“What are we supposed to be doing, Commander?” the systems operator inquired.
“We’re supposed to be missile bait, Willy,” O’Malley replied amiably, and lifted off.
NORTH ATLANTIC
The southernmost Bear was within sixty miles of the convoy, but didn’t yet know it, nor did the Americans, since he was below the horizon from Reuben James’s radar. The Bear’s pilot did know that it was about time for the aircraft to climb and switch on their own search radars. But word hadn’t come yet from the raid commander. Though there was no indication of trouble, the pilot was worried. His instinct told him something strange was happening. One of the Bears that had disappeared last week reported tracking a single American frigate radar—nothing more. Just like now . . . The raid commander then had aborted the Backfire mission for fear of enemy fighter activity, only to be dressed down for supposed cowardice. As was so often the case in combat, the only data available were negative. They knew that four Bears had not returned. He knew that his raid commander had not yet given the expected order. He knew there had not been any positive sign of trouble. He also knew that he was not happy.
“Estimated distance to that American frigate?” he asked over his intercom.
“One hundred thirty kilometers,” the navigator answered.
Maintain radio silence, the pilot told himself. Those are the orders . . .
“Screw the orders!” he said aloud. The pilot reached down and flipped on his radio. “Gull Two to Gull One, over.” Nothing. He repeated the call twice more.
Lots of radio receivers heard that, and in less than a minute the Bear’s position was plotted, forty miles southeast of the convoy. A Tomcat dove after the contact.
The raid commander didn’t answer . . . he would have answered, the pilot told himself. He would have answered. The Backfires should now be less than two hundred kilometers away. What are we leading them into?
“Activate the radar!” he ordered.
Every screen ship detected the distinctive emissions from the Big Bulge radar. The nearest SAM-equipped ship, the frigate Groves, immediately energized her missile radars and fired a surface-to-air missile at the oncoming Bear—but the Tomcat fighter that was also racing toward the Bear was too close. The frigate shut down her tracking radar, and the SMI missile lost radar lock and self-destructed automatically.
Aboard the Bear the warnings came back to back, first surface-to-air missile alarm, then an air-intercept radar—and then the radar operator acquired the convoy.
“Many ships to the northwest.” The radar operator passed the information to the navigator, who worked out a position report for the Backfires. The Bear shut down her radar and dove while the communications officer broadcast his sighting report. And then everyone’s radars lit up.
USS REUBEN JAMES
“There are the Backfires,” the tactical action officer said as the symbols appeared on the scope. “Bearing zero-four-one, range one hundred eighty miles.”
On the bridge the executive officer was as nervous as he would ever get. In addition to the inbound bomber raid, he was now conning his ship exactly fifty feet from the side of HMS Battleaxe. The ships were so close together that on a radarscope they’d appear as a single target. Five miles away’Malley and the helicopter from Battleaxe were also flying close formation over the ocean at twenty knots. Each had its blip-enhance transponder turned on. Ordinarily too small to register on this sort of radar, the helicopters would now appear to be a ship, something worthy of a missile attack.
NORTH ATLANTIC
The air action now had all the elegance of a saloon fight. The Tomcats on combat air patrol near the convoy flew toward the three Bears, the first of which already had a missile streaking toward it. The other two had not yet detected the convoy, and never would, as they ran due east to get away. It was a vain attempt. Propeller-driven patrol bombers cannot run from supersonic fighters.
Gull Two died first. The pilot managed to get his contact report out and acknowledged before a pair of Sparrow missiles exploded close aboard, setting his wing afire. He ordered his men to bail out, kept the aircraft level so they could, and a minute later struggled out of his seat and jumped through the escape hatch in the floor. The Bear exploded five seconds after he opened his parachute. As the pilot watched his aircraft fireball into the sea, he wondered if he’d drown.
Above him a squadron of Tomcats headed toward the Backfires, and the race was to see who got into missile-firing position first. The Soviet bombers climbed steeply on afterburner, activating their own look-down radars to find targets for their missiles. Their orders were to locate and kill escorts, and they found what they were looking for thirty miles from the body of the convoy: two blips. The large blip in the rear drew six shots. The smaller one five miles away drew four.
STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND
“We have a multiregiment Backfire raid in progress now at forty-five degrees north, forty-nine west.” Toland held the Red Rocket telex in his hand.
“What does COMEASTLANT have to say about it?”
“He’s probably going over this one now. You ready?” he asked the fighter pilot.
“Damned right I’m ready!”
The teleprinter in the corner of the room started chattering: INITIATE OPERATION DOOLITTLE.
USS REUBEN JAMES
“Vampire, vampire! We have incoming missiles.”
Here we go again, Morris thought. The tactical display was more modern than what he’d had on Pharris—each of the incoming missiles was marked with a velocity vector that indicated speed and direction. They were coming in low.
Morris lifted his phone. “Bridge, Combat. Execute separation maneuver.”
“Bridge, aye. Separating now,” Ernst said. “Crash stop! All back emergency!”
The helmsman pulled the throttle control back, then abruptly reversed the pitch of the propeller blades, throwing the ship from ahead to full astern. Reuben James slowed so rapidly that men had to brace themselves, and Battleaxe forged ahead, accelerating to twenty-five knots. As soon as it was safe, the British frigate turned hard to port, and Reuben James went to ahead full and turned sharply to starboard.
Any Soviet radar operator who had lingered behind would have been impressed by the deception. The oncoming AS-4 missiles had been targeted on a single blip. Now there were two, and they were separating. The missiles divided their attention evenly, with three opting for either target.
Morris watched his display intently. The distance between his ship and his companion was widening rapidly.
“Missiles are tracking us!” the ESM operator said loudly. “We have multiple missile seeker heads tracking us.”
“Right full rudder, reverse course. Fire off chaff rockets!”
Everyone in the Combat Information Center jumped as four canisters exploded directly overhead, filling the air with aluminum foil and creating a radar target for the missiles to track while the frigate heeled violently to port as she turned. Her forward missile launcher turned around with her, a SAM already assigned to the first incoming Russian missile. The frigate righted herself on a northerly course, three miles behind Battleaxe.
“Here we go,” the weapons officer said. The solution light blinked on the fire-control console.
The first of the white-painted SMI missiles shot into the sky. It had scarcely cleared the launch rail when the launcher twisted in two dimensions and accepted another missile from the circular magazine, then turned and elevated again, firing seven seconds after the first missile was launched, then repeated the cycle twice more.
“That’s it!” O’Malley said when he saw the first smoke trail. He punched his finger on the blip-enhance button. “Hatchet, shut down your emitter and break left!” Both helicopters went to full power and ran away. Four missiles suddenly had no targets. They kept heading west to look for more, but there were none to be found.
“More chaff,” Morris ordered, watching the electronic traces of friendly and unfriendly missiles conver
ge. The CIC shook again as another cloud of aluminum blasted into the air, and the wind carried it toward the incoming missiles.
“We still have missiles tracking us!”
“Hit!” the weapons officer exclaimed. The first missile disappeared from the scope, intercepted sixteen miles out, but the second Soviet missile kept coming. The first SAM sent after it missed, exploding harmlessly behind it, and then the second one missed, too. Another SAM was fired. Range was down to six miles. Five. Four. Three.
“Hit! One missile left—veering off. Going after the chaff! Passing aft!”
The missile struck the water two thousand yards from Reuben James. Even at that distance the noise was impressive. It was followed by total silence in the CIC. Men kept staring at their instruments, looking for additional missiles, and it took several seconds before they were satisfied that there were no more. One by one the sailors looked at their comrades and began to breathe again.
“What modern combat lacks in humanity,” Calloway observed, “it more than makes up for in intensity.”
Morris leaned back in his chair. “Or something like that. What’s the story on Battleaxe?”
“Still on radar, sir,” the tactical action officer replied. Morris lifted the radiotelephone.
“Bravo, this is Romeo. Do you read, over.”
“I do believe we’re still alive.” Perrin was examining his tactical display and shaking his head in amazement.
“Any damage?”
“None. Hatchet is checking in. He’s all right, too. Remarkable,” Captain Perrin said. “Any further inbound traffic? We show none.”
“Negative. The Tomcats chased the Backfires off the scope. Let’s get reformed.”
“Roger, Romeo.”
Morris hung up and looked around the CIC. “Well done, people.”
The sailors in the room looked at each other, and presently some grins started showing. But they didn’t last long.
The TAO looked up. “For your information, Captain, Ivan fired a quarter of his missiles at us. So far as I can tell, the Tomcats got about six, and Bunker Hill got most of the rest . . . but we show one frigate hit, and three merchies. The fighters are returning.” He kept his voice neutral. “They report zero kills on the Backfire force.”
“Damn!” Morris said. The trap had failed—and he didn’t know why.
He had no idea that Stornoway considered it a success.
STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND
The key to the operation, as with all military operations, was communications, and not enough time had been spent setting the lines up on this one to suit Toland. The America’s radar aircraft tracked the Backfires all the way off the scope. The data from the aircraft was linked to the carrier, thence by satellite to Norfolk, and by satellite again to Northwood. His data came by land line from Royal Navy headquarters. The most important NATO mission of the war depended on transistors and telephone wire more than the weapons that were to be employed.
“Okay, their last course was zero-two-nine, speed six hundred ten knots.”
“That puts them over Iceland’s north coast in two hours, seventeen minutes. How much time did they have on burner?” Commander Winters asked.
“About five, according to America.” Toland frowned. This was pretty thin intelligence information.
“Any way you cut it, their fuel reserves are thinned down some . . . Okay. Three aircraft, eighty miles apart.” He looked over at the newest satellite weather photo. “Good visibility. We’ll spot ’em. Whoever does, follows—the other planes come right back home.”
“Good luck, Commander.”
NORTH ATLANTIC
The three Tomcats climbed slowly to altitude on a course northwest from Stornoway, and at thirty-five thousand feet linked up with their tankers. Several hundred miles away the Backfire crews did much the same thing. The presence of American fighters over the convoy in large numbers had come as a rude shock, but time and distance had been in their favor, and they’d managed to escape without loss this time. The crew of each aircraft talked among themselves, their emotions released by the climax of yet another dangerous mission. They discussed the claims they’d make on returning to Kirovsk, based on a straightforward mathematical formula. One missile in three was judged to have hit a target, even accounting for enemy SAM fire. Today SAM opposition had been light—though none had lingered to evaluate it properly. By consensus they would claim sixteen ship kills, and claim both the outside sonar pickets that their comrades in submarines were having such a bad time with. The flight crews relaxed and sipped tea from thermos jugs as they contemplated their next visit to the eighty-ship convoy.
The Tomcats separated as they spotted the mountains of Iceland. No radio signals were passed; the flyers exchanged hand signals before breaking off on their patrol stations. They knew the radars couldn’t reach them there. Commander Winters checked his watch. The Backfires should be here in about thirty minutes.
“Such a beautiful island,” the Backfire pilot observed to his copilot.
“Pretty to look at, living there I am not so certain about. I wonder if the women are as pretty as I have heard? One day we must have ‘mechanical difficulties.’ Then we could land there and find out.”
“We must get you married, Volodya.”
The copilot laughed. “So many tears would be shed! How can I deny myself to the women of the world?”
The pilot punched up his radio. “Keflavik, this is Sea Eagle Two-Six, status check.”
“Sea Eagle, we show no contacts except for your group. Count is correct. IFF transponders show normal.”
“Acknowledged. Out.” The pilot switched off. “So, Volodya, our friends are still there. Lonely place.”
“If there are women about, and you are kulturny, you need never be lonely.” Another voice came over the intercom.
“Will somebody shut that horny bastard up!” the navigator suggested.
“Studying to be a political officer?” the copilot inquired. “How long to home?”
“Two hours twenty-five minutes.”
The Backfire continued northeast at six hundred knots as it passed over the desolate center of the island.
“Tallyho!” the pilot said quietly. “One o‘clock and low.” The Tomcat’s on-board television system showed the distinctive shape of the Russian bomber. Say what you want about the Russians, Winters thought, they do build ’em pretty.
He turned the aircraft, which took his nose-mounted camera off the target, but his back-seat officer put his binoculars on the Backfire and soon spotted two more flying in a loose formation. As expected, their course was northeast, and they were cruising at about thirty thousand feet. Winters looked for a big cloud to hide in and found one. Visibility dropped to a few yards. There could be another Backfire out there, Winters thought, and maybe he likes flying in clouds, too. That could really ruin this mission.
He ran out of cloud a moment later, banked his fighter hard, and ducked back inside, his mind computing time and distance. The Backfires should all be past now. He pulled back on his stick and popped out of the cloud top.
“There they be,” the back-seater said first. “Heads up! I see more of ‘em at three o’clock.”
The pilot vanished back into the cloud for another ten minutes. Finally: “Nothing to the south of us. They should all be past by now, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, let’s go looking.”
One terrifying minute later, Winters was wondering if he hadn’t let them get too far ahead, as his TV system swept across the sky and found nothing. Patience, he told himself, and increased his speed to six hundred ninety knots. Five minutes later, a dot appeared on his screen. It grew to three dots. He estimated he was forty miles behind the Backfires, and with the sun at his back, there was no way they could spot him. His back-seater made a check of the radar warning receiver and the air behind them for additional aircraft, a procedure repeated three times a minute. If an American fighter could be out here, why not a Russian?
&n
bsp; The pilot watched the numbers click off on his inertial navigation system, kept an eye on fuel, and watched forward for any change in the Russian bomber formation. It was both exciting and boring. He knew the significance of what he was doing, but the actual doing was no more thrilling than driving a 747 from New York to L.A. For over an hour they flew, covering the seven hundred miles between Iceland and the Norwegian coast.
“Here’s where it gets cute,” the back-seater said. “Air-search radar ahead, looks like Andøya. Still over a hundred miles away, they’ll probably have us in two or three minutes.”
“That’s nice.” Where there was air-search radar, there would be fighters. “Got their position worked out?”
“Yep.”
“Start transmitting.” Winters turned the aircraft and headed back out to sea.
Two hundred miles away, a circling British Nimrod receipted the signal and retransmitted to a communications satellite.
NORTHWOOD, ENGLAND
Admiral Beattie was trying to remain calm, but it didn’t come easily to a man whose nerves had been stretched and abused by crisis after crisis since the war began. Doolittle was his baby. For the past two hours, he’d waited for word from the Tomcat. Two had returned without sighting the Russians. One had not. Was it tracking them as planned or had it merely fallen into the sea?
The printer in the corner of the communications room began to make the screeing sound that the Admiral had learned to hate: EYEBALLS REPORTS HARES AT 69/20N, 15/45E AT 1543z COURSE 021 SPEED 580 KTS ALT 30.