There was real danger here. For a mechanized formation, safety lay in movement. The Soviets were feeding units into the gap, but NATO was using its air power to the utmost. The bridges on the Leine were being destroyed almost as fast as they could be repaired. Engineers had prepared crossing points on the riverbanks, and the Russians were able to swim their infantry carriers across now, but the tanks couldn’t swim, and every attempt to run them across underwater—as they were supposedly equipped to do—had been a failure. Too many units had had to be deployed to protect the breach in NATO’s lines, and too few were able to exploit it. Alekseyev had achieved a perfect textbook breakthrough—only to see that the other side had its own textbook for containing and smashing it. Western Theater had a total of six reserve class-A divisions to send into the fighting. After that they would have to start using class-B units composed of reservists, with older men and equipment. There were many of them, but they would not—could not—perform as well as the younger soldiers. The General bridled at the necessity of committing units to battle that would certainly take higher casualties than normal. But he had no choice. His political masters wanted it, and he was only the executor of political policy.
“I have to go back forward,” Alekseyev told his boss.
“Yes, but no closer than five kilometers to the front line, Pasha. I cannot afford to lose you now.”
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
The Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, looked at his own tally sheet. Nearly all of his reserves were committed to the fighting now, and the Russians seemed to have an endless supply of men and vehicles moving forward. His units had no time to reorganize and redeploy. NATO faced the nightmare of all armies: they could only react to the moves of their opponent, with almost no chance to launch their own initiatives. So far things were holding together—but only barely. Southeast of Hameln his map showed a British brigade. In fact it was nothing more than a reinforced regiment composed of exhausted men and damaged equipment. Artillery and aircraft were all that allowed him to prevent a collapse, and even that would not be enough if his units didn’t get much more replacement equipment. More ominously, NATO was now down to two weeks of ordnance, and the resupply coming from America had been seriously impeded by attacks on the convoys. What could he tell his men? Reduce munitions expenditures—when the only thing stopping the Russians was the profligate use of every weapon at hand?
His morning intelligence brief was starting. The chief NATO intelligence officer was a German general who was accompanied by a Dutch major carrying a videotape cassette. For something this important, the intel officer knew, SACEUR wanted to see the raw data, not just the analysis. The Dutch officer set up the machine.
A computer-generated map appeared, then units showed up. The tape took under two minutes to display five hours of data, repeating it several times so that the officers could discern patterns.
“General, we estimate that the Soviets are sending six full divisions toward Alfeld. The movement you see here on the main road from Braunschweig is the first of them. The others come from their theater reserve, and these two coming south are reserve formations from their northern army group.”
“So you think that they are making this their main point of attack?” SACEUR asked.
“Ja.” The German General nodded. “The Schwerpunkt is here.”
SACEUR frowned. The rational thing to do would be to withdraw behind the river Weser to shorten his defensive line and reorganize his forces. But that would mean abandoning Hannover. The Germans would never accept that. Their own national strategy of defending each home and field had cost the Russians dear—and stretched NATO forces to the breaking point. Politically they would never accept such a strategic withdrawal. West German units would fight on alone if they had to: he could see it clearly enough in the eyes of his own intelligence chief. And if somebody invaded New Hampshire, he admitted to himself, would I withdraw into Pennsylvania?
An hour later, half of the existing NATO reserves were heading east from Osnabrück to Hameln. The battle for Germany would be won or lost on the right bank of the Weser.
STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND
The returning Tomcats got little rest. As soon as they landed, the British and American ground crewmen refueled and rearmed the fighters. The Russians were raiding the British northern airfields more carefully now. The American airborne radar aircraft supporting the British Nimrods and Shackletons were making life hard on the twin-engine Blinder bombers flying out of Andøya in Norway. Royal Air Force Tornados flew combat air-patrol missions two hundred miles offshore while the American pilots rested, a few enterprising crew chiefs painted red stars underneath the cockpits, and intelligence officers evaluated gunsight videotapes and recordings of Soviet missile radars.
“Looks like we hurt them,” Toland judged. The kill claims were too high, but with fighter pilots they always were.
“Bet your ass!” replied the commander of the Jolly Rogers. The Navy commander chewed on a cigar. He claimed personal credit for a pair of MiGs. “Question is, will they reinforce? It worked once, but they won’t fall for that gag again. You tell me, Toland: can they replace what we culled out?”
“I don’t think so. The MiG-29 is about the only fighter they can stage out that far. The rest of those are in Germany, and they’ve taken a beating there, too. If the Russians decide to cut loose some MiG-31s, I think they can reach that far, but I don’t see them releasing their prime bomber-interceptor for this kind of mission.”
The Jolly Rogers’s skipper nodded agreement. “Okay. Next step then is we put a combat air patrol close to Iceland and start beating on those Backfire raids for-real.”
“They might just come looking for us, too,” Toland warned. “They have to know now what we did, and where we did it from.” The commander of VF-41 looked out the window. One of his Tomcats sat half a mile away between two piles of sandbags. Four missiles were visible on the airframe. He fingered the Ace of Spades emblem on his chest and turned back.
“Good. If they want to fight us on our turf, in our radar cover, fine.”
ALFELD, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
Alekseyev left his helicopter on the outskirts of the town and climbed into yet another BMP infantry carrier. Two ribbon bridges were operating. Fragments of at least five others littered the riverbanks, along with countless burned-out tanks and trucks. The commander of 20th Tanks rode with them.
“NATO air attacks are murderous,” General Beregovoy said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Even with our SAMs they close in. We get our share, but it’s not enough, and things only get worse as we approach the front.”
“What progress have you made today?”
“The main opposition at the moment is English. At least a brigade of tanks. We’ve pushed them back two kilometers since dawn.”
“There’s supposed to be a Belgian force out there also,” Sergetov pointed out.
“They’ve disappeared. We don’t know where they are—and, yes, that worries me also. I’ve placed one of the new divisions on our left flank to guard against counterattack. The other will join 20th Tanks when we resume the attack this afternoon.”
“Strength?” Alekseyev asked.
“The Twentieth is down to ninety working tanks. Maybe less,” the General said. “That number is four hours old. Our infantry has done better, but the division is now under fifty-percent nominal strength.”
Their vehicle angled down onto the floating ribbon bridge. Each boxlike segment was bolted to two others, and the vehicle bobbed up and down like a small boat in the surf as they drove across the Leine. All three officers controlled their feelings, but none liked being locked inside a steel box over the water. The BMP infantry assault vehicle was technically amphibious, but many had sunk without warning and it was rare for anyone to escape when that happened. They could hear distant artillery fire. Air attacks at Alfeld happened without warning. It took just over a minute to complete the crossing.
“In case you’re curious,
that bridge we just crossed holds the record for the longest survival.” He checked his watch. “Seven hours.”
“What of that major you requested the gold star for?” Alekseyev asked.
“He was wounded in an air attack. He’ll live.”
“Give him this. Perhaps it will speed his recovery.” Alekseyev reached into a pocket and came out with a five-pointed gold star attached to a blood-red ribbon. He handed it to the General. That major of engineers was now a Hero of the Soviet Union.
USS CHICAGO
All the boats slowed on reaching the icepack. McCafferty inspected it through his periscope, a thin white line less than two miles away. There was nothing else visible. Few ships lingered so near the ice, and no aircraft were visible.
Sonar reported a gratifying amount of noise. The serrated fringe of the pack was composed of thousands of individual floes, slabs of ice a few feet thick, ranging in size from a few square feet to several acres. Every year they came loose with the spring thaw and drifted at random until the freeze began again. While loose in the brief arctic summer, they drifted at random, grinding against one another in a process that destroyed some of the smaller floes, which added to the never-ending groans and pops of the solid ice that went across the top of the pole all the way to the North Slope of Alaska.
“What’s that?” McCafferty adjusted the scope slightly, turning the handle to the twelve-power setting. He’d glimpsed what might have been a periscope for the merest instant. It was gone now and—reappeared: the swordlike dorsal fin of a male killer whale. A puff of spray marked its breath, condensing to vapor in the polar air, then a few more whales appeared. What was it they called a family of orcas? A school—no, a pod. Up here hunting seals, probably. He wondered if the omen was good or bad. Orcinus orca was the scientific name: Bringer of Death.
“Sonar, do you have anything at one-three-nine?”
“Conn, we have eleven killer whales on that bearing. I make it three males, six females, and two adolescents. Pretty close in, I think. Bearing is changing slowly.” The sonar chief responded as if insulted. There were standing orders not to report “biologicals” unless specifically ordered otherwise.
“Very well.” McCafferty had to grin in spite of himself.
The other submarines of Operation Doolittle were strung out on a line more than ten miles across. One by one they went deep and headed under the pack. An hour later the freight train headed east, five miles inside the nominal edge of the pack. Twelve thousand feet below them was the floor of the Barents Abyssal Plain.
ICELAND
“Haven’t seen a chopper all day,” Sergeant Smith observed.
Conversation, Edwards noted, made a nice distraction from the fact that they were eating raw fish. He checked his watch. It was time to call in again. It had gotten so that he could assemble the radio antenna in his sleep.
“Doghouse, this is Beagle, and things could be a lot better, over.”
“Beagle, we read you. Where are you now?”
“About forty-six kilometers from our objective,” Edwards replied. He gave them map coordinates. There was one road yet to cross, and only one more row of hills, according to the map. “Nothing much to report except we have not seen any choppers today. In fact we haven’t seen any aircraft at all.” Edwards looked up. The sky was pretty clear, too. Usually they spotted fighters once or twice a day as they patrolled overhead.
“Roger that, Beagle. Be advised that the Navy sent some fighters over and beat them up pretty good around dawn.”
“All right! We haven’t seen any Russians since the chopper looked us over.” In Scotland his controller shuddered at that. Edwards went on, “We’re down to eating fish we catch, but the fishing’s pretty good.”
“How’s your lady friend?”
Mike had to smile at that one. “She’s not holding us back, if that’s what you mean. Anything else?”
“Negative.”
“Okay, we’ll be back if we see anything. Out.” Edwards flipped the power switch on the radio pack. “Our friends say the Navy chewed up some Russian fighters today.”
“ ’Bout time,” Smith said. He was down to his last five cigarettes and stared at one now, deciding whether or not to reduce his supply to four. As Edwards watched, he opened his lighter to poison himself again.
“We go to Hvammsfjördur?” Vidgis asked. “Why?”
“Somebody wants to know what’s there,” Edwards said. He unfolded the tactical map. It showed the entrance to the bay to be crammed with rocks. It took him a moment to realize that while the land elevations were in meters, the depth curves on the map were in fathoms . . .
KEFLAVIK
“How many?”
The fighter regiment commander was lowered gently from the helicopter, his arm tied across his chest. Ejecting from his disintegrating aircraft, the colonel had dislocated his shoulder, and then his parachute had landed him on a mountainside, giving him a sprained ankle plus several facial cuts. It had taken eleven hours to find him. On the whole, the colonel considered himself lucky—for a fool who had allowed his command to be ambushed by a superior force.
“Five aircraft are mission capable,” he was told. “Of the damaged ones, we can repair two.”
The colonel swore, angered in spite of the morphine that coursed through his veins. “My men?”
“We’ve found six, including you. Two are uninjured and can still fly. The rest are in the hospital.”
Another helicopter landed close by. The paratroop general got out and came over.
“Good to see you alive.”
“Thank you, Comrade General. You are continuing the search?”
“Yes. I have detailed two helicopters to the task. What happened?”
“The Americans staged a raid with heavy bombers. We never saw them, but we could tell from the jamming. They had fighters mixed in with them. The bombers fled when we approached.” The Air Force colonel tried to put the best face on it, and the General did not press him. This was an exposed post, and such things were expected. The MiGs could hardly have ignored the American raid. There was no point in punishing this man.
The General had already radioed for more fighters, though he didn’t expect any. The plan said they would not be necessary, but the plan had also said his division had to hold the island unsupported for only two weeks. By that time Germany was supposed to be fully defeated, and the land war in Europe mainly over. He received reports from the front that were mere embellishments of the news on Radio Moscow. The Red Army was driving on the Rhein—and they’d been driving on the Rhein since the first day of the damned war! The names of the cities under daily attack were strangely left out. His intelligence chief was risking his life by listening in on Western radio broadcasts—the KGB regarded it as a disloyal act—in order to get an idea of how the fighting was going. If Western reports were true—he didn’t really believe them either—the campaign in Germany was a bloody mess. Until that was over, he was vulnerable.
Would NATO try to invade? His operations officer said it was impossible unless the Americans were able to destroy the long-range bombers flying out of Kirovsk first, and the whole point of seizing Iceland had been to prevent the American carriers from moving to a position from which they could do just that. On paper, then, the General expected only increased air attacks, and he had surface-to-air missiles to defend against those. But he hadn’t become a divisional commander by merely shuffling papers.
NORTH ATLANTIC
“What the hell happened?” The captain looked up to see a tube stuck in his arm. The last thing he remembered was being on the bridge halfway through the afternoon watch. Now the porthole on the starboard side of his stateroom was covered. Darkened ship: it was night outside.
“You passed out, Captain,” the chief hospital corpsman said. “Don’t—”
The captain tried to rise. His head made it about eighteen inches off the pillow when his strength gave way.
“You have to rest. You got internal bl
eeding, skipper. You threw up blood last night. I think it’s a perforated ulcer. You scared the hell outa me last night. Why didn’t you come see me?” The chief held up a bottle of Maalox tablets. People gotta be so damned smart about everything. “Your blood pressure’s down twenty points and you durned near went into shock on me. This ain’t no bellyache you got, Captain. You might have to have surgery. There’s a helo on the way out now to medevac you to the beach.”
“I can’t leave the ship, I—”
“Doc’s orders, Captain. If you die on me I lose my perfect record. I’m sorry, sir, but unless you get real medical attention real quick, you could be in real trouble. You’re heading for the beach.”
32
New Names, New Faces
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
“Good morning, Ed.” Commander, Naval Surface Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet was seated behind a desk covered with dispatches that seemed to be organized into piles. Morning—half an hour after midnight. Morris hadn’t left Norfolk since arriving at dawn on the previous day. If he went home, he’d have to sleep again . . .
“Morning, sir. What can I do for you?” Morris didn’t want to sit down.
“You want to go back out?” COMNAVSURFLANT asked bluntly.
“Who with?”
“Reuben James’s skipper came down with a bleeding ulcer. They flew him in this morning. She arrives in another hour with the ’phibs from PACFLT. I’m assigning her to convoy duty. We have a big one assembling in New York harbor. Eighty ships, all big, all fast, loaded with heavy equipment for Germany. It sails in four days with a heavy U.S./U.K. escort, plus carrier support. Reuben James will be in port long enough to refuel and reprovision. She sails for New York this evening in company with HMS Battleaxe. If you’re up to it, I want you to take her.” The Vice Admiral eyed Morris closely. “She’s yours if you want her. You up to it?”