted out of the sky by American air-to-air missiles; three more were damaged.
The Tomcat pilots all wanted to close, but the commander ordered them off. They were all short of fuel, and Stornoway was seven hundred miles off. They turned east, ducking through the cloud of aluminum chaff left by the B-52s. The Americans would claim thirty-seven kills, quite a score since they had expected a total of only twenty-seven Russian aircraft. In fact, of twenty-six MiGs, only five undamaged aircraft remained. A stunned air base commander immediately began rescue operations. Soon the parachute division’s attack helicopters were flying northeast, searching for downed pilots.
STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
Thirty kilometers from Alfeld to Hameln, Alekseyev thought. An hour’s drive in a tank. Elements of three divisions were making that drive now, and since the crossing had been achieved, they’d advanced a total of only eighteen kilometers. This time it was the English: the tanks of the Royal Tank Regiment and 21st Lancers had stopped his leading elements cold halfway to Hameln and hadn’t budged in eighteen hours.