Red Storm Rising

21. Nordic Hammer

"I know that was a fighter, and there had to be more than one," Edwards said. It was raining again, probably for the last time. The clouds to the southwest were breaking up, and there was a hint of clear sky on the horizon. Edwards just sat there in his helmet and poncho, staring into the distance.

"I suppose you're right, sir," Smith replied. The sergeant was nervous. They'd been on this hilltop for almost twenty-four hours, a long time to be stationary in hostile country. The best time to move out would have been during the rain showers, when visibility was cut to a few hundred yards. Soon the sky might be clear again, and it wouldn't get dark again for quite a while. As it was, they sat on their hilltop in camouflage ponchos that kept them partly dry and wholly miserable.

There was a heavy shower north of them that prevented their seeing Reykjavik, and they could barely make out Hafnarfjordur to the west, which worried the sergeant, who wanted to know what Ivan was up to. What if they detected Edwards's satellite radio and began to triangulate on it? What if there were patrols out?

"Lieutenant?"

"Yeah, Sarge?"

"We got those phone lines on one side of us, and those power lines on the other-"

"You want to blow some up?" Edwards smiled.

"No, sir, but Ivan is going to start patrolling them soon, and this ain't a very good place for us to make contact."

"We're supposed to observe and report, Sarge," Edwards said without conviction.

"Yes, sir."

Edwards checked his watch. It was 1955Z. Doghouse might want to talk with them, though they hadn't called in to him yet. Edwards broke the radio out of the pack again, assembled the pistol-grip antenna, and donned his headset. At 1959 he switched on and tracked in on the satellite carrier wave.

"Doghouse calling Beagle. Doghouse calling Beagle. Do you copy? Over."

"Well, how about that." He toggled the Transmit switch. "Roger we're here, Doghouse."

"Anything new to report?"

"Negative, unless you want to know about the rain. Visibility is down. We can't see very much."

The communications watch officer at Doghouse looked at a weather map. So it really was raining there. He hadn't been able to convince his boss that Beagle could be trusted. Edwards had answered the questions that the counterintelligence guys had come up with. They'd even had a voice-stress analyzer handy to check the tapes of his answers. The needle had pegged on the last answer about his girlfriend. That hadn't been faked. Copies of the relevant parts of his personnel package had been faxed to them. Upper fifth of his class at Colorado Springs. Good in math and engineering studies, did extremely well in his post-graduation studies in meteorology. His eyesight had worsened slightly during his tenure at Colorado Springs, becoming just bad enough to keep him from flying. Regarded as quiet and shy, but evidently well liked by his classmates. Not a warrior type, the psychological profile said. How long would the kid last?

One MiG-29 was flying. The others were in the hardened shelters the Americans had only just finished at the end of runway eleven. The fighter's mission was twofold. It was a standing combat air patrol aircraft should an incoming raid be detected, but more importantly, it was being tracked carefully by the ground radar controllers: their radar needed to be calibrated. Iceland's irregular terrain made for troublesome radar performance, and as with the surface-to-air missiles, the instruments themselves had been badly jostled by the trip aboard the Fucik The fighter flew circles around the airport while the radar operators determined that what their instruments told them was correct.

The fighters were fully fueled and armed, their pilots resting on cots near them. At the moment, the bowsers were fueling the Badger bomber that had given the fighters navigational and electronic support. Soon it would be leaving to bring in nine more. The Air Force detachment was rapidly finishing their job of clearing the airfield. All but one of the runways was swept clear of fragments now. The remains of the American aircraft had been bulldozed off the pavement. The fuel pipeline would be repaired in an hour, the engineers said.

"Quite a busy day," the major said to the fighter commander.

"It's not over yet. I'll feel better when we get the rest of the regiment in," the colonel observed quietly. "They should have hit us already."

"How do you expect them to attack?"

The colonel shrugged. "Hard to say. If they're really serious about closing this field, they'll use a nuclear warhead."

"Are you always so optimistic, Comrade Colonel?"

The raid was an hour away. The eighteen B-52H bombers had left Louisiana ten hours before and landed to refuel at Sondrestrom Air Force Base on Greenland's west coast. Fifty miles ahead of them were a single Raven EF-111 jamming aircraft and four F-4 Phantoms configured for defense-suppression.

The radar was about halfway calibrated, though what had been done was the easy part. The fighter that had just landed had flown racetrack ovals from due north around the western horizon to due south of Keflavik. The area to the west of the air base, though not exactly flat, was nearly so, with low rocky hills. Next came the hard part, plotting radar coverage of the eastern arc over Iceland's mountainous center, a solid collection of hills that worked up to the island's tall central peak. Another Fulcrum rolled off the runway to begin this task, its pilot wondering how long it might take to map all the nulls-areas blanked to radar coverage by the steep valleys-areas that an attacking aircraft could use to mask its approach to Keflavik.

The radar officers were plotting probable troublesome spots on their topographical maps when an operator shouted a warning. Their clear radar screens had just turned to hash from powerful electronic jammers. That could mean only one thing.

The klaxons sounded in the fighter shelters at the end of runway eleven. Fighter pilots who had been dozing or playing dominos jumped to their feet and raced to their aircraft.

The tower officer lifted the field phone to give more exact warning to the fighters, then called up the missile battery commander: "Incoming air raid!"

Men leaped into action all across the air base. The fighter ground crews hit the built-in self-starters, turning the jet engines even as the pilots climbed into the cockpits. The SAM battery turned on its search and fire-control systems while the launch vehicles slewed their missiles into firing position.

Just under the radar horizon, eighteen B-52 bombers had just lit off their ECM jamming systems. They were deployed in six groups of three each. The first skimmed over the top of Mt. Snaefells, sixty miles north of Keflavik, and the rest came from all around the west side of the compass, converging on the target behind a wall of electronic noise provided by their own systems and the supporting EF-111 Raven jammer.

The Russian fighter just lifting off climbed to altitude, the pilot keeping his radar off as he scanned the sky visually, waiting for intercept information from the ground-based radar. His comrades were even now taxiing into the open, racing straight down the runway and into the sky. The aircraft that had just landed taxied to a fuel bowser, its pilot gesturing and cursing at the ground crewmen who were struggling to fuel his fighter. In their haste, they spilled ten gallons of fuel over the wing. Amazingly, it did not ignite, and a dozen men ran in with CO, extinguishers to prevent an explosion as the fighter drank in a full load of fuel.

Edwards's head jerked up at the noise, the distinctive roar of jet fighters. He saw a dark trail of smoke approaching in from the east, and the silhouettes passed within a mile. The shapes were heavy with ordnance, the up-angled wingtips making identification easy.

"F-4s!" he hooted. "They're our guys!"

They were Phantom jets of the New York Air National Guard, configured as Wild Weasel SAM-killers. While Russian attention was on the converging bomber raid, they skimmed over hilltops and down valleys, using the crenelated landscape to mask their low-level approach. The back-seat crewman in each aircraft counted the missile radars, selecting the most dangerous targets. When they got to within ten miles of Keflavik, they popped up high and fired a salvo of Standard-ARM antiradar missiles.

The Russians were caught by surprise. Laboring to direct missile fire at the bombers, they didn't expect a two-part raid. The incoming missiles were not detected. Three of the ARMs found targets, killing two search radars and a missile-launch vehicle. One launch commander turned his vehicle around and trained manually on the new threat. The Phantoms jammed his fire-control radar, leaving behind a series of chaff clouds as they came in at thirty-foot height. As each pilot raced to the target area assigned to him, he conducted a hasty visual search. One saw an undamaged SAM launcher and streaked toward it, dropping Rockeye clusterbomb canisters that fell short but spread over a hundred bomblets all over the area. The SA-11 launcher exploded in his wake; its crew never knew what had happened. A thousand yards beyond it was a mobile antiaircraft gun vehicle. The Phantom engaged it with his own cannon, badly damaging it as he swept across the rest of the peninsula and escaped back over the sea, a cloud of chaff and flares in his wake. It was a letter-perfect Weasel mission. All four aircraft were gone before the Soviet missile crews were able to react. The two SAMs that were launched exploded harmlessly in chaff clouds. The battery had lost two-thirds of its launcher vehicles and all of its search radars. Three of the mobile guns were also destroyed or damaged. The bombers were now a mere twenty miles out, their powerful ECM jamming systems drowning the Soviet radar with electronic noise.

They could not defeat the radar on the mobile guns, however. The new system had a radar for which they were not equipped, but it didn't matter. The guns had been designed to deal with small fighters, and when their radars tried to lock on the huge bombers, they found a target so large that their radar signals traced from one part to another. The computers could not decide what the target range was, and kept recycling automatically, rendering the electronics package useless. The gun crews cursed as one man and switched over to manual fire-control, using their eyes to sight in on the massive incoming targets.

The bombers popped up to nine hundred feet now, hoping to avoid the worst of the gunfire and escape without loss. They had not been warned of a possible fighter presence. Their mission was to wreck Keflavik before fighters could get there.

Now surprise was on the Soviet side. The Fulcrums dived out of the sun at the bombers. Their own fire-control radars were nearly useless as they approached, but half their missiles were infrared-guided, and the American bombers gave off enough heat to attract the attention of a blind man in a fur coat.

The southbound flight of three never saw them coming in. Two took missile hits and exploded in midair. The third radioed for fighter cover, jinking his aircraft hard-too hard. His second dive bottomed out too late, and the aircraft disintegrated on the ground north of Keflavik in a fireball visible to Edwards thirty miles away.

The Russian fighters were experiencing an airman's dream. All eight aircraft had individual targets, and they split to hunt them singly before Keflavik absorbed too many bomb hits. The bomber crews pressed in on their targets. It was too late to run away, and all they could do was scream for the fighters to come back and support them.

The ground-based gunners joined in. Firing over open sights, a young sergeant hit a bomber just dropping its load. The bomb bay took a dozen rounds, and the aircraft vanished in a deafening explosion that shook the sky and damaged yet another B-52. One missile-launch crew successfully switched their missile-control systems to the backup infrared mode and fired a single rocket at a bomber. It hit just after the bombs were released. The bomber's wing erupted in flame and the aircraft swooped east trailing a black river of smoke.

They watched it approach their hill, a wounded monster whose right wing trailed burning fuel. The pilot was trying to maintain altitude so that his crew could eject, but all four of his right engines were gone and the burning wing collapsed. The bomber staggered in the air and dropped, rolling into the west face of Hill 152. None of the crew escaped. Edwards didn't have to give an order. In five seconds, his men had packed their gear and were running northeast.

The remaining bombers were now over the target and screaming for help from their escorting fighters. Eight successfully dropped their bomb loads before turning clear of the area. The Soviet fighters had claimed five by now, and the surviving crews were desperate to escape the unexpected hazard. The Russians were now out of missiles, and attempting to engage with their cannon. That was dangerous. The B-52s retained their tail guns, and one Fulcrum was damaged by machine-gun fire from his target and had to break off.

The final element of confusion was the return of the American Phantoms. They carried only three Sparrow missiles each, and when they lit off their missile-intercept radars, the Soviet fighters all received warning tones from their defense systems. The Fulcrums scattered before the twelve incoming missiles and dove for the ground. Four dropped down right on top of Edwards' group, swooping low over a crashed B-52 east of Hafnarfjordur. When they came back up, the sky was clear again. The Phantoms were short on fuel. They could not press their attack and turned away without a single kill. The surviving bombers were now safely hidden in the cloud of jamming. The Soviets re-formed and moved back to Keflavik.

Their first impression was a bad one. Fully two hundred bombs had fallen within the airport perimeter, and nine of them had found runway targets. But runway eleven was unscarred. As they watched, the single Fulcrum left on the ground roared off into the sky, its pilot frantic with rage, demanding a vector to a target. He was ordered to patrol as the rest of the squadron landed to refuel.

The first battle had mixed results. The Americans lost half their bomber force in return for damaging three of Keflavik's five runways. The Soviets had most of a SAM battery smashed to little gain, but Keflavik was still usable. Already the ground personnel were running to the runway-repair equipment left behind by the Americans. At the end of each runway was a pile of gravel, and a half-dozen bunkers contained steel mats. Heavy equipment would bulldoze the debris back into the holes, even it out, then cover it over with gravel and steel. Keflavik was damaged, but its runways would be fully operational again before midnight.

"I think this one's for-real, Captain," the ASW officer said quietly. The line of colored blocks on the passive sonar display had lasted for seven minutes. Bearing was changing slowly aft, as though the contact were heading for the convoy, but not Pharris.

The frigate was steaming at twelve knots, and her Prairie/Masker systems were operating. Sonar conditions were better today. A hard thermocline layer at two hundred feet severely impeded the utility of a surface sonar. Pharris was able to deploy her towed-array sonar below it, however, and the lower water temperature there made for an excellent sound channel. Better still, the layer worked in both directions. A submarine's sonar had as much trouble penetrating the thermocline as a surface sonar. Pharris would be virtually undetectable to a submarine below the layer.

"How's the plot look?" the tactical action officer asked.

"Firming up," ASW answered. "Still the distance question. Given the water conditions and our known sonar performance, our sonar figure of merit gives us a contact distance of anything from five to fourteen miles on direct path, or into the first convergence zone. That predicts out from nineteen to twenty-three miles…" A convergence zone is a trick of physics. Sound traveling in water radiates in all directions. Noise that traveled down was gradually turned by water temperature and pressure into a series of curves, rising to the surface, then bending again downward. While the frigate could hear noise out from herself for a distance of about fourteen nautical miles, the convergence zone was in the shape of an annulus-the area between two concentric circles-a donut-shaped piece of water that began nineteen miles and ended twenty-three miles away. The distance to the submarine was unknown, but was probably less than twenty-three miles. That was already too close. The submarine could attack them or the convoy they guarded with torpedoes, or with surface-to-surface missiles, a technology pioneered by the Soviets.

"Recommendation, gentlemen?" Morris asked. The TAO spoke first.

"Let's put the helicopter up for the near solution, and get an Orion working the far one."

"Sounds good," ASW agreed.

Within five minutes, the frigate's helo was five miles out, dropping Lofar-type sonobuoys. On striking the water, these miniature passive sonar sets deployed a non-directional sonar transducer at a preselected depth. In this case all dipped above the thermocline layer to determine if the target was close. The data was relayed back to Pharris's combat information center: nothing. The passive sonar track, however, still showed a submarine or something that sounded like a submarine. The helo began moving outward, dropping sonobuoys as it went.

Then the Orion arrived. The four-engine aircraft swooped low along the frigate's reported bearing-to-target. The Orion carried over fifty sonobuoys, and was soon dropping them in sets both above and below the layer.

"I got a weak signal on number six and a medium on number five," a sonar operator reported. Excitement crept into his voice.

"Roger, confirm that," the tactical coordinator on Bluebird-Three agreed. He'd been in the ASW game for six years, but he was getting excited, too. "We're going to start making MAD runs."

"You want our helo to back you up?"

"Roger that, yes, but tell him to keep low."

Seconds later the frigate's SH-2F Sea Sprite helicopter sped off north, her magnetic anomaly detector trailing out by cable from a shroud on the right side of the aircraft. Essentially a highly sensitive magnetometer, it could detect the disturbance in the earth's magnetic field made by a large chunk of ferrous metal-like the steel hull of a submarine.

"Signal on number six is now medium-strength. Signal on seven remains medium." The plotting team took this to mean that the submarine was heading south.

"I can give you a working range figure," ASW said to the TAO. Forty-two to forty-five thousand yards, bearing three-four-zero to three-three-six." The frigate relayed this at once to the Orion.

As they watched on radar, the P-3C quartered the area, flying very precise tracks across the box of ocean defined by Pharris's sonar data as the probable location of the submarine. A computer system plotted the lines as they extended to the south.

"Pharris, this is Bluebird. Our data indicates no friendly subs in the area. Please confirm, over."

"Roger that, Bluebird. We confirm no reports of friendlies in the area." Morris had checked that himself half an hour before.

"Signal strength increasing on number six. We now have a weak signal on number five. Number seven is fading out." The technician was really struggling to be professionally impassive now.

"Range is firming up. Estimate target speed roughly eight knots, distance forty-three thousand yards."

"Transient! Transient!" called the ship sonar operator. A metallic noise had come from the target bearing. A closing hatch, a dropped tool, an opening torpedo tube door-something had made a uniquely man-made sound.

"Confirm mechanical transient, copied on buoys five and six," the aircraft called immediately.

"Confirmed," Pharris's TAO answered. "We got that on the towed array, too. We evaluate the contact as positive submarine at this time."

"Concur," the Orion replied. "Positive Redboat classification-madman! Madman, madman, smoke away! We have a NLAD contact." A big spike appeared on the MAD readout. Instantly, a crewman flipped a switch to deploy a smoke marker and the aircraft turned hard right to circle back on the contact point.

"Plotted!" The tactical action officer marked the position on his tactical display scope with a large V symbol.

The helo raced in on the contact as the Orion circled back.

"Madman!" its systems operator called out, and the helo dropped its own smoke bomb, slightly south and west of the Orion's.

The data was now being relayed to the frigate's torpedo-tube and ASROC attack directors. Neither had anything like the range to engage the target, but that could change quickly.

"Patience," Morris breathed from his chair in the CIC, then louder: "Take your time, people. Let's lock this guy in before we fire."

The Orion's tactical coordinator agreed, forcing himself to relax and take the time needed. The P-3 and the helicopter made another MAD run north to south. This time the Orion got a reading and the helo did not. Another run, and both had the contact's course line. Next came an east-to-west run. At first, both missed, but on the second run both had him. The contact was no longer an it. Now it was a he, a submarine being driven by a man. Control of the operation now passed exclusively to the tactical coordinator on the Orion. The big patrol aircraft orbited two miles away as the helicopter lined up for the final pass. The pilot made a very careful check of his tactical display, then locked his eyes on the gyrocompass.

The helo began the last MAD run, with the Orion two miles behind it.

"Madman, madman, smoke away!" The final smoke marker dropped, a green flare floating on the surface. The Sea Sprite banked hard to the right to clear the area as the Orion came in low. The pilot watched the smoke's movement to figure wind drift as he lined up on the target. The P-3C's bomb bay doors opened. A single Mk-46 ASW torpedo was armed for launch.

"Torp away!"

The torpedo dropped cleanly, its braking parachute trailed out of the tail to make sure the weapon entered the water nose down. The Orion also dropped an additional sonobuoy, this time a directional DIFAR.

"Strong signal, bearing one-seven-niner."

The torpedo dove to two hundred feet before beginning its circular search. Its high-frequency sonar came on as it reached search depth. Things started happening quickly.

The submarine had been oblivious to the activity over her head. She was an old Foxtrot. Too old and too noisy for front-line operations, she was there nonetheless, hoping to catch up with the convoy reported to her south. Her sonar operator had noted and reported a possible overhead splash, but the captain was busy plotting the position of the convoy he had been ordered to approach. The torpedo's homing sonar changed that. Instantly, the Foxtrot went to flank speed, turning hard to the left in a pre-planned evasion maneuver. The suddenly increased noise of her cavitating screws was discernible to several sonobuoys and Pharris's tactical sonar.

The torpedo was in ping-and-listen mode, using both active and passive sonar to find its target. As it completed its first circle, the passive receptors in the nose heard the cavitation noises of the submarine and homed in on them. Soon the active sonar pings were reflecting off the submarine's stem as it dodged left and right trying to get away. The torpedo automatically went to continuous pinging, increasing to maximum speed as it homed in on its target like the remorseless robot it was.

The sonar operators on the aircraft and the frigate had the best picture of what was happening. As they watched, the bearing lines of the submarine and torpedo began to converge. At fifteen knots, the Foxtrot was too slow to run away from the forty-knot torpedo. The submarine began a radical series of turns with the torpedo in pursuit. The Mk-46 missed its first attempt for a kill by twenty feet, and immediately turned for another try. Then the submarine's captain made a mistake. Instead of continuing his left turn, he reversed it, hoping to confuse the oncoming torpedo. He ran directly into its path…

Immediately overhead, the helicopter crew saw the water appear to leap, then froth, as the shock wave of the explosion reached the surface.

"We have warhead detonation," the pilot reported. A moment later his systems operator dropped a passive buoy. The sound came into them in less than a minute.

The Foxtrot was dying. They heard the sounds of air blowing into her ballast tanks and continued flank power from her electric motors, her propellers struggling to overcome the weight of water entering the hull and drive the wounded submarine to the surface. Suddenly the engine sounds stopped. Two minutes later, they heard the metallic scream of internal bulkheads being torn asunder by water pressure as the submarine fell below crush depth.

"This is Bluebird. We score that one as a kill. Can you confirm, over?"

"Roger, Bluebird," the ASW officer answered. "We copied blowing air and breakup noises. We confirm your kill." The crewmen cheered, forgetting the decorum that went with duty in CIC.

"All right! That's one less to worry about. We'll give you a big assist on that one, Pharris. Nice job from your sonar folks and the helo. Out." The Orion increased power and returned to her patrol station forward of the convoy.

"Assist, hell!" snorted the ASW officer. "That was our contact. We could have dropped the torp on him just as easy as he did." Morris punched him in the shoulder and went up the ladder to the pilothouse.

The bridge crew was all grins. Soon the bosun's mate would paint half of a red submarine silhouette next to the pilothouse door. It had not struck them yet that they had just helped in the killing of a hundred young men not at all unlike themselves, their lives cut short by the hammering pressure of the North Atlantic.

"What's that?" called a lookout. "Possible explosion on the starboard beam!"

Morris grabbed his binoculars and raced out the open door. The lookout pointed.

A column of black smoke was reaching into the sky from the direction of the convoy. Someone else had just gotten his first kill.

Toland had never seen so many welding torches operating. Under the supervision of the executive officer and three damage-control experts, crewmen were using acetylene torches to cut away the damaged portions of Nimitz's flight deck and its supporting steel beams. What had been bad enough became worse on more thorough examination. Six of the enormous frames under the flight deck had been wrecked, and the damage extended two decks below that. A third of the hangar deck was burned out. Most of the plane-fueling network and all of the ordnance elevators had to be repaired. CIC was gone, and with it all of the computers and communications needed to fight the ship. The arrester wire systems would have to be fully replaced. The main search radar was gone. The list went on.

Tugs were pushing the wounded carrier into Southampton's Ocean Dock, a task made doubly hard because of the ship's induced ten-degree list. Water cascaded from the carrier's clifflike hull into the harbor while more entered the bilges below. Already a senior Royal Navy repair expert and the chief of the Vosper Ship Repair Yard were aboard, reviewing the damage below and cataloging the material needed to enable the ship to operate again. Captain Svenson watched the messenger lines being shot off to handlers who would secure the ship. He was an angry man, Toland noted. Five hundred of his men known dead, another three hundred wounded, and the count was nowhere near complete. The most grievous losses were in the flight deck crews, many of whose shelters had been immolated by the two Soviet missiles. They would also have to be replaced before Nimitz could sail and fight again.

"Toland, you'll be heading to Scotland."

"Excuse me, sir?''

"The air wing is being split. The fighters and Hawkeyes are going north. Ivan's been pounding on the Brits' northern radar line, and their fighters have taken a beating trying to help the Norwegians out. The Tomcats are already on the way, and we'll be loading their missiles onto the dock so the Brits can fly them north. I want you to operate with the fighter teams to evaluate what Ivan's up to with his Badgers, and maybe help our guys to cull off some of the bastards. The attack birds are joining the NATO tactical air reserve for the present."

"When do I leave?" Toland reflected that he had nothing to pack. The Kingfish had taken care of that, too. His first order of business was to cable his family that he was all right.

"Doghouse, this is Beagle, and what the hell just happened, over?"

"Beagle, I am authorized to tell you that an attack was just made against Keflavik."

"No kidding, guy. A B-52 just crashed right on our Goddamned hill. Didn't you tell anybody that I reported fighters?"

"Your information was evaluated as unconfirmed and was not passed on, Beagle. I did not concur in that. Continue your report."

"I saw four, repeat four, Soviet single-seat aircraft with a twin-rudder configuration. I can't be sure of the type, but they had double tails, you copy that?"

"Twin rudders, copy that. Confirm you saw four."

"One-two-three-four, Doghouse. I can't arrange them to parade over head. But if you send bombers in here unescorted again, mister, don' blame me."

"Any survivors from the crash you saw?"

"Negative. No 'chutes, and no way anyone would have survived the crash. Saw one fireball on the horizon, but I'm not sure what that was. How did the Weasels do?"

"Can't say, Beagle, but thanks for the word on the SAMs."

"You have instructions for me?"

"Your status is being reevaluated now. We'll be back on the hour."

"Make it two, fella. We have to move some before the bad guys send a patrol this way. Out." The Marines were around him, weapons ready, alert for the patrol or helicopter, or both, that had to be heading their way. Edwards tore off the headset and repacked the radio. "Great, just great," he muttered. "Let's move it, people."

They had already jogged a full kilometer from their former home, heading due east into the uninhabited wasteland that formed this part of the island. Smith kept them on slopes, off the crests and hilltops that could silhouette them against the clearing sky. There was a lake off to their left, with many houses on its western side. They had to be careful here. There was no telling who might note their passing and inform someone of it. They passed under the main power transmission lines at a run, angling south to keep a crest line between them and most of the houses. An hour later, they were in the Holmshraun lava field, an incredible collection of rocks overlooking Highway 1, one of Iceland's two major thoroughfares. There were vehicles on the road heading in both directions. Many of them carried soldiers.

"What are we figuring to do now, sir?" Smith asked pointedly.

"Well, Sarge, we got good concealment here. Hell, a guy fifty yards away would have trouble spotting us in this crap. I say we wait for it to get a little dark tonight and get north of the road. Once we get past that, the population thins out-at least that's what the map says. It ought to be fairly safe once we get away from the population centers."

"What will our friends on the other side of that radio say about that?"

"I guess we better find out." Edwards checked his watch. He was nearly two hours overdue. Doghouse was annoyed with him.

"What kept you off the air?"

"We just moved about eight klicks. Maybe you'd prefer we waited around and counted the Russians picking over the wreckage. Listen up, we're all alone here and that's a little scary, you know?"

"Understood, Beagle. Okay, we got orders for you. You have a map of the area you're in?"

"That's affirm, a one-to-fifty-thousand one."

"Okay, they want you to move to Grafarholt. There's a hill there. You're supposed to find a safe place near there and belly-up for further instructions."

"Hey, Doghouse, before we get any farther, what if Ivan starts playing DF games and tries to track us down from our radio transmissions?"

"Okay, about time you asked that. The radio you got is encrypted UHF, single-sideband. That means it's got thousands of channels, and having him lock into one is not real likely. Second, you have a directional antenna. When you transmit, make sure there's a hill between you and them. UHF is line-of-sight only. So you ought to be safe on that score, too. Happy?"

"It helps."

"How soon can you get to that hill for us?"

Edwards looked at the map. About seven kilometers. A comfortable two-hour walk in peacetime, maybe three or four not so comfortable hours, given the terrain here. They'd have to wait for darkness, detour around a few villages… and there was that one other little thing to be concerned about… "Twelve hours, minimum."

"Roger, understood, Beagle. Copy twelve hours. That's fine. We'll be calling for you then. Anything else to report?"

"Some activity on the road below us. Several trucks, Army-type, painted green. A lot of personal vehicles, four-by-fours. No armored stuff, though."

"Okay. Take your time and play it safe. Your mission is to avoid contact and report. We'll be here if you need us. Out."

At Doghouse in northern Scotland, the communications officer leaned back in his swivel chair.

"The lad sounds somewhat rattled," an intelligence officer commented over his tea.

"Not quite SAS material, is he?" another asked.

"Let's not be too hasty," said a third. "He's bright, something of an athlete, and he had the presence of mind to escape when events called for it. Seems a bit high-strung, but given his position that's understandable, I think."

The first pointed on the map. "Twelve hours to go this little distance?" "Across hilly, open terrain, with a whole bloody division of paras running about in lorries and BMPs, and with a sun that never sets, what the hell do you expect of four men?" demanded the fourth, a man dressed in civilian clothes who had been gravely wounded while in the 22nd SAS Regiment. "If that lad had any sense, he'd have packed it in yesterday. Interesting psychological profile here. If he manages to get to this hill on time for us, I think he'll do all right."

The convoy had scattered. Toland looked at the radar display, an expanding ring of ships, now beginning to turn back east to reassemble. One merchantman had been sunk, another badly damaged and limping west. Three frigates were trying to locate the submarine that had done the damage. Gallery had gotten a possible contact and fired a torpedo at it, without result. Four helicopters were dropping sonobuoys in hope of reacquiring it, and a half-dozen sonars were pinging away, but so far it looked as though the submarine had evaded the angry escorts.

"That was a beautiful approach," the tactical action officer observed grudgingly. "His only goof was hitting the back end of the convoy."

"His fire control wasn't all that great," Morris said. "They say they had sonar readings on five fish. Figure three targets. Two hits for a kill on one, and a scratch hit on another for damage. The other was a clean miss. Not a bad afternoon's work. What's he doing now, people?"

"How much you want to bet it's an old nuc boat?" TAO asked. "Their fire-control systems aren't up to current standards, and they can't run very fast and still stay covert. He just barely made the intercept, and bit off two ships. When they scattered he didn't have the speed to pursue without advertising his position, and he's too smart for that."

"Then what did he do?" ASW asked.

"He was in close when he launched. Ducked inside the convoy and went deep. Used the noise from the thundering herd to mask himself, then motored off clear…"

"North." Morris bent over the display. "Most of the merchies went northeast when the scatter order went out. He probably went north to trail, and maybe hope to get another shot in later. What do you think we're up against?"

"Intel says this area had three Foxtrots and a November, plus maybe another nuc. The one we killed was probably a Fox. Doesn't have the speed to trail the convoy." The ASW officer looked up. "But a November would. We're not up against a new nuc. He'd still be shooting. Call it a November."

"Okay, say he came north at six or seven knots, then turned east hoping to pick us up again tomorrow, say. Where would he be?"

"Right now… here, sir," ASW said. He pointed to a spot fifteen miles aft of the frigate. "We can't go back after him."

"No, but we can listen for him if he tries to play catchup." Morris thought hard. The convoy would be altering base course to one-two-zero on the hour to head farther south, away from the suddenly increased threat of Soviet long-range bombers. More time would be needed for them to re-form and establish proper stations. That would allow the submarine to cut the corner and close the target. With all the zigzagging the merchies were doing, their effective speed of advance was only about sixteen knots, and a November might try to catch up with that. "I want the operators to pay particular attention to this sector. Our friend just might be back."

"Call in a P-3?" TAO wondered.

Morris shook his head. "They want to keep station forward. The main threat is still ahead of us. Us 'cans have to worry about the trailers, until we get a hot contact, anyway. I think this guy will trail, and he might try and get off a contact report."

"Good news," the naval officer said. "Our bombers report sinking three aviation ships, two cruisers, and two destroyers."

Alekseyev and his boss exchanged a look: their colleagues in blue would be insufferable now.

"How firm is that evaluation?" CINC-Southwest asked.

"There were four carrier-type ships photographed before the attack. The next satellite pass eight hours after the attack showed only one. Two cruisers and two destroyers were also missing. Finally we have intelligence reports of numerous carrier-type aircraft landing at French naval air bases in Brittany. Our submarines were unable to make contact with the formation-it would seem that one was sunk, unfortunately, but our first naval air battle was a smashing success. We will close the Atlantic for you, Comrades," the captain predicted.

"We may need it closed," Alekseyev said after the captain left.

His boss grunted agreement. Things in Germany were not going well. The Soviet Air Force had been hurt even worse than they had feared, and as a result the land campaign was already far behind schedule. On the second day of the war, the first day's objectives had been met in only one army's zone, and that one was being heavily counterattacked twenty kilometers east of Hamburg. Tank losses had been 50 percent higher than predicted, and control of the air was in jeopardy, with many units reporting heavier-than-expected air attacks. Only half of the Elbe bridges had been replaced as yet, and the floating ribbon bridges could not carry all the load of the highway bridges they replaced. The NATO armies had not yet reached their peak strength. American reinforcements were still arriving by air, mating up with their pre-positioned equipment. The Soviet first echelon was being bled, and the second echelon was still largely trapped behind the Elbe.

"About as dark as it's gonna get," Edwards said. The light level was what meteorologists and sailors called nautical twilight. Visibility was down to five hundred yards with the sun just below the northwest horizon. The lieutenant put on his pack and rose. His Marines did the same, with as much enthusiasm as a child on his way to school.

They headed down the shallow slope towards the Sudura River, more a fair-sized creek, Edwards thought. The lava field provided good cover. The ground was littered with rocks, some as much as three feet high, a landscape that broke up shapes and disguised movement to the casual observer. He hoped there was nothing more than that out there. They had observed a number of Soviet patrols, mainly on military trucks that passed through the area at intervals of about thirty minutes. They saw no fixed positions. Certainly they had garrisoned the hydroelectric power station at Burfell, farther east on Route 1. No one had bombed that yet: the lights were still bright in some of the homes below them.

The rocks got smaller as the land changed to a grassy meadow. There had been sheep here recently-the smell was unmistakable and the grass was short. Instinctively the men walked in a crouch toward a gravel road. The houses and barns here were spread irregularly. They picked a spot where the space between buildings was about five hundred yards, hoping that the dim light and their camouflage uniforms would make them invisible to any observer. No one was about in the open. Edwards halted his group and looked carefully through his binoculars at the nearest houses. Lights burned in some, but no people were visible outside. Perhaps the Russians had imposed a curfew… meaning that anyone seen moving might be shot on sight. Happy thought.

The riverbanks sloped downward sharply about twenty feet to the water, and were covered with rocks smoothed by years of erosion at highwater time. Smith went down first as the others lay with weapons ready at the lip of the south bank. The sergeant moved slowly at first, checking the water depth before hurrying across, rifle held high in the air. Edwards was surprised how quickly he went through it, then up the far bank. The sergeant waved, and the rest of the men followed. Edwards soon found out why the sergeant had crossed the stream quickly. The waist-deep water was icy cold, like most of the streams on Iceland, fed by melting glaciers. He gasped and went across as fast as he could, his rifle and radio held above his head. A minute later he was atop the far bank.

Smith chuckled in the dark. "I guess that woke everybody up."

"Like to froze my balls off, Sarge," Rodgers groused.

"Looks clear ahead," Edwards said. "Beyond this meadow is another creek, then the main road, a secondary road, then up a hill into a lava field. Let's keep moving."

"Right, Lieutenant." Smith got to his feet and moved off. The others trailed behind him at five-yard intervals. The little bastard's in a hurry, isn't he?

The ground here was agreeably flat, the grass as high as their boot tops. They moved rapidly, keeping low, weapons held ready across their chests as they angled slightly east to avoid the village of Holmur. The next stream was shallower than the Sudura, though no less cold. They stopped on crossing it, now only two hundred yards from the highway. Again Smith moved off first, this time with his back bent double, moving in rushes followed by pauses while he knelt to examine the terrain repeatedly. The men behind him matched his movements exactly, and the team got together again in tall grass fifty feet from the road.

"Okay," Smith said. "We cross one at a time, a minute apart. I go first. I'll stop fifty feet on the other side by those rocks. When you cross, don't screw around-run and keep low, and come to me. If you see something coming, get as far from the road as you can and drop. They can't see you if you lay still, people. Take things real easy. Okay?" Everyone, Edwards included, nodded agreement.

The sergeant was as good as his word. After a final look to be sure that nothing was moving in their direction, he raced off across the road, his personal gear flopping and slapping against his body as he did so. They waited a minute, then Garcia followed. After another minute, Rodgers went. Edwards counted to sixty and darted forward. The lieutenant was d appalled-at how stressful this was. His heart pounded with terror as he reached the roadway, and he froze dead in the center. Automobile lights were approaching them from the north. Edwards just stood there, watching them come closer

"Move your ass, Lieutenant!'' the sergeant's voice rasped at him.

The lieutenant shook his head clear and ran to the sound of the sergeant's voice, one hand holding his helmet in place on his head.

"Lights coming down!'' he gasped.

"No shit. Be cool, sir. People, let's get spread out. Find some good cover and freeze. And make Goddamned sure those weapons are on safe! You stay with me, sir."

The two privates moved left and right into tall weeds, disappearing from view as soon as they stopped moving. Edwards lay next to Sergeant Smith.

"You think they saw me?"

The darkness prevented him from seeing the angry expression accompanying Smith's reply: "Prob'ly not. Don't freeze in the road like that again, sir."

"I won't. Sorry, Sarge, this isn't exactly my thing."

"Just listen and learn what we tell ya', okay?" Smith whispered. "We're Marines. We'll take good care of you."

The lights approached slowly, proceeding down the steep grade to their north. The driver didn't trust the loose gravel surface. The north-south road split here, forking left and right to Route 1. It had to be a military truck, they saw. The lights were rectangular, taped slips over headlights installed at the Soviets' massive Kama River factory, built largely with Western aid. The truck stopped.

Edwards did not allow himself to react, except that his grip tightened on the plastic stock of his rifle. What if someone had seen them cross the road and telephoned the Russians? Smith's hand reached out and pushed the lieutenant's rifle down.

"Let's be careful with that, Lieutenant," Smith whispered.

The ten men in the truck dismounted and spread into the grass off the road, perhaps fifty yards away. Edwards couldn't tell if they carried weapons or not. Each man stopped, and almost in unison they unbuttoned their flies to urinate. Edwards gawked and nearly laughed. Finished, they moved back to the truck, which started up and proceeded west on the fork to the main road, motoring off with the sound on a poorly muffled diesel engine. The Marines re-formed as the truck's taillights dipped under the horizon.

"Too bad." Rodgers smiled in the semidarkness. "I coulda blow'd one guy's pecker right off!"

"You done good, people," Smith said. "Ready to move out, Lieutenant?"

"Yeah." Shamed by his performance, the lieutenant let Smith lead them off. They crossed the gravel road and a hundred yards later were in yet another lava field, climbing over rocks into the wasteland. Their wet fatigue pants clung to their legs, drying slowly in the cool westerly breeze.

"Our friend the November doesn't have an anechoic coating," ASW said quietly, pointing to the display. "I think that's him, running to catch up with the convoy."

"We have this trace plotted at about forty-six thousand yards," the tactical action officer said.

"Get the helo up," Morris ordered.

Five minutes later, Pharris's helicopter was running southwest at full speed, and Bluebird-Seven, another P-3C Orion, was closing on the datum point from the east. Both aircraft flew low, hoping to surprise the submarine that had killed one of their flock and gravely damaged another. The Russian had probably made a mistake by increasing his speed. Maybe he had orders to trail the convoy and radio data for other submarines to use. Maybe he wanted to catch up to make another attack. Whatever the reason, his reactor pumps were running and making noise that his hull could not contain. His periscope was up, and that gave the aircraft a chance to spot him with their look-down radars. The helo was closer, and its pilot was communicating with the tactical coordinator of the Orion. This could be a textbook attack if things worked out right.

"Okay, Bluebird, we are now three miles from datum center. Say your position."

"We're two miles behind you, Papa-One-Six. Illuminate!"

The systems operator flipped the cover off the radar switch and moved it from Standby to Active. Instantly, energy began to radiate from the radar transmitter slung under the helicopter's nose.

"Contact, we have a radar contact bearing one-six-five, range eleven hundred yards!"

"Stream the MAD gear!" The pilot advanced his throttles to race toward the contact.

"We got him, too,"-the Tacco called swiftly. The petty officer beside him armed a torpedo, setting its initial search depth for a hundred feet.

The helicopter's anticollision lights came on, the red lights flashing in the darkness. No sense in hiding their approach now. The sub must have detected their radar signals and would now be attempting a crash dive. But that took more time than he had.

"Madman, madman, smoke away!" the systems operator screamed.

The smoke was invisible in the darkness, but the short green flame was an unmissable beacon in the darkness. The helo banked left, clearing the way for the Orion now only five hundred yards behind him.

The P-3C's powerful searchlights came on, spotting the telltale wake left by the now-invisible periscope. The MAD contact had been right on, the pilot saw at once. The Orion's bomb doors swung open and the torpedo dropped toward the black waters along with a sonobuoy.

"Positive sonar contact, evaluate as submarine!" a sonar-board operator said over the intercom. The tone lines displayed on his screen were exactly what a November at high speed looked like, and the torpedo chasing her was already on continuous pinging. "Torpedo is closing the target rapidly… Looks good, Tacco, closing… closing-impact!" The torpedo's sound tracing merged with that of the submarine, and a brilliant splotch appeared in the waterfall display. The Orion's operator switched the sonobuoy from active to passive, recording the recurring rumbles of the torpedo warhead explosion. The submarine's screw sounds stopped, and again he heard the sound of blowing air that quickly stopped as the submarine began her last dive.

"That's a kill, that's a kill!" exulted the Tacco.

"Confirm the kill," Morris said over the radio. "Nice job, Bluebird. That was a real quick-draw!"

"Roger, copy, Pharris. Thank you, sir! Beautiful job with the helo and the detection, guy. You just got another assist. Hell, we might just orbit you for a while, Captain, looks like you got all the action. Out."

Morris walked to the corner and poured himself a cup of coffee. So, they had just helped to kill a pair of Soviet submarines.

The TAO was less enthusiastic. "We got a noisy old Foxtrot and a November who did something dumb. You suppose he had orders to trail and report, and that's why we got him?"

"Maybe," Morris nodded. "if Ivan's making his skippers do things like that-well, they like central control, but that can change if they find out ifs costing them boats. We learned that lesson ourselves once."

McCafferty had his own contact. They had been tracking it for over an hour now, the sonar operators struggling to discern random noise from discrete signal on their visual displays. Their data was passed to the firecontrol tracking party, four men hovering over the chart table in the after comer of the attack center.

Already the crew was whispering, McCafferty knew. First the yard fire before they were commissioned. Then being pulled out of the Barents Sea at the wrong time. Then being attacked by a friendly aircraft… was Chicago an unlucky boat? they wondered. The chiefs and officers would work to dispel that thought, but the chiefs and officers held it, too, since all sailors believed in luck, an institutional faith among submarines. If you're not lucky, we can't use you, a famous submarine admiral once said. McCafferty had heard that story often enough. He had so far been devoid of luck.

The captain moved back to the chart table. "What's happening?"

"Not much in the way of a bearing change. He has to be way out there, skipper, like the third convergence zone. Maybe eighty miles. He can't be closing us. We would have lost the signal as he passed out of the zone." The executive officer was showing the strain of the past week's operations, too. "Captain, if I had to guess, I'd say we're tracking a nuclear sub. Probably a noisy one. Acoustical conditions are pretty good, so we have three CZs to play with. And I'd bet he is doing the same thing we are, patrolling a set position. Hell, he could be running back and forth on a racetrack pattern, same as us. That would account for the minimal bearing changes."

The captain frowned. This was the only real contact he'd had since the war started. He was close to the northern border of his patrol area, and the target was probably just on the other side of it. Going after it meant leaving the bulk of his assigned sector unprotected

"Let's go after him," McCafferty ordered. "Left ten degrees rudder, come left to new course three-five-one. All ahead two thirds."

Chicago rapidly turned to a northerly heading, accelerating to fifteen knots, her maximum "silent" speed. At fifteen knots the submarine radiated only a small amount of noise. The risk of counterdetection was slight, since even at this speed her sonars could detect a target five to ten miles off. Her four tubes were loaded with a pair of Mk-48 torpedoes and two Harpoon antiship missiles. If the target was a submarine or a surface ship, Chicago could handle it.

"You're early, Beagle," Doghouse replied.

Edwards was sitting between two rocks and leaning back against a third, the antenna resting on his knee. He hoped it was pointing in a safe direction. The Russians, he figured, were strung mostly along the coast from Keflavik to Reykjavik, well to the west of the direction to the satellite. But there were houses and factories below him, and if they had a listening post down there…

"We had to get here before it got too light," the lieutenant explained. They had run the last kilometer with the rising sun behind them. Edwards took some small comfort in the fact that the Marines were puffing harder than he was.

"How secure are you?"

"There is some movement on the road below us, but that's a good ways off, maybe a mile."

"Okay, you see the electrical switching station southwest of you?"

Edwards got out his binoculars with one hand to check. The map called the place Artun. It held the main electrical transformers for the power grid on this part of the island. The high-voltage lines came in from the east, and the feeder cables radiated out from this point.

"Yeah, I see it."

"How are things going, Beagle?"

Edwards almost said they were going great, but stopped himself. "Lousy. Things are going lousy."

"Roger that, Beagle. You keep an eye on that power station. Anything around it?"

"Stand by." Edwards set down the antenna and gave the place a closer look. Aha! "Okay, I got one armored vehicle, just visible around the comer on the west side. Three-no, four armed men are in the open. Nothing else that I can see."

"Very good, Beagle. Now you keep watch on that place. Let us know if any SAMs show up. We also want data if you see any more fighters. Start keeping records of how many trucks and troops you see, where they're heading. Be sure to write things down. Got that?"

"Okay. We write it all down and report in."

"Good. You're doing all right, Beagle. Your orders are to observe and report," Doghouse reminded them. "Avoid contact. If you see enemy troops heading in your direction, bug out. Don't worry about calling in, just bug the hell out and report when you can. Now get off the air for a while."

"Roger that. Out." Edwards repacked the radio. It was getting so that he could do it with his eyes closed.

"What gives, Lieutenant?" Smith asked.

The lieutenant grunted. "We sit tight and watch that electrical place off that way."

"You s'pose they want us to turn some lights off?"

"There's too many troops down there, Sarge," Edwards replied. He stretched and opened his canteen. Garcia was on guard atop the knoll to his right, and Rodgers was asleep. "What's for breakfast?"

"Well, if you got peanut butter and crackers, I'll trade you my peaches for it."

Edwards ripped open the C-Ration container and inspected the contents. "Deal."