Battlefield Russia

Operation Nordic Fury

Commodore Robert Cornell, the captain of the HMS Queen Elizabeth, had just poured himself a fresh cup of tea when the storm suddenly opened up on them. He sighed. He didn’t want this winter storm to derail the start of this very important operation.

The wind had been howling for a while, but now the windshield wipers on the bridge were in full swing, batting back and forth against the rain, which was coming down so quickly that it still made it nearly impossible for them to see. Looking to the right of the bridge, Cornell could see one of the destroyers rising as it crested a solid ten-meter wave before racing down the back of it into the trough and subsequently being hammered by another large wave.

“The troops in the transports are probably retching their guts out right now. Land lubbers,” he thought with a smirk.

Commodore Cornell turned to look for his weather officer. “How long is this new storm supposed to stick around?” he asked.

Lieutenant Commander Jonathon Band replied, “It should clear up in about twenty-four-hours, though we are still going to experience some rough seas for at least two or three days. The latest satellite report shows we should have about five days of clear, good weather before the next storm hits the Barents Sea and moves down into the White Sea.”

Cornell thought about that for a moment. At their current pace, they’d be in range of Russian air and missile defenses in three days, but they’d need at least two or three days to clear themselves a path for the troop ships to round the Kola Peninsula into the White Sea. That left them roughly twenty-four to forty-eight hours to land the troops and secure the area before the next storm hit and put an end to both air and sea support operations.

“This next storm — can you give me your best estimate of how long you think it’ll last? Are we talking a couple of days, or maybe a week in length?” he pressed.

The weatherman paused. “Sir, weather prediction is tricky, especially when you’re talking about a week or more in advance. I can give you a better estimate in four or five days. However, right now, if I had to estimate, I would guess it should last around three, maybe four days. But that’s a guess right now. It could be shorter or longer. What I can assure you of is, when it does hit, we’ll be hard-pressed to carry out any air operations and certainly wouldn’t be able to support any amphibious operations unless the ships were already in the White Sea.”

This was about as close to a definitive answer as he was going to get. “OK, Band. Thank you for the insight,” Cornell responded. “If you can, please make sure you’re coordinating your assessments with the French and Americans in the fleet. Let’s hope the weather gods will smile on us long enough to accomplish our mission.”

Seeing that he wasn’t really needed on the bridge, Commodore Cornell made his way to the air operations tower to see how his air operation planners were progressing with the next phase of the operation. They still needed to hunt down and destroy the Russians’ remaining aircraft carrier and what was left of the Russian northern fleet.

The storm had been battering the HMS Albion, which had been carrying three commando brigades of the Royal Marines, for more than a day. While many of the men were used to being holed up on an amphibious assault ship, they were not as used to having twice as many Marines crammed into the same space. It made for some uncomfortable living conditions, and all the men were eager to get ashore and fight the Russians.

Sergeant Philip Jones was one such Marine. He was far more at home in the woods or mountains, stalking an enemy that could kill him, than being cooped up on a ship in the middle of the ocean with no way to defend himself. The constant battle drills the ship captain kept running the crew through only reinforced his belief that he was safer on land than stuck on the transport. The thought of a Russian submarine torpedoing their ship was unnerving and terrifying. With the frigid temperatures of the waters they were sailing through, there was little chance of survival for very long if their ship was sunk.

As the waves kept rolling up and down, he drifted back to thoughts of how he’d gotten to be in this situation in the first place. This was Sergeant Jones’s seventh year in the Marines. He’d joined at the age of just eighteen, shortly after his mother had passed away from breast cancer. Jones was an only child, and his mother was the only real family he had ever known. His father, an abusive drunkard, had left him and his mother when he was just nine, abandoning them to fend for themselves. As a young boy he’d grown up in government housing, with a mother who loved him dearly but spent most of her time working, trying to make sure her only son had a chance at life. His mother had sacrificed so much to ensure he was able to attend a good primary and secondary school, knowing that education was going to be his way out of the low-income ghetto they’d found themselves living in.

When his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, he had just turned sixteen. He opted to finish school early and quickly found a menial labor job to help bring in some money to help cover the mounting medical bills. Private insurance and specialists were expensive. When his mother became too sick to work, Jones looked for other ways to make money, eventually turning to one of his childhood friends who ran with the wrong crowd. His friend, George, was two years older and had been working for a local gang who made their money in the drug trade. It didn’t take long before Jones was working a corner, peddling their products to earn some extra cash. However, he was a lot smarter than the average street thug. In a short period of time, he’d moved up the ranks from street peddling to running his own network. Jones knew the real money to be made was not on the street, but in the financial district.

A friend of his from school had a father who worked for Barclays as an investment banker. When his friend’s dad caught them smoking weed one day after school, rather than chastise the boys, he joined them. Through a little prodding, Jones was able to learn that his friend’s father had other colleagues who would be interested in finding a confidential source for some drugs. Jones assured him that he could provide a steady source of cocaine if he wanted it. Because he didn’t know who these people were, he’d sell the drugs to his friend’s father, and then he could sell the drugs to his friends. That way it made things easy.

For six months, this little arrangement worked out well. Jones was making more money than he had ever dreamed of and he made sure his mother was given the best care and medicine money could buy. Unfortunately for Jones, he was paying for specialized care that was way above the national coverage his mother’s meager wages could have afforded. This behavior, along with a few unnecessary purchases, eventually caught the attention of local law enforcement. One day, a pair of detectives paid Jones and his mother a house call. They’d been observing him for nearly a month and had built quite a case against him. His mother was appalled once she learned of how he’d been earning his money; it broke her heart to see that he was squandering the future life she had worked so hard to give him.

The police detectives saw some potential in Jones, and in consultation with the Justice Department, agreed to not press charges against him if he provided the names of who was supplying him the drugs and who he was selling them to, and then enlisted in the armed forces. The prosecutor had served in the Royal Marines for a stint and told Jones that it had helped to set him on the straight and narrow, and he was willing to give Jones the same opportunity if he’d take it. During this ordeal, Jones’s mother had passed away from the cancer, and with no one else in his life, he agreed to take them up on their offer of redemption.

A month before his eighteenth birthday, he’d joined the Royal Marines and left for recruit training. Seven years later, Jones had served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, along with a few other hotspots around the world. He had one year left in his enlistment, though he’d decided the Marines was it for him. He’d enlist again and this time make it a career, not just an adventure.

One of his corporals pulled him out of his memories. “Sergeant Jones, how far do you think we are from Russia?” he asked. The rest of his men were just as antsy to get off the ship.

“From what I’ve heard, we’re roughly four days away from the Kola Peninsula and then the White Sea. How are the men holding up?” Jones asked.

The corporal shrugged. “They’re holding up fine. I’m working them as hard as our limited space allows. Lots of time in the gym, etcetera.”

Before the two of them could say anything further, the warning klaxons sounded general quarters again. Thinking this was just another drill, they turned back to continue their conversation before they heard and felt an explosion. It didn’t quite feel like their ship had been hit, but something near their ship definitely had. This clearly was not a drill, and something terrible had just transpired. Sergeant Jones jumped up and made it his mission to find out what had happened.

The HMS Duncan was one of the newest British Type 45 Daring destroyers, and a pivotal part of the Queen Elizabeth strike group. With the American strike group in the center and rear positions of the fleet, the Duncan, along with three other Type 23 or Duke-class frigates, was responsible for protecting the European carriers and their French counterparts. There were over sixty warships in Task Force One, which made up the bulk of the fleet’s striking power. In Task Force Two, there were an additional fifty-two warships, though these mostly comprised the amphibious assault ships, troop transports, and additional roll-on, roll-off or ro-ro ships. It was an enormous fleet, and by far the largest concentration of Allied warships.

“Any word on that underwater contact yet? Is it moving toward the fleet?” asked Commander Mike Shepherd, the captain of the Duncan.

Lieutenant Martin Nibs looked up at the captain, replying, “No word on the possible contact in sector G3. However, the Portland just registered a possible underwater contact in D5. They’re moving to investigate it further right now.”

They were all a bit on edge. Several of the frigates had detected an underwater contact at the outskirts of the fleet’s protective zone. Unfortunately, the storm was preventing them from launching their helicopters or calling in for land-based support from their antisubmarine planes, which meant they were left with their passive and active sonars. One of the frigates would pound the water with its active sonar, while the other ships would sit in passive mode, trying to see if they would hear the sonar pulse reflect off the hull of an enemy submarine.

The terrible weather had also prevented them from being able to effectively deploy their towed sonar array, making it much more difficult to differentiate the sound of heavy rain and waves crashing around them from the noise of an electric pump or propulsion used on a submarine. For the last hour, they’d been picking up faint signals, only to lose them again in the clutter of the storm and then suddenly have them spring up again much closer to the fleet.

Commander Mike Shepherd scratched his head as he looked at the map for himself. As he saw where D5 was in relationship to G3, it just didn’t make sense. “That new contact is way too far away from G3 to be the same contact,” he asserted. “We’re most likely looking at a new contact, if that is in fact what it is,” he replied to the lieutenant, his targeting officer.

Lieutenant Nibs’s brow furrowed. “Sir, if this is a new possible underwater contact at D5, then that contact is well within our protective bubble. Shoot, they’re almost within torpedo range of the Queen Elizabeth, if it is a sub,” he explained.

“Damn this storm. We need our helicopters!” thought Commander Mike Shepherd. He clenched his fist, frustrated that the pounding rain was blocking their sensing capabilities.

One of the petty officers who was manning a sonar display nearby suddenly turned in his chair. “Multiple underwater contacts!” he shouted.

Everyone’s heads turned toward the captain, who shouted, “How many and where are they headed?”

“It’s that possible contact in D5. It’s a sub. Holy hell, the contact just multiplied. We’ve got five confirmed submarines!” shouted Petty Officer Lee Davies. “The identification is coming in now… they’re Akulas,” he said. Seconds later, he yelled, “Torpedoes! I count eight torpedoes in the water, Sir. It looks like one is heading toward the Portland, and another toward the Lancaster. The other six appear to be split evening between the Queen Elizabeth, the Charles de Gaulle, and the Italian ship, the Cavour.”

“Sound general quarters!” ordered Commander Shepherd. “Send a message to the fleet admiral and let him know what’s happening.” He hoped that somehow the frigates and other ships would be able to launch enough decoys to confuse the enemy submarines.

“How could the Russians have gotten so close to us?” he wondered in awe. He figured that there was no way that all five contacts were enemy subs — there had to be decoys. There was simply no other way to explain how an enemy threat had been able to penetrate so far into their perimeter.

Lieutenant Nibs finished a phone call. “Sir, the Lancaster is engaging the enemy submarines with their torpedoes, and the Somerset is moving to engage the enemy as well.”

Before either man could say anything else, Petty Officer Davies signaled for their attention again. “What is it, Petty Officer?” demanded the captain. He and Lieutenant Nibs quickly walked over to his sonar station.

“I’m picking up more torpedoes, Sir,” he answered. “They appear to be from one of our submarines. It’s engaging the underwater contacts. After listening more closely, it sounds like there’s probably only one Akula, not five. It sounds like the other Akula noises were decoys launched by the original submarine to confuse us.”

Both officers let out an audible sigh. Commodore Shepherd wiped his forehead. The volume of torpedoes five submarines would have been able to shoot at them would have certainly guaranteed some hits. As it was, they still had eight torpedoes heading toward the fleet.

They waited anxiously through every second for the next several minutes. One by one, they received reports from the sonar officer on whether or not the torpedoes hit their intended targets.

“Sir, I can confirm that the torpedo launched at the Lancaster went after the decoy and blew up harmlessly,” announced Petty Officer Lee Davies.

Several seamen nearby let out an excited half-yell, half-grunt. However, the battle was far from over.

Davies had another announcement. “Sir, the Portland wasn’t so lucky. The torpedo missed the decoy and definitely connected with the ship.”

Lieutenant Nibs got on the horn to find out what their status was. He looked a bit pale when he hung up. “Commodore, they did pick up the phone, so at least they weren’t immediately sunk. However, the torpedo sheared off most of the front part of the ship, and they’re taking on a lot of water. They don’t know for sure if the engineers will be able to repair the Portland enough for them to make it.”

Petty Officer Davies spoke again. “One of the French destroyers must have been able to move their decoy into the path of one of the torpedoes that was headed toward the Charles de Gaulle. It just exploded harmlessly.”

Every second felt like an eternity at this point to Commodore Shepherd.

“Commodore, the second torpedo headed toward the Charles de Gaulle did connect with the ship,” explained Davies.

Moments later, Lieutenant Nibs announced, “That last torpedo that hit the Charles de Gaulle must have been a wave runner since it traveled right in their wake. It blew up against the stern. There’s a small fire in engineering, but so far, they seem to be stable.”

One of the radar operators suddenly waved for attention. “Sir, the Kent—it’s moving right in the path of those torpedoes!” he shouted.

“My God, he must’ve realized that there was a wave runner and now he’s trying to obscure the torpedoes’ guidance picture,” thought Shepherd. It was a very risky move, and he wasn’t sure if he’d have had the stomach for it himself.

Petty Officer Davies announced, “Sir, the Kent just took a direct hit.”

Seconds later, everyone heard an enormous blast.

The XO called down from the bridge.

“What just happened?” asked Shepherd.

“Sir, the first hit must have damaged the boiler room. As soon as that icy water hit, the entire stern was blown clean off. There’s a third of the ship missing. There is no way they’re going to make it. Let’s just pray that some of the men can make it onto the life rafts before the Kent sinks beneath the waves,” the XO explained.

“We’re going to need to organize a rescue party,” Commodore Shepherd said.

However, before any action could take place on that matter, Petty Officer Davies announced, “Sir, the second torpedo that had been headed toward the Queen Elizabeth just connected with the hull.”

“What do you see, XO?” asked Shepherd.

“This does not look good, Sir,” responded the commanding officer. “The torpedo hit the underbelly of the ship, and she’s likely taking on a lot of water. She’s already starting to keel over to one side. They’re slowing down. They must have a lot of flooding. I see fires springing up all around. My God… I hope I’m not watching while the pride of British fleet is sinking.”

A knot formed in the pit of Commodore Shepherd’s stomach. He had never anticipated that this day could ever end this way.

Over the next few minutes, he learned that the Akula had been destroyed by the Allied torpedoes and that the Italian ship had skated by without any damage. However, it didn’t remove the awful feeling of knowing that many lives had been lost and that Her Majesty’s namesake was in danger of slipping to the bottom of the ocean.

Vice Admiral Mitch Lindal sighed. The fleet was four days into their operation, and already, they were experiencing a number of problems. Aside from the storm that was battering the aged ships that comprised his fleet, the Kitty Hawk was experiencing a series of engine problems that under any other situation would have meant she would have returned to port. But her aircraft — even the limited ones she was carrying — were needed for the coming operation. Two of her eight boiler rooms were experiencing problems that were affecting her propulsion systems. She was unable to maintain full speed, and while that wasn’t a problem right now, when it came time to launch their aircraft, it could become an issue.

“I wasn’t even supposed to be here,” he thought in one of his rare pessimistic moments.

After thirty-two years of military service, Vice Admiral Mitch Lindal had been five days away from starting his terminal leave and his retirement from the Navy when the war with Russia had started. His retirement had been postponed for ninety days to allow the Navy to determine how serious this new war was. Once the Bush carrier strike group had been destroyed, a second carrier sunk by the Chinese, and a third severely damaged, it had quickly become clear the US was going to need to pull several of their older carriers out of retirement to fill the gap. World War III had arrived, and it was all hands on deck to defeat the powers bent on destroying them.

Once Admiral Lindal’s retirement had been rescinded, he’d been placed in charge of creating a new carrier strike group that would defeat the Russian Navy and help end the war. In that pursuit, he was placed in charge of reactivating the USS Enterprise, which had recently been stripped of her electronics, reactor fuel rods and most of her other critical systems. An army of nearly three thousand contractors had been brought in and had worked around the clock to get the ship brought back up to speed.

In addition to getting the Enterprise reactivated and ready for war, he also had to ready John F. Kennedy, which was in a similar state. Both ships had been in the process of being made ready to be turned into floating museums, which was fortunate, given that at least they weren’t in the process of being broken down for scrap.

Getting the Kitty Hawk seaworthy was practically going to require an intervention from the Almighty. However, instead of divine intervention, Admiral Lindal has been given an army of contractors. The carrier had just started the process of being broken down for scrap when the war started. It had taken nearly ten months to get her seaworthy and ready for combat. Even in her deployment to England, she was still flooded with an army of two thousand contractors who were getting the ship’s electronics, weapons, and aviation functions ready for war. It was not until ten days prior to this deployment that the ship had received her full crew, munitions, and aircraft. Bringing these three carriers out of retirement and ready for war in essentially ten months had been nothing short of miraculous.

In addition to getting the three carriers ready for war, Admiral Lindal had also had to assemble the support ships that would be needed to escort this aged fleet of warships. After combing through the naval inactive ship maintenance facility in Philadelphia, his staff was able to identify thirteen of sixteen Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates that could be brought back up to service for this newly designated fleet. His planners had also identified two Ticonderoga-class cruisers and six amphibious transport ships. In Pearl Harbor, they’d looked at the eight amphibious assault transports and had wanted to incorporate them into their Atlantic fleet but had been told they had been slated for use in the Pacific. Admiral Lindal had only been allowed to pillage through the Atlantic reserve fleet. Rumor had it the Navy was even considering reactivating the two remaining Iowa-class battleships, purely for their sixteen-inch gun platforms.

It had been a long few months for Admiral Lindal, to say the least. He poured himself another cup of coffee and stared blankly out the window at the storm.

Captain Donna King had a similar idea. She emptied the current pot of coffee on the bridge into her mug, and after setting the next one up to brew, she found the admiral, who was looking outside. “Remind me why we’re launching this operation now, instead of a few months from now when the ship and the fleet would be better prepared,” she said in a hushed tone only loud enough for the two of them to hear.

Admiral Lindal grunted in reply before turning to look at the newly promoted captain. Donna King had just pinned on captain when the war started. She was going to assume the role of Commander Air Group on the George H.W. Bush when it had been sunk. When the Navy had made the decision to reactivate the Enterprise, she had been Admiral Lindal’s top pick to take command. Aside from being a brilliant aviator, she had served as his aide during his obligatory Pentagon tour. He knew if anyone could light a fire under the butts of the engineers to get the ship ready for combat, it would be her.

Ever since he’d met her sixteen years ago, Admiral Lindal had taken a liking to King. As a young F/A-18 Hornet pilot, she was aggressive and tenacious, but she was also a big thinker, someone who saw the grand strategy. That singled her out as an officer who would make flag level one day. He had taken it upon himself to help mentor her and guide her through the perils of the Navy officer selection process. When he had been given the herculean task of building a new carrier strike group out of mothballed and reserve ships, he’d sat down and gone through his rolodex of officers he had personally groomed and mentored. He had orders chopped and people transferred around as he sought to build his leadership dream team. He would do his best to make sure these officers were rewarded following the war.

Smiling as he looked at Donna, he responded in a similarly hushed tone. “If we wait, we won’t be able to move until spring. Before we left port, I had a telecom with the SecDef. He told me that between the ground offensive and our amphibious assault, they believe the Russian Army may completely collapse. We could end this war within the next two or three months.”

Captain King sighed but nodded. “Did you hear about the boiler room problems on the Kitty Hawk? I’m glad we don’t have that issue to deal with,” she said, changing the topic.

“Yeah, I’ve been hearing about a host of mechanical problems from different ships throughout the fleet. I hate to admit this, but I’m glad we brought a few tugboats along. Some of the transport ships are really having a hard time keeping up. I’ve already had to detail off a couple of frigates to help guard two transports that broke down and are currently trying to get back underway.”

“Did you ever think in 2018, a carrier fleet would be traveling with several tug boats? We’re as bad as the Russians,” she said with a slight chuckle. Prior to the war, the Russian carrier was often seen traveling with a tugboat. It was notorious for breaking down and having to be pulled into port.

“The Kitty Hawk was commissioned in 1961. I served on her in the 1980s. I never imagined leading a fleet of ships that had largely been part of the Ghost fleet.”

Before they could continue their conversation, a call came through, requesting their presence in the combat information center. They both headed down to the CIC to see what was going on. When they entered the room, they saw several underwater contacts on the big board screen.

“Torpedoes in the water!” announced one of the senior petty officers who had been manning one of the operations desks.

Before anyone else could speak, Admiral Lindal demanded, “Where are they headed?”

“The torpedoes appear to be aimed at the European ships,” he replied. “We’re well outside of their range.”

“Admiral, we’re receiving a message from the New Hampshire,” the underwater LNO explained. “They say they’re moving to engage an Oscar-class sub. They said it sounded like the Oscar was preparing to fire her cruise missiles.”

“Let’s go ahead and bring the rest of the fleet to battle stations and prepare them to respond to a possible cruise missile attack,” the admiral ordered. Despite the new threat, he trusted that his people and their ships would be able to handle the evolving situation.

Admiral Feliks Gromov smiled to himself as he watched the waves crashing. The storm raging in the Barents Sea couldn’t have come at a better time if he’d planned it himself. Things were going much better than he had anticipated.

Their intelligence sources in both Britain and Norway had confirmed the departure of the Allied fleet four days ago; when they’d discovered the Allied plans for Operation Nordic Fury, his officers had scrambled to figure out how they could stop the American fleet. It was clear they were going to try and end the war before the conclusion of the year, and if the Allies were successful in landing troops at Severodvinsk, they had a good chance of succeeding.

A major high-profile defeat like that would be nearly impossible for the media to spin, and it would cause the Russian people to question how well the war really was going. In general, the average Russian citizen knew the Allies were still carrying out sporadic strategic bombings across the country, but the news from the front was still regaling them with victories, tales of pushing the Allies completely out of Ukraine, and their army driving deep into Poland and even Slovakia. An Allied invasion of the Russian mainland from the White Sea would call all of that into question.

When the war with the Americans had started, Admiral Gromov had petitioned to have upgrades to the Admiral Nakhimov rushed, and to have his own flagship, the Pyotr Velikiy, equipped with their new 3M22 Zircon anti-ship missiles. NATO had called these missiles the SS-N-33, and they were petrified of them. While the Russian Navy had not been able to use them in the war up to this point, they would be heavily used in the coming naval battle.

Admiral Gromov had marshaled his meager fleet, which consisted of the lone Russian aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, two Kirov-class battlecruisers, his two remaining Slava-class cruisers, and the one remaining Sovremennyy-class destroyer the Allies had not sunk yet in an occupied Norwegian fjord. The Russian rocket forces had successfully shot down a few Allied satellites that were providing them with real-time intelligence over this area of the Barents Sea just for this operation. He also had three additional Udaloy-class destroyers for antisubmarine warfare support.

In all, his fleet comprised eight surface ships and four submarines — not much considering the fleet they were supposed to intercept, but what they had that the Allies didn’t was a hypersonic anti-ship missile capable of carrying a 2,500-pound warhead at speeds in excess of Mach 5. His fleet was equipped with a total of 120 of these missiles, and depending on how many of them made it through the Allied air-defense screen, his little fleet could still force the Allied fleet to turn around and head back to Britain.

Gromov’s greatest fear right now was not that his fleet would fail, but that Petrov might authorize the use of tactical nuclear weapons to destroy the Allied fleet if it came down to it. Many of the Russian military leaders were desperate to keep the war conventional, even if it meant they ultimately lost. After seeing how the American president had responded to the use of nuclear weapons by the North Koreans, there was no question as to how the US would respond to a second use of these dastardly weapons against their forces. Even in defeat, Admiral Gromov and his men would still have a home to come back to. However, if the war turned nuclear, there was no guarantee any of them or their families would survive, and that kind of victory was not worth having.

Once the Allied fleet left their British and European ports and formed up in the North Sea, the meteorologist reported that a large winter storm would descend from the North Pole and converge into a nasty storm over the Greenland Sea and then make its way down to the Norwegian and Barents Seas. During this period, it would be nearly impossible to conduct air operations, and the dense storm cloud coverage would hamper drone surveillance after the Allies lost their satellites. The loss of the satellites would only guarantee him a day, maybe two tops, before either new ones were launched or satellites already in space were redirected to cover the Allied fleet. If Gromov rushed his fleet from Tanafjorden, where he currently had them laid up, into the opposite side of Bear Island, he just might catch the Allied fleet by surprise.

As he continued to watch the waves crash around him, his mood soured a bit. “These rollers are horrendous,” he thought. Launching an attack in this severe of a weather pattern was very risky. If the targeting officers weren’t careful, the missiles could very well fly right into a wave before they even hit an American ship.

He sighed. If they waited for calmer seas, the Allies would be able to use their Air Force and drones, and his fleet wouldn’t last an hour against the Allied airpower.

“No, we need to use this horrible storm and hope for the best,” he determined.

Turning to face his weapons officer, Admiral Gromov nodded. “Order the fleet to begin firing our missiles,” he announced.

Gromov glanced down at his watch; the submarines would begin launching their attack within the next ten minutes. If they timed things correctly, the Allied fleet would be dealing with torpedoes and missiles from the submarines when their swarm of hypersonic missiles showed up on their radar screens.

Bright flashes of light appeared on the front section of the battlecruiser as the first missiles fired out of the vertical launch system. Forty Zircon missiles packed enough punch to severely cripple a strike group — at least that was what the military developers in Moscow had told the Russian armed forces.

“Vampires! Vampires! Vampires! We have inbound missiles bearing 113, one hundred and thirty kilometers, traveling .9 Mach,” shouted one of the air-defense officers aboard the USS Enterprise. The team of radar and defensive weapons personnel were picking up handsets and shouting all sorts of information as they tried to begin the critical coordination of the fleet’s defenses.

The watch commander in the CIC turned to face the admiral. “Sir, the Gates is asking permission to slave the fleet’s air-defense systems. What should I tell him?” asked Commander Lipton, holding the receiver to his shoulder while he waited for a response.

Captain King gave the admiral a pensive look that said it was a gamble. While the Thomas Gates was a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, she had also been pulled out of mothballs and given a hasty upgrade to make her seaworthy. There were a lot of concerns about her targeting computer’s ability to properly slave and integrate the air-defense weapons of the fleet’s destroyers and frigates. In normal times, none of them would have questioned this decision. They would have had a system in place where the cruiser would have taken over and immediately engaged the enemy threats with the fleet’s missiles.

Admiral Lindal made eye contact with King. He must have seen her nervous look, but he straightened up. “Permission granted,” he ordered. “Have the Gates take control of the air-defense systems immediately. Tell Captain Tappal he’d better take those threats out.”

Captain King felt nervous, but she gritted her teeth and went about her job.

“I wish I had as much optimism as Lindal,” she thought. Then she realized that the admiral had known Captain Tappal for a long time and most likely trusted him to report any potential problems before now.

She turned to her air boss. “Captain Adel, is there any possible way we can get some aircraft in the air? I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of missiles being thrown at us soon.”

The CAG looked at her for a second and then at the weather screen and readings. “I’d advise against it, Captain, but I’ll ask for volunteers. Are you thinking of a Growler flight?”

“Yes, I want to get as many of our Growlers in the air as possible. I know the weather’s terrible, but my gut says there’s at least one or two Oscars out there that are about to make life tough for us. With the Queen Elizabeth and the Charles de Gaulle sitting still while they assess their damage, I want to make sure we have some electronic countermeasure assets airborne.”

No sooner had she finished her sentence than the lieutenant commander who oversaw their air-defense system shouted again. “Vampires, Vampires!”

She turned to look at the radar display. As she watched, she saw the original six anti-ship missiles headed toward the fleet suddenly turn into forty new contacts. Before she had any time to figure out what had happened, a second wave of twenty missiles appeared from a new heading and suddenly split into sixty missiles, further throwing her off.

“What the hell is happening, Commander Lipton? How are these missiles multiplying?” Captain King asked, confused.

“They aren’t multiplying,” answered Lipton. “They’re projecting decoys to throw off our defenses.” The irritation in his voice showed just how angry he was at the Russians for employing this new trick.

Minutes went by as they observed the fleet’s missile interceptors start to converge on the enemy threats. One by one, the enemy missile count was starting to go down, though they were still getting close to the fleet. The British and French warships now joined the fray, firing the next round of interceptors. Once the enemy missiles reached forty kilometers from the fleet, they increased speed as they headed in for the kill. The targeting computers were still struggling with determining which missiles were ghosts and which ones were in fact missiles, so interceptors were being launched at each contact, just to make sure.

As the enemy remaining missiles zoomed into the last layer of defense, a new set of missile contacts showed up on the screen.

“Those must be more ghost contacts. There’s no way an enemy missile could travel that fast,” Captain King thought. Her eyes grew wider as the targeting data showed that the new threats were traveling at speeds of Mach 5.2. At that rate, they would close the distance between them very rapidly.

She turned to face her watch commander. “Where are these missiles coming from? And tell me that’s not their true speed,” she demanded.

Commander Lipton didn’t say anything.

Admiral Lindal picked up a receiver near him. “Tappal?” he confirmed. After the slightest of pauses, he yelled, “Tell me those missiles aren’t traveling at Mach 5.2!”

Captain King saw Admiral Lindal hit the speaker button so everyone could hear the answer.

There was no response on the other end for a few seconds, but everyone could hear a fair bit of shouting and loud voices in the background. “Those speeds are accurate, Admiral.,” Tappal finally said. “They appear to have come from the Bear Island vicinity, or at least that’s our best guess. I didn’t think the Russians had deployed them yet, but these must be the new Zircon missiles. They can travel at speeds in excess of Mach 5 and carry a 2,500-pound warhead.”

Captain King suddenly felt nauseous.

“Tell me you can shoot them down or have a plan to deal with them,” demanded the admiral.

“The two Growlers you guys just launched, we’re going to try and see if they can jam the missiles until they hit our defensive perimeter,” said Captain Tappal. He paused. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Admiral, we’ll get one shot at taking them before they come in range of our point defenses. Once they enter that zone, I’m not confident our systems will swat them down. I’d prepare the fleet to absorb some hits, Sir.” His voice sounded bleak.

Admiral Lindal sighed. “Do what you can,” he answered. “Hopefully, this is the only barrage they have.”

Just as Captain King thought the situation couldn’t get any worse, the initial wave of hypersonic cruise missiles was suddenly joined by a second, and then a third wave that were rapidly closing the distance between them.

Turning to the watch commander, the admiral asked, “Did we sustain any hits from the first barrage of missiles?”

Commander Lipton replied, “A couple. One of the frigates took a direct hit. The ship is still afloat, though she has a serious fire to her aft section. Two of the destroyers were hit. None fatally. I’m more concerned by this new set of missiles. I don’t think we’ve ever encountered something like this. I have no idea if we’re going to be able to shoot them down.”

Minutes ticked by as they watched the Growlers use their ECM jammers on the missiles in an effort to help confuse and blind them from the hundreds of interceptors heading toward them. When the first wave of interceptors converged on the hypersonic missiles, they scored a number of hits, but of the forty missiles in the first wave, thirty-two continued on. Then the second wave of interceptors converged, and another ten more missiles were destroyed. At this point, the Zircons were traveling so fast that they were on the fleet before a third wave of interceptors could be fired, and it was now up to the point defense systems to do their job.

Dozens upon dozens of RIM-116 and ESSM missiles from the carriers, destroyers, and frigates joined the fray, adding hundreds of additional interceptors, all trying to stop the hypersonic threats from hitting the fleet. Fractions of a second later, the Phalanx CIWS guns joined in.

“Brace for impact!” yelled someone in the CIC. Seconds later, the ship shook violently, throwing several sailors to the ground who were not strapped in. A thunderous boom reverberated throughout the ship.

“Damage report!” yelled Captain King.

Before anyone could respond to her, the CIWS opened fire a second time. The next wave of hypersonic missiles had already begun to arrive.

“Brace for impact!” someone else yelled.

Thud!

The ship lurched as another missile hit their carrier. The lights flickered off briefly, creating a moment of panic before they switched back on.

Captain King had been thrown the floor and hit something on her way down that temporarily knocked the wind out of her. She watched Admiral Lindal help himself back up from the deck and walked over to one of the action officers. “What’s the status of the fleet?” he asked.

From her perch on the floor, King could clearly see the look of fear written on the young lieutenant’s face.

“This is probably his first time being shot at,” she realized. It was an unnerving experience, one she wished they were not going through right now.

The lieutenant examined his computer screen, which was being refreshed with the status of each ship in the fleet. Although she couldn’t see very much from the floor, Captain King did note that there were several names highlighted in red and many more in yellow.

The young lieutenant answered, “Three ships have been destroyed, Sir. I’m showing fifteen more with damage. We’ll get the actual damage report on how bad they are soon.”

“What about the carriers? How many were hit?” Admiral Lindal demanded.

One of the petty officers tried to use the external cameras to see if they could spot any of the carriers and see if they had any visible damage. “Sir,” he said, “while the winds from the storm have died down the past hour, the rain is still heavy. There’s enough of a mist that it’s difficult to get any clean images. From what I can see, there are a lot of fires in all directions around us.”

“Satellites are back up!” yelled one of the petty officers manning the air-defense system. Bad weather had been interfering with their reception for several hours.

Captain King finally managed to catch her breath and went about the task of getting a damage assessment of the ship. However, she also kept her ears open to overhear what was going on at Admiral Lindal’s end. She managed to pick up that the enemy ships were making best speed to the coastline, and heard Lindal order, “Send a message out to the fleet to engage the enemy ships with our Tomahawks. I want those ships destroyed.”

A few moments later, Admiral Lindal walked over to join her. “Captain, satellites are back up. We’ve identified the location of the enemy fleet. Can you get your birds in the air to finish them off?” he asked.

Captain King looked at the admiral and shook her head. “We’re a no for further flight operations, Admiral. One of those missiles hit the hangar deck. We’ve also got one of the catapults down right now, and the port-side elevator is out. More reports are coming in now, and it looks like we took a lot of damage to the aircraft down there as well.”

“This isn’t good. How many casualties?” he asked.

King tried to stay strong and keep her composure as she responded, “No idea just yet, but it’s going to be high, Sir.”

Captain Adel interrupted them. “Ma’am, I’ve got four F/A-18s that were already on the flight deck before the attack. We can launch them now if you want,” he said.

She nodded, and the CAG ordered the fighters launched. They’d link up with the others that had already been able get airborne and go after whatever Russian ships remained after the Tomahawks did their job.

Admiral Lindal thanked Captain King and then moved over to his action officers. “Have the Tomahawks launched yet?” he asked.

Chief Morris looked up at him. “The Ramage and Cole are launching their missiles now. However, Sir, the Laboon was sunk, and so were the Carney and the Gonzalez.”

“My God, that was sixty percent of our Tomahawk capability,” Admiral Lindal thought. He suddenly realized just how many sailors had perished at sea. He shook himself — there wasn’t time to dwell on it. He could mourn the dead later.

Changing subjects, Lindal ordered, “Give me the battle damage assessment of the fleet.”

A senior chief spoke up. “Sir, the Charles de Gaulle is gone. She was nearly dead in the water when the hypersonic missiles converged on the fleet, so she had no way of being able to maneuver. She took nine direct hits, several to her magazine rooms. Once her missiles and bombs started to go off, she completely blew up. I don’t know how, but both the Italian and Spanish carriers sustained only minor damage from the first cruise missile attack by the Russian subs. They are moving to try and conduct search and rescue operations of the ships that have been sunk.”

Admiral Lindal shook his head. This was not good.

The senior chief continued his report. “The Queen Elizabeth appears to have taken seven hits. I’m honestly not sure if she’s going to make it. She’s almost completely ablaze, though the rain does appear to be helping to tamper down the fires. Who knows, maybe the cruddy weather might actually save the ship by putting out some of the fires. The Kitty Hawk is going down. She hasn’t sunk yet, but she’s burning out of control. I spoke with someone from their CIC a few minutes ago, and he said the captain had given the order to abandon ship. They took a hit to engineering, and they were already having problems with two of their boilers. When the missiles arrived, one of them hit just at the waterline in the engineering section. Aside from the blast tearing the place up, once the icy waters hit the boiler room, everything exploded. It blew the aft and lower section of the ship wide open.”

As if to add emphasis to what he was saying, the senior chief pulled up a camera feed that showed the Kitty Hawk. Admiral Lindal crossed his arms in frustration. Not only was a good portion of the Kitty Hawk on fire, but the aft section of the ship was sinking — nearly the entire bow of the ship was raised out of the water.

“How about the Kennedy?” asked Lindal.

“No damage,” said the senior chief. “I don’t know how, but they didn’t take a single a hit.” He paused a moment. “Sir, I know this doesn’t bring any of our guys back, but the Russians fired 120 of those hypersonic missiles at us. Only 46 of them actually scored hits. Without the Growlers we launched prior to the attack and some seriously fancy shooting by the Gates, the Brits, and French destroyers, this could have been a bloodbath. Plus, none of the troop transports or amphibious assault ships sustained any damage.”

Admiral Lindal grunted and uncrossed his arms. “I suppose that’s one way to look at it, Senior. You guys did a good job through all of this.”

Lindal patted the senior chief on the shoulder, then walked over to the workstation he had been occupying and sat down for a second. He needed to collect his thoughts before he phoned back to higher headquarters to let them know what had happened.

He rested his head on his hands. “It’s going to take a while to scoop up the survivors,” he thought. However, he realized that at the end of the day, despite the loss of ships, they would still be able to carry on with their original mission. This war was going to end, and the troops they were escorting were going to make it happen.