Red Storm Rising

19. Journeys End/Journeys Begin

Sergeant James Smith was a company clerk, which meant that he carried his commander's maps, Edwards was grateful to learn. He would have been less happy to learn what Smith thought about what they were doing, and who was leading this party. A company clerk was also supposed to pack an ax with him, but since Iceland was almost entirely devoid of trees, his was still in the company headquarters, probably burned down to a charred axhead by now. They walked east in silence, their eyes punished by the low sun, past two kilometers of lava field that gave mute testimony to Iceland's volcanic birth.

They moved fast, without pausing for rest. The sea was at their back and as long as they could see it, men on the coast might see them. Each puff of dust raised by their boots made them feel increasingly vulnerable and Private Garcia, who brought up the rear of their small unit, periodically turned and walked backward for a few yards to be sure that no one was following them. The others looked ahead, to the sides, and up. They were sure that Ivan had thought to bring a helicopter or two along. Few things can make a man feel as naked as an aircraft filled with eyes.

The ground was almost totally barren. Here and there a few sprigs of grass fought their way through the rocks to sunlight, but for the most part the terrain was as barren as the surface of the moon-the Apollo astronauts had trained somewhere in Iceland for that very reason, Edwards remembered. The mild surface winds scoured up the slopes they were climbing, raising small quantities of dust that made the lieutenant sneeze periodically. He was already wondering what they would do when their rations ran out. This was no place to try living off the land. He'd been in Iceland only for a few months, and hadn't had a single chance to tour the countryside. Cross one bridge at a time, Edwards told himself. People grow their own food everywhere. There have to be farms around, and you'll be able to find them on the maps.

"Chopper!" Garcia called out.

The private had a great set of eyes, Edwards noted. They couldn't hear it yet, but there it was on the horizon, coming in from the sea.

"Everybody down. Let me see those glasses, Sergeant." Edwards held out his hand as he sat. Smith came down next to him, the binoculars already at his eyes.

"It's a Hip, sir. Troop carrier." He handed the glasses over.

"I'll take your word for it," Edwards replied. He could see the ungainly shape, perhaps three miles away, heading southeast toward Hafnarfjordur. "Looks like it's heading for the piers. Oh. They came in on a ship. They want to dock it, and they'll want to secure the waterfront first."

"Makes sense," Sergeant Smith agreed.

Edwards followed the helicopter until it dropped behind some buildings. Less than a minute later, it was up again, heading back northwest. He gave the horizon a close look.

"Looks like a ship out there."

Kherov moved slowly back to the chart table with an Army medic at his side. His pumps were almost keeping up with the inflow of water. The Fucik was down half a meter at the bow. Portable fire pumps were being set near the bilges to draw more seawater out and eject it over the side through the hole the American missile had made. He smiled wanly to himself. An Army medic followed him around. The General had practically pulled a gun on the captain, forcing him to allow the medic to give him a bottle of blood plasma and some morphine. He was grateful for the latter-his pain was still there, but not nearly so bad as it had been. The plasma container was a damned nuisance, with the medic holding it aloft as he moved around the pilothouse. But he knew he needed it. Kherov wanted to stay alive a few hours longer-and who knows, he thought, if the regimental surgeon has skill, I might even live…

There were more important things at hand. He had studied the charts of this port, but he had never been here before. He had no pilot. There would be no harbor tugs, and the tiny barge-tugs carried in his ship's split stem would be useless for docking.

The helicopter circled his ship after making its first trip. A miracle that it flew at all, the captain thought, after having the one next to it shattered by that strafing run. The mechanics had managed to extinguish that fire rapidly and place a curtain of water fog around the other aircraft. Some minor repairs had been needed, there were an even dozen holes in the sheet metal, but there it was, hovering just aft of the superstructure, landing slowly and awkwardly in the roiled air.

"How are you feeling, my captain?" the General inquired.

"How do I look?" A brave smile that failed to draw one in return. The General knew that he should physically carry the man to his surgeon's emergency medical post, but who then would dock the ship? Captain Kherov was dying before his eyes. The medic had made that clear enough. There was internal bleeding. The plasma and bandages couldn't hope to keep up with it. "Have your men secured their objectives?"

"They report some fighting still at the air base, but it Will soon be under control. The first team at the main quay reports no one there. That will be secure, my captain. You should rest a bit."

Kherov shook his head like a drunken man. "That will come soon enough. Fifteen more kilometers. We race in too fast as it is. The Americans may yet have some aircraft heading for us. We must get to the dock and unload your equipment before noon. I have lost too many of my crewmen to fail."

"We gotta report this," Edwards said quietly. He shrugged out of his pack and opened it. He'd watched a man test the radio before, and saw that instructions were printed on the side of the radio set. The six pieces of the antenna fitted easily into the pistol grip. Next he plugged in his headset and switched the radio on.

He was supposed to point the flowerlike antenna at a satellite on the 30* meridian, but he didn't have a compass to tell him where that was. Smith unfolded a map and selected a landmark in that general direction. Edwards pointed the antenna at it and waved it slowly across the sky until he heard the warbling carrier wave of the communications bird.

"Okay." Edwards turned the frequency knob to a preselected channel and toggled the Transmit switch.

"Anyone on this net, this is Mike Edwards, first lieutenant, United States Air Force, transmitting from Iceland. Please acknowledge, over." Nothing happened. Edwards reread the instructions to make sure he was doing the right thing, and rebroadcast the same message three more times.

"Sender on this net, please identify. Over." A voice finally answered.

"Edwards, Michael D., first lieutenant, U.S. Air Force, serial number 328-61-4030. I'm the meteorological officer attached to the 57th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Keflavik. Who is this? Over."

"If you don't know that, pal, you don't belong on this net. Clear off, we need this for official traffic," the voice answered coldly. Edwards stared at the radio in mute rage for several seconds before exploding.

"Listen up, asshole! The guy who knows how to work this damned radio is dead, and I'm all you got. The base at Keflavik was hit seven hours ago by a Russian air and ground attack. The place is crawling with bad guys, there's a Russian ship coming into Hafnarfjordur harbor right now, and you're playing fucking word games! Let's get it together, mister. Over!"

"Copy that. Stand by. We have to verify who you are." Not a trace of remorse.

"Dammit, this thing works on batteries. You want me to run them down while you open a file cabinet?"

A new voice came on the circuit. "Edwards, this is the senior communications watch officer. Get off the air. They might be able to monitor you. We'll check you out and be back in three-zero minutes from now. You got that? Over."

That was more like it. The lieutenant checked his watch. "Roger, understand. We'll be back in three-zero minutes. Out." Edwards flipped the power switch off. "Let's get moving. I didn't know they could track in on this." The good news was that the radio broke down in under two minutes, and they were moving again.

"Sarge, let's head for this Hill 152. We should be able to see pretty good from up there, and there's water on the way."

"It's hot water, sir, full of sulfur. Just as soon not drink that shit, if you know what I mean."

"Suit yourself." Edwards moved off at a slow trot. Once as a boy he'd had to call in to report a fire. They'd believed him then. Why not now?

Kherov knew that he was finishing the work that the Americans had begun. Driving his ship into the harbor at eighteen knots was worse than reckless. The sea bottom here was rock, not mud, and a grounding could easily rip his bottom out. But he feared another air attack even more, and he was sure that a flight of American fighters was heading this way, laden with missiles and bombs that would rob him of success in the most important mission of his life.

"Midships!" he called.

"Rudder amidships," the helmsman acknowledged.

He'd learned minutes before that his first officer was dead, from wounds sustained in the first strafing attack. His best helmsman had died screaming before his eyes, along with many of his skilled deck crewmen. He had only one man qualified to take the shore sightings necessary for a positive position fix. But the quay was in sight, and he'd depend on a seaman's eye.

"Slow to half speed," he ordered. The helmsman relayed the order on the engine room telegraph.

"Rudder right full." He watched his ship's head come slowly right. He stood on the centerline of the bridge, carefully lining his jackstaff up with the quay. There was no one trained to handle the mooring lines. He wondered if the soldiers could manage it.

The ship touched bottom. Kherov was thrown from his feet and cursed loudly with pain and rage. He'd misjudged his approach. The Fucik shuddered as she slid across the rocky bottom. There was no time to check his chart. When the tide turned, the harbor's strong eddy currents would make his landing an impossible nightmare.

"Reverse your rudder." A minute later the ship was fully afloat again. The captain ignored the flooding alarms that hooted behind him. The hull was penetrated, or maybe the damaged seams had sprung farther. No matter. The dock was a mere thousand meters away. It was a massive quay made of rough stone. "Midships. All stop."

The ship was moving far too fast to stop. The soldiers on the dock could already see that, and were slowly backing up, away from the edge, fearing that it would crumble when the ship struck. Kherov grunted with dark amusement. So much for the line handlers. Eight hundred meters.

"All back full."

Six hundred meters. The ship's whole mass shuddered as the engines fought to slow her. She headed into the berth at a thirty-degree angle, her speed now eight knots. Kherov walked to the engine room voice tube.

"On my order, shut down the engines, pull the manual sprinkler handle, and evacuate the engine spaces."

"What are you doing?" the General asked.

"We cannot moor to the quay," Kherov answered simply. "Your soldiers don't know how to handle the lines, and many of my seamen are dead." The berth Kherov had selected was precisely half a meter shallower than his ship's draft. He went back to the voice tube.

"Now, Comrades!"

Below, the chief engineer gave the orders. His chief machinist cut off the diesel engines and ran to the escape ladder. The engineer yanked the emergency handle for the fire-suppression system and followed, after counting heads to make sure that all his men had gotten out.

"Rudder hard right!"

A minute later the bow of JULIUS FUCIK rammed the quay at a speed of five knots. Her bow crumpled as though constructed of paper, and the whole ship pivoted to the right, her side slamming against the rocks in a shower of orange sparks. The impact ripped the ship's bottom open at the turn of her starboard bilges. Instantly her lower decks flooded, and the ship settled rapidly to the bottom, only a few feet below her flat keel. The JULIUS FUCIK would never sail again. But she had reached her objective.

Kherov waved to the General. "My men will deploy the two baby tugboats we have in the stem. Tell them to remove two barges and set them between the stem and the end of the quay. My men will show you how to secure the barges properly so they don't drift off. Then use your bridging equipment to take your vehicles off the elevator onto the barges, then from the barges to the quay."

"We can do this easily. Now, Comrade Captain, you will see my surgeon. I will brook no further argument." The General waved to his orderly and both men assisted the captain below. There might still be time.

"You decide who I am yet?" Edwards asked testily. Another really annoying thing was the quarter-second delay caused by the signal's travel time to and from the satellite.

"That's affirmative. The problem is, how do we know it's really you?" The officer had a telex in his hand confirming that one First Lieutenant Michael D. Edwards, USAF, had indeed been the met officer for the 57th FIS, information that could easily have been in Russian hands before the attack.

"Look, turkey, I'm sitting here on Hill 152, east of Hafnarfjordur, okay? There is a Russian helicopter flying around, and some godawful big ship just docked in the harbor. It's too far to see a flag, but I don't figure the son of a bitch came from New York, y'know? The Russians have invaded this rock. They pounded hell out of Keflavik, and they got troops all over the place."

"Tell me about the ship."

Edwards locked the binoculars to his eyes. "Black hull, white superstructure. Big block letters on the side. Can't quite make it out. Something-Lines. The first word begins with an L. Some kind of barge-carrying ship. There's a tugboat moving a barge around right now."

"Have you seen any Russian troops?"

Edwards paused before answering. "No. I've just heard radio reports of the Marines at Keflavik. They were being overrun. They've been off the air ever since. I can see some people on the dock, but I can't tell what they are."

"Okay, we'll be checking that out. For the moment I'd suggest that you find a good, safe place to belly-up, and stay off the air. If we have to contact you, we'll broadcast on the hour, every even hour. If you want to talk to us, we'll be here. Understood?"

"Roger, copy. Out." Edwards switched off. "I don't believe this."

"Nobody knows what the hell's going on, Lieutenant," Smith observed. "Why should they? We sure as hell don't."

"Ain't that the truth!" Edwards repacked his radio. "If those idiots would listen to me, we could have some fighter-bombers here to blast that ship inside two hours. God, but she's a big one. How much equipment can you Marines load in something that big?"

"A lot," Smith said quietly.

"You think they'll be trying to land more troops?"

"It figures, sir. They couldn't have hit Keflavik with all that many-figure a battalion, tops. This here's a pretty big rock. I'd sure as hell want more troops to hold it than that. Course, I'm just a buck sergeant."

The General could finally get to work. The first order of business was to board the single working helicopter, now operating off the dock, its pilots delighted to see the ship sunk alongside the quay. He left a rifle company to secure the harbor area, sent another to Reykjavik airport to reinforce that, and detailed his last to get the division's equipment moving off the ship. Then he flew to Keflavik to survey the situation.

Most of the fires were still burning, he saw. The aircraft fuel dump nearest the base was ablaze, but the main storage tanks five kilometers away seemed intact, and, he could see, were already guarded by a BMD assault vehicle and some men. The assault regiment commander met him on one of the undamaged runways.

"Keflavik air base is secure, Comrade General!" he proclaimed.

"How did it go?"

"Hard. The Americans were uncoordinated-one of the missiles hit their command post-but they did not give up easily. We have nineteen dead and forty-three wounded. We have accounted for most of the Marines and other security troops, and we are still counting the other prisoners."

"How many armed troops escaped?"

"None that we know of. Too early to tell, of course, but some undoubtedly died in the fires." The colonel waved at the smashed base area to the east. "How is the ship? I heard he took a missile hit."

"And we were strafed by American fighters. He's tied to the dock, and the equipment is being unloaded now. Can we use this airfield? I-"

"Getting that report now." The colonel's radio operator handed his radiophone over. The colonel spoke for a minute or so. A five-man party of Air Force personnel had accompanied the second wave and was evaluating the base facilities.

"Comrade General, the base radar and radio systems are destroyed.

The runways are littered with debris, and they tell me that they need some hours to sweep them clear. Also the fuel pipeline is broken in two places. Fortunately it did not bum. For the moment we'll have to use the airport's trucks to transfer fuel. All of them seem to be intact… they recommend that the airlift come into Reykjavik. Have we secured that?"

"Yes, and it is intact. Any hope of getting information from the American aircraft?"

"Unfortunately not, Comrade. The aircraft were badly damaged from incoming missiles. Those that did not bum of their own accord were burned by their crews. As I said, they fought hard."

"Very well. I'll send the remainder of your two battalions with your equipment as soon as we can get things organized. I'll need the third at the dock for the moment. Set up your perimeter. Start the cleanup, we need this airfield operational as soon as possible. Get the prisoners together and ready to move. We'll be flying them out tonight. They are to be treated correctly." His orders on that score were very precise. Prisoners are assets.

"As you say, Comrade General. And please get me some engineers so that we can repair that fuel pipe."

"Well done, Nikolay Gennadyevich!"

The General ran back to his helicopter. Only nineteen dead. He'd expected a higher number than that. Taking out the Marine command center had been a real stroke of luck. By the time his Hip returned to the dock, the equipment was already rolling off. The ship's barges had been fitted with loading doors in their hulls, like miniature landing craft, which allowed vehicles to roll straight out. The units already were being organized on the dock and nearby lots. His staff officers were fully in charge of things, the General saw. To this point, Operation Polar Glory was a total success.

When the Hip landed, it refueled from a line draped down from the ship's side. The General went to his operations officer.

"Reykjavik airport is secure also, Comrade General, and there we have complete fueling facilities. Is that where you want the airlift to come in?"

The General thought about that one. Reykjavik's airport was a small one, but he didn't want to wait until the larger Keflavik was clear to bring in his reinforcements. "Yes. Send the code word to headquarters: I want the airlift to begin at once."

"Tanks." Garcia had the binoculars. "A bunch of 'em and they all got red stars. Heading west on Route 4 1. This oughta convince 'em, sir."

Edwards took the field glasses. He could see the tanks, but not the stars. "What kind are they? They don't look like real tanks."

It was now Smith's turn. "That's BMPs-maybe BMDs. It's an infantry assault vehicle, like an amtrak. Holds a squad of men and a 73-millimeter gun. They're Russian, that's for sure, Lieutenant. I count eleven of the bastards, and maybe twenty trucks with men in 'em.''

Edwards broke out his radio again. Garcia was right. This did get their attention.

"Okay, Edwards, who do you have with you?"

Edwards rattled off the names of his Marines. "We bugged out before the Russians got into the base."

"Where are you now?"

"Hill 152, four kilometers due east of Hafnarfjordur. We can see all the way into the harbor. There are Russian vehicles heading west towards Keflavik, and some trucks-we can't tell what kind-heading northeast towards Reykjavik on Highway 41. Look, guys, if you can whistle up a couple of Aardvarks, maybe we can kill that ship before she unloads," the lieutenant said urgently.

"I'm afraid the Varks are a little busy right now, fella. In case nobody told you, there's a shooting war in Germany. World War III kicked off ten hours ago. We're trying to get a recon bird up your way, but it might take awhile. Nobody's decided what to do about you either. For right now, you're on your own."

"No shit," Edwards replied, looking at his men.

"Okay, Edwards. Use your head, avoid contact with the enemy. If I read this right, you're the only friendly we have there right now. It figures they'll want you to keep the reports coming in. Observe and report. Conserve the battery power you have. Play it nice and cool, guy. Help will be coming, but it might take awhile. Just hang in there. You can listen for us on the hour, on even hours. You got a good watch?" In the meantime, the communications officer thought, we'll try to figure a way to find out if you're really who you say, and that you haven't got a Russian pistol at your head.

"Roger, it's set to Zulu time. We'll be listening. Out."

"More tanks," Smith said. "Jeez, that ship sure is a busy place!"

The General would not have believed how well things were going. When he had seen the Harpoon coming, he was sure that his mission would be a failure. Already a third of his vehicles had rolled off the ship and were en route to their destinations. Next, he wanted the rest of his division flown in. After that came more helicopters. For the present, all around him were a hundred thousand Icelanders whose friendship he did not expect. A few hardy souls were watching him from the opposite side of the harbor, and he'd already sent a squad of men to get rid of them. How many people were making telephone calls? Was the telephone-satellite relay base still intact? Might they be calling the United States to tell what was happening in Iceland? So many things to worry about.

"General, the airlift is under way. The first aircraft took off ten minutes ago with a fighter escort. They should begin to arrive in four hours," his communications officer reported.

"Four hours." The General looked up from the ship's bridge into a clear blue sky. How long before the Americans reacted and threw a squadron of fighter-bombers at him? He pointed to his operations officer.

"We have too many vehicles sitting on the quay. As soon as a platoon-sized grouping is together, move them off to their objectives. There is no time to wait for company groups. What about Reykjavik airport?"

"We have one company of infantrymen in place, with another twenty minutes away. No opposition. The civilian air controllers and the airport maintenance people are all under guard. A patrol going through Reykjavik reports little activity on the streets. Our embassy personnel report that a government radio broadcast told people to remain in their homes, and for the most part they seem to be doing this."

"Tell the patrol to seize the main telephone exchange. Leave the radio and television stations alone, but get the telephone exchange!" He turned as a squad of paratroopers arrived at the crowd on the far side of the harbor. He estimated perhaps thirty people there. The eight soldiers approached quickly after dismounting from their truck, rifles at the ready. One man walked up to the soldiers, waving his arms wildly. He was shot down. The rest of the crowd ran.

The General shouted a curse. "Find out who did that!"

McCafferty returned to the attack center after a brief visit to his private head. Coffee would always keep you awake, he thought, either through the caffeine or the discomfort of an always-full bladder. Things were already not going well. Whatever genius had decided to order the American submarines out of the Barents Sea in the hope of avoiding an "incident" had neatly gotten them out of the way. Just in time for the war to start, the captain grumbled, forgetting that the idea hadn't seemed all that bad at the time.

Had they stuck to the plan, he might already have put a dent in the Soviet Navy. Instead, someone had panicked over the new Soviet missile sub dispositions, and so far as he could tell, the result was that no one had accomplished much of anything. The Soviet subs that had come storming out of the Kola Fjord had not come south into the Norwegian Sea as expected. His long-range sonar reported possible submarine noises far to his north, heading west before fading out. So, he thought, Ivan's sending his boats down the Denmark Strait? The SOSUS line between Iceland and Greenland could make that idea a costly one.

USS CHICAGO was steaming at five hundred feet just north of the 69' parallel, about a hundred miles west of Norway's rocky coastline. The Norwegians' collection of diesel boats was inside of him, guarding their own coast. McCafferty understood that, but didn't like it.

So far nothing had gone right, and McCafferty was worried. That was expected, and he could suppress it. He could fall back on his training. He knew what his submarine could do, and had a pretty good idea of what the Russian subs were capable of. He had the superior capabilities, but some Russian could always get lucky. This was war. A different sort of environment, not one judged by umpires and rule books. Mistakes now were not a matter of a written critique from his squadron commander. And so far luck seemed to be on the other side.

He looked around at his men. They had to be thinking the same thoughts, he was sure, but they all depended on him. The crewmen of his submarine were essentially the physical extensions of his own mind. He was the central control for the entire corporate entity known as USS CHICAGO, and for the first time the awesome responsibility struck him. If he messed up, all these men would die. And he, too, would die-with the knowledge that he had failed them.

You can't think like this, the captain told himself. It will eat you up. Better to have a combat situation where I can limit my thinking to the immediate. He checked the clock. Good.

"Take her up to periscope depth," he ordered. "It's time to check for orders, and we'll try an ESM sweep to see what's happening."

Not a simple procedure, that. The submarine came up slowly, cautiously, turning to allow her sonar to make certain that there was not a ship around.

"Raise the ESM."

An electronics technician pressed the button to raise the mast for his broad-band receiver. The board lit up instantly.

"Numerous electronic sources, sir. Three J-band search sets, lots of other stuff. Lots of VHF and UHF chatter. The recorders are going."

That figures, McCafferty thought. The odds against having anyone here after us are pretty low, though. "Up scope."

The captain angled the search-scope lens upward to scan the sky for a nearby aircraft and made a quick turn around the horizon. He noticed something odd, and had to angle down the lens to see what it was.

There was a green smoke marker not two hundred yards away. McCafferty cringed and spun the instrument back around. A multiengine aircraft was coming out of the haze-directly in at them.

The captain reached up and spun the periscope wheel, lowering the instrument. "Take her down! All ahead flank! Make your depth eight hundred feet!" Where the hell did he come from?

The submarine's engines fairly exploded into action. A flurry of orders had the helmsmen push their controls to the stops.

"Torpedo in the water, starboard side!'' a sonarman screamed.

McCafferty reacted at once. "Left full rudder!"

"Left full rudder, aye!" The speed log was at ten knots and rising quickly. They passed below one hundred feet.

"Torpedo bearing one-seven-five relative. It's pinging. Doesn't have us yet."

"Fire off a noisemaker."

Seventy feet aft of the control room, a five-inch canister was ejected from a launcher. It immediately started making all kinds of noise for the torpedo to home in on.

"Noisemaker away!"

"Right fifteen degrees rudder." McCafferty was calmer now. He'd played this game before. "Come to new course one-one-zero. Sonar, I want true bearings on that torpedo."

"Aye. Torpedo bearing two-zero-six, coming port-to-starboard."

Chicago passed through two hundred feet. The boat had a twenty-degree down angle. The planesmen and most of the technicians had seatbelts to hold them in place. The officers and a few others who had to circulate around grasped at rails and stanchions to keep from falling.

"Conn, Sonar. The torpedo seems to be following a circular path. Now traveling starboard-to-port, bearing one-seven-five. Still pinging, but I don't think it has us."

"Very well. Keep those reports coming." McCafferty climbed aft to the plot. "Looks like he made a bad drop."

"Could be," the navigator agreed. "But how in hell-"

"Had to be a MAD pass. The magnetic anomaly detector. Was the tape running? I didn't have him long enough for an ID." He checked the plot. They were now a mile and a half from where they'd been when the torpedo was dropped. "Sonar, tell me about the fish."

"Bearing one-nine-zero, dead aft. Still circling, seems to be going down a little. I think maybe the noisemaker drew him in and he's trying to hit it."

"All ahead two-thirds." Time to slow down, McCafferty thought. They'd cleared the initial datum point, and the aircraft's crew would need a few minutes to evaluate their attack before beginning a new search. In that time they'd be two or three miles away, below the layer, and making little noise.

"All ahead two-thirds, aye. Leveling off at eight hundred feet."

"We can start breathing again, people," McCafferty said. His own voice was not as even as he would have preferred. For the first time, he noted a few shaky hands. Just like a car wreck, he thought. You only shake after you're safe. "Left fifteen degrees rudder. Come left to two-eight-zero." If the aircraft dropped again, no sense in traveling in a straight path. But they should be fairly safe now. The whole episode, he noted, had lasted less than ten minutes.

The captain walked to the forward bulkhead and rewound the videotape, then set it up to run. It showed the periscope breaking the surface, the first quick search… then the smoke marker. Next came the aircraft. McCafferty froze the frame.

The plane looked like a Lockheed P-3 Orion.

"That's one of ours!" the duty electrician noted. The captain stepped forward into sonar.

"The fish is fading aft, Cap'n. Probably still trying to kill the noisemaker. I think when it hit the water it circled in the wrong direction, away from us, I mean."

"What's it sound like?"

"A lot like one of our Mark-46s"-the leading sonarman shuddered-it really did sound like a forty-six!" He rewound his own tape and set it on speaker. The screeeing sound of the twin-screw fish was enough to raise the hairs on your neck. McCafferty nodded and went back aft.

"Okay, that might have been a Norwegian P-3. Then again it might have been a Russian May. They look pretty much alike, and they have exactly the same job. Well done, people. We're going to clear the area." The captain congratulated himself on his performance. He'd just evaded his first war shot-dropped by a friendly aircraft! But he had evaded it. Not all the luck was with the other side. Or was it?

Morris was catnapping in his bridge chair, wondering what was missing from his life. It took a few seconds to realize that he wasn't doing any paperwork, his normal afternoon pastime. He had to transmit position reports every four hours, contact reports when he had any-he hadn't yet — but the routine paper-shuffling that ate up so much of his time was a thing of the past. A pity, he thought, that it took a war to relieve one of that! He could almost imagine himself starting to enjoy it.

The convoy was still twenty miles to his southeast. Pharris was the outlying sonar picket. Her mission was to detect, localize, and engage any submarine trying to close the convoy. To do that, the frigate was alternately dashing-"sprinting"-forward at maximum speed, then drifting briefly at slower speed to allow her sonar to work with maximum efficiency. Had the convoy proceeded at twenty knots on a straight course, it would have been nearly impossible. The three columns of merchantmen were zigzagging, however, making life a little easier on all concerned. Except on the merchant sailors, for whom station-keeping was as foreign as marching.

Morris sipped at a Coke. It was a warm afternoon and he preferred his caffeine cold.

"Signal coming in from Talbot, sir," the junior officer of the deck reported.

Morris rose and walked to the starboard bridge wing with his binoculars. He prided himself on being able to read Morse almost as quickly as his signalmen:

"More good news, skipper," the OOD commented.

"Yeah."

"How did they do it?" Chip wondered aloud.

"How don't matter a damn," Toland replied. "We gotta get this to the boss." He made a quick phone call and left for flag country.

He almost got lost. Nimitz had over two thousand compartments. The Admiral lived in only one of them, and Toland had only been there once. He found a Marine sentry at the door. The carrier's commander, Captain Svenson, was already there.

"Sir, we have a Flash message that the Soviets have attacked and neutralized Iceland. They may have troops there."

"Do they have aircraft there?" Svenson asked at once.

"We don't know. They're trying to get a recon bird to take a look, probably the Brits, but we won't have any hard information for at least six hours. The last friendly satellite pass was two hours ago, and we won't have another one of those for nine hours."

"Okay, tell me what you have," the Admiral ordered.

Toland went over the sketchy data that had come in the dispatch from Norfolk. "From what we know, it was a pretty off-the-wall plan, but it seems to have worked."

"Nobody ever said Ivan was dumb," Svenson commented sourly. "What about our orders?"

"Nothing yet."

"How many troops on Iceland?" the Admiral asked.

"No word on that, sir. The P-3 crew watched two relays of four hovercraft. At a hundred men per load, that's eight hundred men, at least a battalion. probably more like a regiment. The ship is large enough to carry the equipment load for a full brigade and then some. It's in one of Gorshkov's books that this sort of ship is uniquely useful for landing operations."

"That's too much for a MAU to take on, sir," Svenson said. A Marine Amphibious Unit consisted of a reinforced battalion of troops.

"With three carriers backing them up?" Admiral Baker snorted, then adopted a more thoughtful pose. "You could be right at that. What does this do to the air threat to us?"

"Iceland had a squadron of F-15s and a couple AWACS birds. That's a lot of protection for us-gone. We've lost raid warning, attrition, and raid-tracking capabilities." Svenson didn't like this at all. "We should be able to handle their Backfires ourselves, but it would have been a lot easier with those Eagles running interference."

Baker sipped at his coffee. "Our orders haven't changed."

"What else is going on in the world?" Svenson asked.

"Norway is being hit hard, but no details yet. Same story in Germany. The Air Force is supposed to have gotten a heavy hit in on the Soviets, again no details. It's still too early for any substantive intel assessments of what's happening."

"If Ivan was able to suppress the Norwegians and fully neutralize Iceland, the air threat against this battle group has at least doubled," Svenson said. "I have to get talking with my air group."

The captain left. Admiral Baker was silent for several minutes. Toland had to stay put. He hadn't been dismissed yet. "They just hit Keflavik?"

"Yes, sir."

"Find out what else is there and get back to me."

"Yes, sir." As Toland walked back to the intelligence shack, he pondered what he'd told his wife: The carrier is the best-protected ship in the fleet. But the captain was worried.

They were almost thinking of it as home. The position was at least easily defensible. No one could approach Hill 152 without being seen, and that meant crossing a lava field, then climbing up a steep, bare slope. Garcia found a small lake a kilometer away, evidently filled with water from the winter snows that had only lately melted. Sergeant Smith observed that it would have made a good mixer for bourbon, if they had any bourbon.

They were hungry, but all had four days of rations along, and they feasted on such delicacies as canned lima beans and ham. Edwards learned a new and indelicate name for this item.

"Anybody here know how to cook a sheep?" Rodgers asked. Several miles south of them was a large herd of the animals.

"Cook with what?" Edwards asked.

"Oh." Rodgers looked around. There wasn't a tree in sight. "How come there ain't no trees?"

"Rodgers only been here a month," Smith explained. "Prive, you ain't never seen a windy day till you been here in the winter. The only way a tree can grow here is if you set her in concrete. I seen wind strong enough to blow a deuce-and-a-half right off the road."

"Airplanes." Garcia had the binoculars. He pointed northeast. "Lots."

Edwards took the field glasses. They were just dots, but they grew rapidly into shapes. "I count six, big ones, look like C-141s… that makes them IL-76s, I think. Maybe some fighters, too. Sergeant, get a pad and a pencil-we have to do a count."

It lasted for hours. The fighters landed first, rolling off to the refueling area at once, then taxiing to one of the shorter runways. One aircraft came in every three minutes, and Edwards couldn't help be impressed. The IL-76, code-named the Candid by the NATO countries, was an awkward, ungainly design, like its American counterpart. The pilots landed, stopped, and rolled their aircraft onto the taxiway off the main north-south runway as though they had practiced for months-as Edwards rather suspected they had. They unloaded at the airport terminal building, then rolled to the refueling area and took off, coordinating neatly with the landing aircraft. Those lifting off came very close to their hill, close enough that Edwards was able to copy down a few fail numbers. When the count reached fifty, he set up his radio.

"This is Edwards transmitting from Hill 152. Do you copy, over."

"Roger, copy," the voice came back at once. "From now on, your code name is Beagle. We are Doghouse. Continue your report."

"Roger, Doghouse. We have a Soviet airlift in progress. We have counted fifty-five-zero-Soviet transport aircraft, India-Lima-Seven-Six type. They are coming into Reykjavik, unloading, and rolling back out to the northeast."

"Beagle, are you sure, repeat are you sure of your count."

"That is affirmative, Doghouse. The takeoff run brings them right over our heads, and we got a paper record. No shit, mister, five-zero aircraft" — Smith held up his pad-"make that five-three aircraft, and the operation is continuing. We also have six single-seat aircraft sitting at the end of runway four. I can't make out the type, but they sure as hell look like fighters. You copy that, Doghouse?"

"I copy five-three transports and six possible fighters. Okay, Beagle, we gotta get this information upstairs fast. Sit tight and we'll keep to the regular transmission schedule. Is your position safe?"

That's a good question, Edwards thought. "I hear you, Doghouse We're staying put. Out." He took off the headset. "We safe, Sergeant?"

"Sure, Lieutenant, I haven't felt this safe since Beirut."

"A beautiful operation, Comrade General." The Ambassador beamed.

"Your support was most valuable," the General lied through his teeth. The Soviet embassy to Iceland had over sixty members, almost all intelligence types of one sort or another. Instead of doing something useful, like seizing the telephone exchange, on donning their uniforms they had been rounding up local political figures. Most of the members of Iceland's ancient Parliament, the Althing, had been arrested. Necessary, the General agreed, but too roughly done, with one of them killed in the process and two more shot. Better to be gentle with them, he thought. This was not Afghanistan. The Icelanders had no warrior tradition, and a gentler approach might have shown better returns. But that aspect of the operation was under KGB control, its control team already in place with the embassy personnel. "With your permission, there is much yet to be done."

The General went back up the jacob's ladder onto the Fucik- Problem had developed in off-loading the division's missile battalion. The barges that contained that equipment had been damaged by the missile strike The newly installed landing doors had jammed solid and had to be torched free. He shrugged. Up to now, Polar Glory had been a near textbook operation. Not bad for a scratch crew. Most of his rolling equipment-two hundred armored vehicles and many trucks-had already been mated with their troops and dispersed. The SA-11 battalion was all that remained. "

Bad news, Comrade General," the SAM commander reported.

"Must I wait for it?" the General asked testily. It had been a very long day.

"We have three usable rockets."

"Three?"

"Both these barges were ruptured when the American missile hit us. The shock damage accounted for several. The main damage came from the water used to fight the fire."

"Those are mobile missiles," the General objected. "Surely the designers anticipated that they might get wet!"

"Not with saltwater, Comrade. This is the army version, not the naval, and it is not protected against saltwater corrosion. The men who fought the fire did so with great gusto, and most of the rockets were soaked. The exposed control wiring and the radar seeker beads on the missile noses were badly damaged. My men have run electronic tests of all the rockets. Three are fully functional. Four more we can probably clean off and repair. The rest are ruined. We have to fly more in."

The General controlled his temper. So, a small thing that no one had thought of. Aboard ship, fires are fought with saltwater. They should have asked for the naval variant of this rocket. It was always the small things.

"Divide your launchers as planned. Place all the usable missiles at the Reykjavik airport, and the ones you think you can fix at Keflavik. I'll order the replacement rockets to be flown in. Is there other damage?"

"Apparently not. The radar antennae were covered with plastic, and the instruments inside the vehicles were safe because the vehicles themselves were sealed. If we get new rockets, my battalion is fully ready. We'll be ready to travel in twenty minutes. Sorry, Comrade."

"Not your fault. You know where you are to go?"

"Two of my battery commanders have already checked the routes."

"Excellent. Carry on, Comrade Colonel." The General climbed back up the ladder to the bridge to look for his communications officer. Within two hours a plane loaded with forty SA-11 surface-to-air missiles was rolling off Murmansk's Kilpyavr airfield bound for Iceland.