Red Storm Rising

18. Polar Glory

It had been decided that all Soviet theater and front commanders would be briefed on developments in Germany. Alekseyev and his superior knew why: if anyone were to be relieved from his command, the new man would have to know the situation. They listened to the intelligence report with fascination. Neither of them had expected many of the Spetznaz attacks to fare well, but it seemed that some had been successful, especially those in the German ports. Then the operational intelligence brief got to the bridges on the Elbe.

"Why weren't we warned about this?" CINC-Southwest demanded.

"Comrade General," the Air Force officer responded. "Our information was that this Stealth aircraft was a prototype, not yet in regular service. Somehow the Americans have managed to construct a number of them, at least part of a squadron. They used it to eliminate our airborne radar coverage, thus paving the way for a massive penetration raid against our airfields and lines of supply, plus a well-planned air battle against our all-weather fighter aircraft. Their mission was successful, but not decisively so."

"Oh, and the commander of Air Forces West was arrested for successfully repelling it, eh?" Alekseyev snarled. "How many aircraft did we lose?"

"I am not authorized to reveal that, Comrade General."

"Can you tell us of the bridges, then!"

"Most of the bridges on the Elbe have been damaged to some extent or another, plus attacks on the bridging units stationed near them for tactical replacement."

"The fucking maniac-he had his bridging units right next to the primary targets!" Southwest looked up at the ceiling as though expecting an air attack right there in Kiev.

"That is where the roads are, Comrade General," the intelligence officer said quietly. Alekseyev waved him out of the room.

"Not a good start, Pasha." Already a general had been arrested. His replacement had not yet been named.

Alekseyev nodded agreement, then checked his watch. "The tanks will cross the border in thirty minutes, and we have a few surprises in store for them. Only half of their reinforcements are in place. They still have not achieved the psychological degree of preparedness that our men have. Our first blow will hurt them. If our friend in Berlin has made his deployments properly."

"Perfect weather," First Lieutenant Mike Edwards pronounced, looking up from the chart just off the facsimile machine. "We have this strong cold front due in from Canada in twenty to twenty-four hours. That'll bring a lot of rain with it, maybe an inch worth, but for all of today we have clear skies-less than two-tenths high clouds-and no precip. Surface winds west to southwest at fifteen to twenty knots. And lots of 'shine'" he concluded with a grin. The sun had risen for the last time nearly five weeks before, and wouldn't truly set for another five. They were so close to the North Pole here in Iceland that in summer the sun wandered in a lazy circle around the azure sky, dipping fractionally below the northwestern horizon but never truly setting. It was something that took getting used to.

"Fighter weather," agreed Lieutenant Colonel Bill Jeffers, commander of the 57th Fighter Interceptor squadron, the "Black Knights," most of whose F-15 Eagle interceptors were sitting in the open a bare hundred yards away. The pilots were in those fighters, waiting. They'd been waiting for ninety minutes now. Two hours before, they'd been warned of a large number of Soviet aircraft taking off from their tactical air bases on the Kola Peninsula, destination unknown.

Keflavik was always a busy place, but for the last week it had been a madhouse. The airport was a combination Navy and Air Force base and a busy international airport at which many airliners stopped to refuel.

The past week had seen this traffic supplemented by grim tactical fighters transiting from the United States and Canada to Europe, cargo aircraft transporting overloads of critical equipment, and airliners returning to America crowded with pale tourists and dependents of the military men who were now on the battle line. The same had happened to Keflavik. Three thousand wives and children had been evacuated. The base facility was cleared for action. If the Soviets kicked off the war that seemed to be springing from the ground like a new volcano, Keflavik was as ready as it could be.

"With your permission, Colonel, I want to check a few things at the tower. This forecast is pretty solid, for the next twelve hours anyway."

"Jet stream?" Colonel Jeffers looked up from the yard-square chart of isobars and wind-trees.

"Same place it's been all week, sir, no sign at all of a change."

"Okay, go ahead."

Edwards put on his cap and walked out the door. He wore a thin blue officer's jacket over his Marine-style fatigues, pleased that the Air Force was still pretty casual about dress codes. His jeep held the rest of his "battle gear," a.38 revolver and pistol belt, and the field jacket that went with the camouflage gear everybody had been issued three days before. They'd thought of everything, Edwards reflected as he started up the jeep for the quarter-mile drive to the tower. Even the flak jacket.

Keflavik had to get hit, Edwards reminded himself. Everybody knew it, prepared for it, and then tried not to think about it. This most isolated of all NATO outposts on the western coast of Iceland was the barred gate to the North Atlantic. If Ivan wanted to fight a naval war, Iceland had to be neutralized. From Keflavik's four runways flew eighteen Eagle interceptors, nine sub-hunting P-3C Orions, and deadliest of all, three E-3A AWACS birds, the eyes of the fighters. Two were operating now; one was circling twenty miles northeast of Cape Fontur, the other directly over Ritstain, 150 miles north of Keflavik. This was most unusual. With only three AWACS birds available, keeping one constantly in the air was difficult enough. The commander of the Iceland defense forces was taking all of this very seriously. Edwards shrugged. If there really were Backfires bearing down on them, there was nothing else for him to do. He was the brand-new squadron meteorological officer, and he'd just given his weather report.

Edwards parked his jeep in an officer's slot next to the tower and decided to take his.38 with him. The lot was not fenced, and there was no telling if someone might want to "borrow" his handgun. The base was crawling with a company of Marines and another of Air Force police, all looking very nasty with their M-16 rifles and web belts festooned with grenades. He hoped they'd be careful with those. Late the next day, a whole Marine Amphibious Unit was due to arrive to beef up base security, something that should have been done a week earlier but had been delayed, partly because of the Icelandic sensitivity regarding large numbers of armed foreigners, but mainly due to the unreal speed with which this crisis had developed. He trotted up the outside stairs and found the tower's control room crowded with eight people rather than the usual five.

"Hi, Jerry," he said to the boss, Navy lieutenant Jerry Simon. The Icelandic civilian controllers who usually worked here were nowhere to be seen. Well, Edwards thought, there's no civilian traffic for them to control.

"Morning, Mike," was the response. The ongoing joke at Keflavik. It was 0315 hours local time. Morning. The sun was already up, glaring in at them from the northeast through roll-down shades inside of the tilted glass windows.

"Let's have an attitude check!" Edwards said as he walked over to his meteorological instruments.

"I hate this fucking place!" the tower crew answered at once.

"Let's have a positive attitude check."

"I positively hate this fucking place!"

"Let's have a negative attitude check."

"I don't like this fucking place!"

"Let's have a short attitude check."

"Fuckit!" Everyone had a good laugh. They needed it.

"Nice to see that we're all maintaining our equilibrium," Edwards observed. The short, scrawny officer had become instantly popular on his arrival two months earlier. A native of Eastpoint, Maine, and a graduate of the Air Force Academy, his glasses prevented him from flying. His diminutive size-five-six and a hundred twenty pounds-was not designed to command respect, but his infectious grin, ready supply of jokes, and recognized expertise at making sense of the confused North Atlantic weather patterns had combined to make him an acceptable companion for anyone at Keflavik. Everyone thought he would make one hell of a TV weatherman one day.

"MAC Flight Five-Two-Zero, roger. Roll her out, Big Guy, we need the room," said a tired controller. A few hundred yards away, a C-5A Galaxy cargo plane began to accelerate down runway one-eight. Edwards took a pair of binoculars to watch. It was hard to get used to the fact that something so monstrous could actually fly.

"Any word from anywhere?" Simon asked Edwards.

"Nope, nothing since the Norwegian report. Lots of activity at Kola. You know, I picked a hell of a time to come here to work," Mike replied. He went back to checking the calibration of his digital barometer.

It had started six weeks before. The Soviet Naval and Long-Range Aviation groups based at a half-dozen airfields around Severomorsk had exercised almost continuously, flying attack-profile missions that could have been directed at nearly anyone or anything. Then two weeks before, the activity had been cut way back. That was the ominous part: first they drilled all their flight crews to perfection and then they went to a standdown maintenance period to make sure that every bird and every instrument was also fully operational… What were they doing now? An attack against Bodo in Norway? Or Iceland maybe? Another exercise? There was no telling.

Edwards lifted a clipboard to sign off for having checked his tower instruments that day. He could have left it to his enlisted technicians, but they were backstopping the aircraft techs with the fighter squadron, and he could handle it for them. Besides, it gave him an excuse to visit the tower and-

"Mr. Simon," the senior enlisted controller said rapidly. "I just copied a Flash from Sentry One: Warning Red. Many bandits inbound, sir. Approaching from due north to northeast-Sentry Two is checking in… they got 'em, too. Jesus. Sounds like forty to fifty bandits, sir." Edwards noted that the inbounds were being called Bandits instead of the usual Zombies.

"Anything friendly coming in?"

"Sir, we got a MAC C-141 twenty minutes out, eight more behind it at five-minute intervals, all inbound from Dover."

"Tell them to turn back, and get an acknowledgment! Keflavik is closed to all inbounds until further notice." Simon turned to his telecommunications man. "Tell Air-Ops to radio SACLANT that we're under attack, and to get the word out. I-"

Klaxons, erupted all around them. Below, in the early-morning shadows, ground crewmen pulled red-flagged safety pins off the waiting interceptors. Edwards saw a pilot drain a Styrofoam cup and begin to strap himself in tight. The starter carts next to each fighter belched black smoke as they generated power to turn the engines.

"Tower, this is Hunter Leader. We're scrambling. Clear those runways, boy!"

Simon took the microphone. "Roger, Hunter Leader, the runways are yours. Scatter Plan Alpha. Go for it! Out."

Below, canopies were coming down, chocks were pulled away from wheels, and each crew chief gave his pilot a smart salute. The shriek of jet engines changed to a roar as the aircraft started to roll awkwardly off the flight line.

"Where's your battle station, Mike?" Simon asked.

"The met building." Edwards nodded and headed for the door. "'Luck, guys."

Aboard Sentry Two, the radar operators watched a broad semicircle of blips converging on them. Each blip had "BGR" painted next to it, plus data on course, altitude, and speed. Each blip was a Tu-16 Badger bomber of Soviet Naval Aviation. There were twenty-four of them, inbound for Keflavik at a speed of six hundred knots. They had approached at low altitude to stay below the E-3A's radar horizon, and, once detected, were now climbing rapidly, two hundred miles away. This mission profile enabled the radar operators to classify them instantly as hostile. There were four Eagles on Combat Air Patrol, two of them with operating AWACS, but it was close to changeover point and the fighters were too low on fuel to race after the Badgers on afterburner. They were directed to head for the incoming Russian bombers at six hundred knots, and could not yet detect the Badgers on their own missile-targeting radars.

Sentry One off Cape Fontur reported something worse. Her blips were supersonic Tu-22M Backfires, coming in slowly enough to indicate that they were heavily loaded with external ordnance. The Eagles here also moved off to intercept. A hundred miles behind them, the two F-15s kept on point defense over Reykjavik had just been topped off from an orbiting tanker and were charging northeast at a thousand knots while the remainder of the squadron was even now leaving the ground. The radar picture from both AWACS aircraft was being transmitted by digital link to Keflavik's fighter-ops center so that ground personnel could monitor the action. Now that the fighters were rotating off the ground, the crews for every other aircraft at the air station worked frantically to ready their birds for flight.

They had practiced this task eight times in the past month. Some flight crews had been sleeping with their aircraft. Others were summoned from their quarters, no more than four hundred yards away. Those aircraft just back from patrol had their fuel tanks topped off, and were preflighted by the ground crews. Marine and Air Force guards not already at their posts rushed to them. It was just as well that the attack had come at this hour. There was only a handful of civilians about, and civilian air traffic was at its lowest. On the other hand, the men at Keflavik had been on double duty for a week now, and they were tired. Things which might have been done in five minutes now took seven or eight.

Edwards was back in his meteorological office, wearing his field jacket, flak jacket, and "fritz" style helmet. His emergency duty station-he could not think of his office as a "battle" station-was his assigned post. As if someone might need an especially deadly weather chart with which to attack an incoming bomber! The service had to have a plan for everything, Edwards knew. There had to be a plan. It didn't have to make sense. He went downstairs to Air-Ops.

"I got breakaway on Bandit Eight, one-two birds launched. The machine says they're AS-4s," a Sentry controller reported. The senior officer got on the radio for Keflavik.

Twenty miles southwest of Keflavik, the "Doctor Lykes" was also a beehive of activity. As each Soviet bomber squadron launched its air-to-ground missiles, its commander transmitted a predetermined codeword that the Fucik copied. Her time had come.

"Rudder left," Captain Kherov ordered. "Bring his bow into the wind."

A full regiment of airborne infantry, many of them seasick from two weeks aboard the huge barge-carrier, was at work testing and loading weapons. The Fucik's augmented crew was stripping the falsework from the aftermost four "barges," revealing each in fact to be a Lebed-type assault hovercraft. The six-man crew of each removed the covers over the air intakes that led to the engines they had tended with loving care for a month. Satisfied, they waved to the craft commanders, who lit off the three engines in each of the aftermost pair.

The ship's first officer stood at his elevator control station aft. On a hand signal, an eighty-five-man infantry company plus a reinforced mortar team were loaded into each craft. Power was increased, the hovercraft lifted up on their air cushions and were winched aft. In another four minutes, the vehicles were resting on the barge-loading elevator that formed the stem of the Seabee vessel.

"Lower away," the first officer ordered. The winch operators lowered the elevator to the surface. The sea was choppy, and four-foot waves lapped at the Fucik's bifurcated stem. When the elevator was level with the sea, first one, then the other Lebed commander increased power and moved off. At once, the elevator returned to the topmost deck while the first pair of hovercraft circled their mothership. In five more minutes, the four assault craft moved off in box formation toward the Keflavik Peninsula.

The Fucik continued her turn, returning to a northerly course to make the next hovercraft trip a shorter one. Her weather deck was ringed with armed troops carrying surface-to-air missiles and machine guns. Andreyev remained on the bridge, knowing this was where he belonged, but wishing he were leading his assault troops.

"Kef-Ops, the bandits are all turning right back after launching their ASMs. So far it's been two birds per aircraft. We got fifty-make that fifty-six inbound missiles, and more are being launched. Nobody behind them, though. I repeat, nothing behind the bomber force. At least we don't have any paratroopers headed in. Hunker down, guys, we now have sixty inbound missiles," Edwards heard as he came through the door.

"At least they won't be nukes," said a captain.

"They're shooting a hundred missiles at us-they don't fuckin' need nukes!" replied another.

Edwards watched the radar picture over the shoulder of one of the officers. It was eerily like an arcade game. Big, slow-moving blips denoted the aircraft. Smaller, quicker blips were the Mach-2 missiles.

"Gotcha!" hooted the enlisted radar operator. The leading Eagle had gotten within missile range of the Badgers and exploded one with a Sparrow missile-ten seconds after it had launched its own missiles. A second Sparrow missed its separate target, but a third appeared locked on it. The first fighter's wingman was just launching at yet another Russian. The Soviets had thought this one out, Edwards saw. They were attacking from all around the northern littoral, with lots of space between the bombers so that no single fighter could engage more than one or two. It was almost like-

"Anybody check the geometry of this?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" The captain looked around. "How come you aren't where you belong?"

Edwards ignored the irrelevancy. "What's the chance they're trying to draw our fighters out, like?"

"Expensive bait." The captain dismissed the idea. "You're saying they might have launched their ASMs from farther out. Maybe they don't fly as far as we thought. Point is, those missiles are ten minutes out now, the first of them, with about a five- or seven-minute delay to the last. And not a Goddamned thing we can do about it."

"Yeah." Edwards nodded. The Air-Ops/Met building was a two-story frame structure that vibrated every time the wind hit fifty knots. The lieutenant took out a stick of gum and started chewing on it. In ten minutes a hundred missiles, each carrying about a ton of high explosives-or a nuclear warhead-would start falling. The men outside would get the worst of it; the enlisted men and the flight crews trying to get the airplanes ready to race off. His assigned job was merely to keep out of the way. It made him a little ashamed. The fear he could now taste along with the peppermint made him more ashamed.

The Eagles were now all airborne, racing north. The last of the Backfires had just launched their missiles and were turning back northeast at full power as the Eagles raced at twelve hundred knots to catch up. Three of the interceptors launched missiles, and they succeeded in killing a pair of Backfires and damaging a third. The "Zulu" fighters which had scrambled off the deck could not catch the Backfires, the commanding controller on Sentry One noted, cursing himself for not having sent them after the older, less valuable Badgers, some of which they might have caught. Instead, he ordered them to slow down, and had his controllers vector them towards the supersonic missiles.

Penguin 8, the first of the P-3C Orion antisubmarine warfare aircraft, was rolling now, down runway two-two. It had been on patrol only five hours before, and its flight crew was still trying to shake off the sleep as they rotated the propjet aircraft off the concrete.

"Tipping over now," the radar operator said. The first Russian missile was almost overhead, beginning its terminal dive. The Eagles had hit two of the incoming missiles, but courses and altitudes had been against them, and most of their Sparrows had missed, unable to catch the Mach-2 missiles. The F-15s orbited over central Iceland, well away from their base, as each pilot wondered if he'd have an airfield to return to.

Edwards cringed as the first landed-or didn't land. The air-to-surface missile had a radar-proximity fuse. It detonated twenty meters off the ground, and the effects were horrific. It exploded directly over International Highway, two hundred yards from Air-Ops, its fragments ripping into a number of buildings, the worst hit being the base fire station. Edwards fell to the floor as fragments lashed through the wooden wall. The door was torn off its hinges by the blast and the air filled with dust. A moment later, at the Esso facility a hundred yards away, a fuel truck exploded, sending a fireball towering into the sky, and dropping burning jet fuel for blocks around. Electrical power was immediately lost. Radars, radios, and room lights went out at once, and battery-powered emergency lights didn't come on as they were supposed to. For a terrified moment, Edwards wondered if the first missile really might have been a nuke. The blast had rippled through his chest, and he felt sudden nausea as his body tried to adjust to the sensations that assaulted it. He looked around and saw a man knocked unconscious by a failing light fixture. He didn't know if he was supposed to buckle his helmet strap or not, and somehow this question seemed enormously important at the moment, though he didn't remember why.

Another missile landed farther away, and then for a minute or so the sounds blended into a series of immense thunderclaps. Edwards was choking from the dust. It felt as though his chest would burst, and impulsively he bolted for the door to get fresh air.

He was greeted by a solid wall of heat. The Esso facility was a roaring mass of flames which had already engulfed the nearby photo lab and base thrift shop. More smoke rose from the enlisted housing area to the east. A half-dozen aircraft still on the flightline would never leave it, their wings snapped like toys from the blast of a missile that had exploded directly over the runway crossroads. A smashed E-3A Sentry burst into flames before his eyes. He turned to see that the control tower had been damaged, too, all its windows gone. Edwards ran that way, not thinking to take his jeep.

Two minutes later, he entered the tower breathlessly to find the crew all dead, torn apart by flying glass, the tiled floor covered with blood. Radio receivers were still making noise over desk-mounted speakers, but he couldn't seem to find a working transmitter.

"What the hell is that?" the Orion pilot said. He turned his aircraft violently to the left and increased power. They had been orbiting ten miles out from Keflavik, watching the smoke and flames rising from their home field, when four massive objects passed under them.

"It's a-," the copilot breathed. "Where-"

The four Lebeds were moving at over forty knots, bouncing roughly over the four- to five-foot waves. About eighty feet long and thirty-five wide, each had a pair of ducted propellers atop, immediately forward of a tall, aircraft-type rudder painted with the Soviet naval ensign, a red hammer and sickle over a blue stripe. They were already too close to shore for the Orion to use any of her weapons.

The pilot watched incredulously as he approached, and any doubts he had ended as a 30mm cannon fired at them. It missed wide, but the pilot jerked the Orion around to the west.

"Tacco, tell Keflavik ASW Ops they got company coming. Four armed hovercraft, type unknown, but Russian-and they gotta be carrying troops."

"Flight," the tactical coordinator reported back thirty seconds later. "Keflavik is off the air. ASW Ops Center is gone; the tower is gone, too. I'm trying to raise the Sentries. Maybe we can get a fighter or two."

"Okay, but keep trying Keflavik. Get our radar lit off. We'll see if we can find where they came from. Get our Harpoons lit off, too."

Edwards was surveying the damage through binoculars when he heard the message come in-and could not answer it. Now what do I do? He looked around and saw one useful thing, a Hammer Ace radio. He took the oversized backpack and ran down the steps. He had to find the Marine officers and warn them.

The hovercraft raced up Djupivogur Cove and came to land a minute later less than a mile from the airbase. The troopers gratefully noted the smoother ride as their craft spread out to line abreast, three hundred yards between them as they tore across the flat, rocky gorse toward the NATO air base.

"What in the hell-" a Marine corporal said. Like a dinosaur coming to the picnic, a massive object appeared on the horizon, apparently coming overland at high speed.

"You! Marine, get over here!" Edwards screamed. A jeep with three enlisted men stopped, then raced toward him. "Get me to your CO fast!"

"CO's dead, sir," the sergeant said. "CP took a hit, Lieutenant-fuckin' gone!"

"Where's the alternate?"

"Elementary school."

"Go, I gotta let them know, we got bad guys coming in from the seas hit! You got a radio."

"Tried calling, sir, but no answer." The sergeant turned south down International Highway. At least three missiles had landed here, judging by the smoke. All around, the small city that had been the Keflavik air base was a loose collection of smoking fires. A number of people in uniforms were running around, doing things that Edwards didn't have time to guess at. Was anybody in charge?

The elementary school had also been hit. The third of the building still standing was a mass of flame.

"Sergeant, that radio work?"

"Yes, sir, but it ain't tuned into the perimeter guards."

"Well, fix it!"

"Right." The sergeant dialed into a different frequency.

The Lebeds halted in two pairs, each a quarter mile from the perimeter. The bow door on each opened, and out rolled a pair of BMD infantry assault vehicles, followed by mortar crews who began at once to set up their weapons. The 73mm guns and missile launchers on the minitanks began to engage the Marine defensive positions as the reinforced company in each vehicle advanced slowly and skillfully, using their cover and taking advantage of their fire support. The assault force had been handpicked from units that had fought in Afghanistan. Every man had been under fire before. The Lebeds immediately turned crablike and sped back to sea to pick up yet more infantrymen. Already, elements of two elite airborne battalions were engaging a single company of Marines.

The frantic words on the platoon radio nets were all too clear. The base electrical supply was cut, and along with it the main radios. The Marine officers were dead, and there was no one to coordinate the defense. Edwards wondered if anyone really knew what the hell was going on. He decided that it probably didn't matter.

"Sergeant, we gotta get the hell outa here!"

"You mean run away!"

"I mean get away and report what's happened here. Looks like we lost this one, Sarge. Somebody's gotta report in so they don't send any more planes to land here. What's the fastest way to Reykjavik?"

"Dammit, sir, there's Marines out there-"

"You wanna be a Russian prisoner? We lost! I say we gotta report in and you'll do what I Goddamned tell you, Sergeant, you got that!"

"Aye aye, sir."

"How we fixed for weapons?"

On his own, a private ran to what was left of the school. A Marine was lying there facedown, a pool of red spreading from some invisible, fatal wound. The private came back with the man's M-16, field pack, and ammo belt, handing the collection to Edwards.

"We all got one now, sir."

"Let's get the hell outa here."

The sergeant threw the jeep into gear. "How we gonna report in?"

"Let me worry about that, okay?"

"You say so." The sergeant turned the jeep completely around, back up International, toward the wrecked satellite antennae.

"Aircraft sighted, port bow!" a lookout screamed. Kherov raised his binoculars to his eyes and swore softly. He saw what could only be missiles dangling from each wing of the multiengined aircraft.

"Well, lookie what we got here," the Orion's pilot said quietly. "Our old friend, the Doctor Lykes. Combat, Flight, what else is around?"

"Nothin', Flight, not another surface ship for over a hundred miles." They had just completed a complete circuit of the horizon, scanning with their surface-search radar.

"And it's for Goddamned sure those hovercraft didn't come in off no submarine." The pilot adjusted course to pass within two miles of the ship, with the sun behind the four-engine patrol aircraft. His copilot examined the ship through binoculars. Onboard TV cameras operated by the weapons crew would provide even better close-up pictures. They saw a pair of helicopters warming up. Someone aboard the Fucik panicked and fired a hand-held SA-7 missile. It failed to lock onto the Orion and blazed off directly into the low sun.

"Idiot!" Kherov growled. The smoke from the rocket motor didn't even come close to the aircraft. "He'll shoot at us now. All ahead flank! Helmsman, be alert!"

"Okay," the pilot said, turning away from the merchantman. "Tacco, we got a target for your Harpoons. Any luck with Keflavik?"

"Negative, but Sentry One is relaying the data into Scotland. They say a bunch of missiles hit Keflavik, looks like the place is closed whether we keep it or not."

The pilot cursed briefly. "Okay. We'll blow this pirate right out of the water."

"Roge, Flight," the tactical coordinator replied. "Two minutes before we can launch the-damn! I got a red light on the portside Harpoon. The sucker won't arm."

"Well, play with the bastard!" the pilot growled. It didn't work. In the haste to get off the ground, the missile's control cables had not been fully attached by the weary ground crew.

"Okay, I got one working. Ready!"

"Shoot!"

The missile dropped clear of the wing and fell thirty feet before its engine ignited. Fucik's weather deck was lined with paratroopers, many holding hand-launched SAMs and hoping to intercept the incoming ASM.

"Tacco, see if you can raise an F-15. Maybe they can rip this baby up with twenty-millimeters."

"Doing that already. We got a pair of Eagles coming in, but they're skosh fuel. One or two passes'll be all they can manage."

Forward, the pilot had binoculars to his eyes, watching the whitepainted missile skimming the wavetops. "Go, baby, go.

"Rocket coming in, low on the horizon, portside." At least we have good lookouts, Kherov thought. He estimated the distance to the horizon, and gave the missile a speed of a thousand kilometers per hour…

"Right hard rudder!" he screamed. The helmsman threw the wheel over as far as it would go and held it down.

"You cannot run from a missile, Kherov," the General said quietly.

"I know this. Watch, my friend."

The black-hulled vessel was turning radically to starboard. As she did so, the ship heeled in the opposite direction, the same way a car rolls away from a turn on a flat road, which artificially raised the waterline on the vulnerable portside.

Some enterprising officers aboard fired signal flares, hoping to decoy the missile away, but all the missile's microchip brain cared about was the enormous blip that occupied the center of its radar seeker head. It noted that the ship's heading was changing slightly, and altered its own course accordingly. Half a mile from the target, the Harpoon lurched upward from its ten-foot altitude in its programmed "pop-up" terminal maneuver. The troopers aboard the Fucik instantly fired an even dozen SAMs. Three locked onto the Harpoon's engine exhaust plume, but were unable to turn rapidly enough to hit the incoming missile, and continued past it. The Harpoon tipped over and dove.

"All right…" the pilot whispered. There was no stopping it now.

The missile struck the Fucik's hull six feet above the waterline, slightly abaft the bridge. The warhead exploded at once, but the missile body kept moving forward, spreading two hundred pounds of jet fuel that fireballed into the lowest cargo deck. In an instant, the ship disappeared behind a wall of smoke. Three paratroopers, thrown off their feet by the impact, accidentally triggered their SAMs straight up.

"Tacco, your bird hit just fine. We got warhead detonation. Looks like… The pilot's eyes strained at his binoculars to assess the damage.

"Rudder amidships!" Kherov had expected to be knocked from his feet, but the missile was a small one, and JULIUS FUCIK still had thirty-five thousand tons of mass. He ran out to the bridge wing to survey the damage. As the ship returned to an even keel, the ragged hole in her side rose ten feet from the lapping waves. Smoke poured from the hole. There was fire aboard, but the ship should not flood from the blow, the captain judged. There was only one danger. Kherov rapidly gave orders to his damage-control teams, and the General sent one of his own officers to assist. A hundred of the paratroopers had been trained over the last ten days in shipboard firefighting. They would now put what they had learned to use.

The Fucik emerged at twenty knots from the smoke, a fifteen-foot hole in the ship's side. Smoke poured from the opening, but the pilot knew at once that the damage would not be fatal. He could see hundreds of men on the upper deck, some of them already running toward ladders to fight the fire below.

"Where are those fighters?" the pilot asked. The tactical coordinator didn't answer. He switched his radio circuits.

"Penguin Eight, this is Cobra One. I got two birds. Our missiles are all gone, but we both got a full load of twenty-mike-mike. I can give you two passes, then we gotta bingo to Scotland."

"That's a roge, Cobra Lead. The target has some helos spooling up. Watch out for hand-held SAMs. I seen 'em fire about twenty of the bastards."

"Roger that, Penguin. Any further word of Keflavik?"

"We're gonna have to find a new home for a while."

"Roger, copy. Okay, keep clear, we're coming in from up-sun, on the deck."

The Orion continued to orbit three miles out. Her pilot didn't see the fighters until they started firing. The two Eagles were a few feet apart, perhaps twenty feet over the water as their noses sparkled with the flash from their 20mm rotary cannon.

Nobody aboard saw them come in. A moment later, the water around the Fucik's side turned to froth from short-failing rounds, then her main deck was hidden with dust. A sudden orange fireball announced the explosion of one of the Russian helicopters, and burning jet fuel splattered over the bridge, narrowly missing the General and captain.

"What was that?" Kherov gasped.

"American fighters. They came in very low. They must only have their cannon, else they'd have bombed us already. It is not over yet, my captain."

The fighters split, passing left and right of the ship, which continued to move at twenty knots in a wide circle. No SAMs followed the Eagles away, and both turned, re-formed, and closed on the Fucik's bow. The next target was the superstructure. A moment later, the freighter's bridge was peppered with several hundred rounds. Every window was blown away, and most of the bridge crew killed, but the ship's watertight integrity hadn't been damaged a whit.

Kherov surveyed the carnage. His helmsman had been blown apart by a half-dozen exploding bullets and every man present on the bridge was dead. It took a second for him to overcome the shock and notice a crippling pain in his own abdomen, his dark jacket darkening further with blood.

"You are hit, Captain." Only the General had had the instinct to duck behind something solid. He looked at the eight mutilated bodies in the pilothouse and wondered once again why he was so lucky.

"I must get the ship to port. Go aft. Tell the first officer to continue landing operations. You, Comrade General, supervise the fires topside. We must get my ship to port."

"I will send you help." The General ran out the door as Kherov went to the wheel.

"Stop, hold it right here!" Edwards screamed.

"What now, Lieutenant?" the sergeant demanded. He stopped the jeep by the BOQ parking lot.

"Let's get my car. This jeep's too friggin' conspicuous." The lieutenant jumped out of the jeep, pulling his car keys from his pants pocket. The Marines just looked at each other for a moment before running after him.

His car was a ten-year-old Volvo that he'd purchased from a departing officer a few months before. It had seen rugged service on Iceland's mainly unpaved roads, and it showed. "Well, get in!"

"Sir, what the hell are we doing, exactly?"

"Look, Sarge, we gotta clear the area. What if Ivan's got helicopters? What do you suppose a jeep looks like from the air?"

"Oh, okay." The sergeant nodded. "But what are we doing, sir?"

"We'll drive at least as far as Hafnarfjordur, ditch the car, and start walking back into the boonies. Soon as we get to a safe place, we'll radio in. That's a satellite radio I got. We have to let Washington know what's happening here. That means we gotta be able to see what Ivan's got coming in. Our people are gonna at least try to take this rock back. Our mission, Sergeant, is to stay alive, report in, and maybe make that easier." Edwards hadn't thought this out until a few moments before he said it. Would they try to take Iceland back? Would they be able to try? What else was going wrong all over the friggin' world? Did any of this make sense? He decided it didn't have to make sense. One thing at a time, he told himself. He for damned sure didn't want to be a prisoner of the Russians, and maybe if they could radio some information in they could get even for what had happened to Keflavik.

Edwards started up the car and drove east up Highway 41. Where to ditch the car? There was a shopping center at Hafnarfjordur… and Iceland's only Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. What better place to ditch a car than that? The young lieutenant smiled in spite of himself They were alive, and they had the most dangerous weapon known to man-a radio. He'd work out the problems as they arose. His mission, he decided, was to stay alive and report in. After they did that, someone else could tell them what to do. One thing at a time, he repeated to himself, and pray to God somebody knows what the hell is going on.

"Looks like the fire's under control," the copilot commented sourly.

"Yeah, how do think they managed that? Shit, that boat should've gone up like-but it didn't." As they watched, a second load of troops was dispatched on the four hovercraft. The pilot hadn't thought of having the two available Eagle fighters-now heading for England-shoot them up instead of this huge black ship. Some fucking officer you are, he told himself. Penguin 8 carried eighty sonobuoys, four Mk-46 ASW torpedoes, and some other high-technology weapons-none of which were of the least use against a simple large target like this merchie. Unless he wanted to play kamikaze… the pilot shook his head.

"If you want to head for Scotland, we got another thirty minutes of fuel," the flight engineer advised.

"Okay, let's take a last look at Keflavik. I'm going up to six thousand. Oughta keep us out of SAM range."

They were over the coast in two minutes. A Lebed was approaching the SOSUS and SIGINT station opposite Hafnir. They could just make out some movement on the ground, and a wisp of smoke coming from the building. The pilot didn't know much about the SIGINT activities, but SOSUS, the oceanic Sonar Surveillance System, was the principal means of detecting targets for the P-3C Orion crews to pounce on. This station covered the gaps from Greenland to Iceland, and from Iceland to the Faroe Islands. The main picketline needed to keep Russian subs out of the trade routes was about to go permanently off the air. Great.

They were over Keflavik a minute after that. Seven or eight aircraft had not gotten off the ground. All were burning. The pilot examined the runways through binoculars and was horrified to see that it was uncratered.

"Tacco, you got a Sentry on the line?"

"You can talk to one right now, Flight. Go right ahead, you got Sentry Two."

"Sentry Two, this is Penguin 8, do you read, over?"

"Roger, Penguin 8, this is the senior controller. We show you over Keflavik. What's it look like?"

"I count eight birds on the ground, all broke and burning. The missiles did not, repeat not, crater the airfield."

"You sure about that, Eight?"

"Affirmative. A whole lot of blast damage, but I don't see any holes in the ground. The in-close fuel tanks appear undamaged, and nothing at all seems to have hit the tank farm at Hakotstangar. We left our friends a whole shitload of jet fuel and an airfield. The base-let's see. Tower's still standing. Lots of smoke and fire around Air/Ops… base looks pretty badly beat-up, but those runways are sure as hell usable. Over."

"How about the ship you shot at?"

"One solid hit, I eyeballed the missile in, and two of your '15s strafed his ass, but it ain't enough. She'll probably make port. I'd guess she'll try to come into Reykjavik, maybe Hafnarfjordur, to unload. She's gotta be carrying a lot of stuff. It's a forty-thousand-ton ship. She can make port in two or three hours unless we can whistle up something to take her out."

"Don't count on it. What's your fuel state?"

"We gotta head for Stornoway right now. My camera guys have shot pictures of the area, and that ship. About all we can do."

"Okay, Penguin 8. Go find yourself a place to land. We're leaving in a few minutes, too. 'Luck. Out."

Edwards parked the car in the shopping center. There had been some people outside along the drivein, mainly looking west toward Keflavik. Awakened by the noise a few miles away and wondering what was happening. Just like us, Edwards thought. Fortunately, there seemed to be no one about right here yet. He locked the car and pocketed the keys without thinking about it.

"Where to, Lieutenant?" Sergeant Smith asked.

"Sergeant, let's straighten a few things out. You're the groundpounder. You got any ideas, I want to know about 'em, okay?"

"Well, sir, I'd say we oughta head straight east for a while, to get away from the roads, like, and find you a place to play with that radio. An' do it quick."

Edwards looked around. There was no one on the streets here yet, but they'd want to get into the back country before being noticed by anybody who might tell someone about it afterward. He nodded, and the sergeant directed a private to lead off. They took off their helmets and slung their rifles to appear as harmless as possible, each sure that a hundred pairs of eyes were locked on them from behind the curtained windows. What a way to start a war, he thought.

"The fires are out, by God!" General Andreyev proclaimed. "There is much damage to our equipment, mainly from water, but the fires are out!" His expression changed when he saw Kherov.

The captain was ghostly pale. An Army medic had bandaged his wound, but there had to be internal bleeding. He struggled to hold himself erect over the chart table.

"Come right to zero-zero-three."

A junior officer was on the wheel. "Right to zero-zero-three, Comrade Captain."

"You must lie down, my captain," Andreyev said softly.

"I must get my ship to safe harbor first!"

The Fucik ran almost due north, the westerly wind and sea on her beam, and water was lapping at the missile wound. His earlier optimism was fading. Some seams in the lower hull had sprung from the missile impact, and water was entering the lower cargo deck, though so far the pumps were keeping up with it. There was twenty thousand tons of cargo to deliver.

"Captain, you must have medical attention," Andreyev persisted.

"After we round the point. When we have the damaged port side alee, then I shall be tended to. Tell your men to stay alert. One more successful attack could finish us. And tell them they have done well. I would be happy to sail with them again."

"Sonar contact, possible submarine bearing three-five-three," the sonarman announced.

And so it begins, Morris said to himself. PHARRIS was at general quarters for the first leg of the trip away from the U.S. coast. The frigate's tactical towed-array sonar was trailed out in her wake. They were twenty miles north of the convoy, a hundred ten miles east of the coast, just crossing the continental shelf line into truly deep water at the Lindenkohl Canyon. A perfect place for a submarine to hide.

"Show me what you have," the ASW officer ordered. Morris kept his peace and just watched his men at work.

The sonarman pointed to the waterfall display. It showed as a series of small digital blocks, numerous shades of green on a black background. Six blocks in a row were different from the random background pattern. Then a seventh. The fact that they were in a vertical row meant that the noise was being generated at a constant bearing from the ship, just west of north. Up to now, all they had was a direction to a possible noise source. They had no way of knowing the distance nor any of deterrmining if it were really a submarine, a fishing boat with an overly loud motor, or simply a disturbance in the water. The signal source did not repeat for a minute, then came back. Then it disappeared again.

Morris and his ASW officer looked at the bathythermograph reading. Every two hours they dropped an instrument that measured water temperature as it fell through the water, reporting back by wire until it was cut loose to fall free to the bottom. The trace showed an uneven line. The water temperature decreased with depth, but not in a uniform way.

"Could be anything," the ASW officer said quietly.

"Sure could," the captain agreed. He went back to the sonar scope. It was still there. The trace had remained fairly constant for nine minutes now.

But what was the range to it? Water was a fine medium for carrying sound energy, far more efficient at it than air, but it had its own rules. One hundred feet below the PHARRIS was "the layer," a fairly abrupt change in water temperature. Like an angled pane of glass, it allowed some sound to pass through, but reflected most of it. Some of the energy would be ducted between layers, retaining its intensity for an enormous distance. The signal source they were listening to could be as close as five miles or as distant as fifty. As they watched, the scope trace started leaning a bit to the left, which meant that they were pulling east of it… or it was pulling west of them, as a submarine might slide aft of her target as part of her own hunting maneuver. Morris went forward to the plotting table.

"If it's a target, it's pretty far off, I think," the quartermaster said quietly. It was surprising how quiet people were during antisubmarine warfare exercises, Morris thought, as though a submarine might hear their voices.

"Sir," the ASW officer said after a moment. "With no perceptible change in bearing, the contact has to be a good fifteen miles off. That means it has to be a fairly noisy source, probably too far to be an immediate threat. If it's a nuclear sub, we can get a cross-bearing after a short sprint."

Morris looked to the CIC's after bulkhead. His frigate was steaming at four knots. He lifted a "growler" phone.

"Bridge, Combat."

"Bridge aye. XO speaking."

"Joe, let's bend on twenty knots for five minutes. See if we can get a cross-bearing on the target we're working."

"Aye, skipper."

A minute later, Morris could feel the change in his ship's motion as her steam plant drove the frigate hard through the six-foot seas. He waited thoughtfully, wishing his ship had one of the more sensitive 2X arrays being fitted to the Perry-class fast-frigates. It was a predictably long five minutes, but ASW was a game that demanded patience.

Power was reduced, and as the ship slowed, the pattern on the sonar screen changed from random flow noise to random ambient noise, something more easily perceived than described. The captain, his ASW officer, and the sonar operator watched the screen intently for ten minutes. The anomalous sound tracing did not reappear. In a peacetime exercise they would have decided that it was a pure anomaly, water-generated noise that had stopped as unpredictably as it had started, perhaps a minor eddy that subsided on the surface. But now everything they detected had a potential red star and a periscope attached.

My first dilemma, Morris thought. If he investigated by sending his own helicopter or one of the Orion patrol aircraft, he might be sending them after nothing at all, and away from a path that could end with a real contact. If he did nothing, he might not be prosecuting a real contact. Morris sometimes wondered if captains should be issued coins with YES and NO stamped on either side, perhaps called a "digital decision generator" in keeping with the Navy's love for electronic-sounding titles.

"Any reason to think it's real?" he asked the ASW officer.

"No, sir." The officer wondered by this time if he had been right to call it to his captain's attention. "Not now."

"Fair enough. It won't be the last one."