Red Storm Rising

22. Ripostes

The submarine slowed to reacquire the target. She'd run deep at fifteen knots for over an hour, and now reduced speed and came up to five hundred feet, right in the middle of the deep sound channel. McCafferty ordered an easterly course, which allowed the towed-array sonar-his "tail"-to bear on the supposed target to the north. It took several minutes before the array was straight and aligned in the proper direction so that the sonar operators could begin their work in earnest. Slowly the data came up on their displays, and a senior petty officer plugged in a set of headphones, hoping for an aural detection. There was nothing to detect. For twenty minutes the screen showed only random noise patterns.

McCafferty examined the paper plot. Their erstwhile contact would now be exactly two convergence zones away and should have been easily detected, given known water conditions. But their screens showed nothing.

"We never did have a classification." The executive officer shrugged. "He's gone."

"Take her up to antenna depth. Let's see what's cooking topside." McCafferty moved back to the periscope pedestal. He could not fail to note the instant tension in the compartment. The last time they'd done this, they'd nearly been sunk. The submarine leveled off at a depth of sixty feet. Sonar did another check and found nothing. The ESM mast went up, and the electronics technician reported only weak signals. The search periscope went up next. McCafferty made a very quick check of the horizon-nothing in the air, nothing on the surface.

"There's a storm to the north, line squall," he said. "Down scope."

The executive officer grumbled an inaudible curse. The noise from the storm would make the normally difficult task of finding a conventional sub motoring along on battery power nearly impossible. It was one thing for them to dart a short distance out of their patrol area with a good chance for a kill. It was another to leave for a whole day looking for something that they might never find. He looked at the captain, waiting for the decision to be made.

"Secure from general quarters," McCafferty said. "XO, take us back to station at ten knots. Keep her deep. I'm going to take a nap. Wake me in two hours."

The captain walked a few steps forward to his stateroom. The bunk was already folded down, unmade, from the portside bulkhead. Instrument repeaters would show him course and speed, and a TV set could show him whatever the periscope might be looking at, or a taped movie. McCafferty had been awake for about twenty hours now, and the added stress that comes from a combat environment made it feel like a week. He took off his shoes and lay down, but sleep would not come.

The colonel ran his hand along the bomber silhouette painted on the side of his fighter. His first combat victory, recorded on his gun cameras. Not since a handful of his comrades had fought in the skies of North Vietnam had a Soviet Air Force pilot won a real air-to-air victory, and this one had been over a nuclear-capable bomber that might otherwise have threatened the homeland.

There were now twenty-five MiG-29 fighters on Iceland, and four of them were aloft at all times to protect the bases as the ground troops tightened their control of the island.

d their control of the island.

The B-52 raid had hurt them. Their main search radar was slightly damaged, but another was being flown out today, a more modem, mobile unit whose position would be changed twice a day. He wished they had an airborne radar, but learned that losses over Germany had severely limited their availability. The news of the air war there was not good, though the two regiments of MiG-29s were doing well. The colonel checked his watch. In two hours he would be leading a squadron escorting a small force of Backfires that was searching for a convoy.

"Okay, Doghouse, I can see six fighter aircraft sitting on the runways at Reykjavik. They all got red stars on them. They have twin-rudder configuration and appear to be armed with air-to-air missiles. Two SAM launchers, and some kind of gun-looks like a Gatling gun-mounted on a tracked vehicle."

"That's a Zulu-Sierra-Uniform Three-Zero, Beagle. They're very bad news. We want to know all about those bastards. How many of them?"

"Only one, located on the grassy triangle a few hundred yards west of the terminal building."

"Are the fighters together or dispersed?"

"Dispersed, two on each runway. There's a small van with each pair, plus five or six soldiers. I estimate a hundred troops here, with two armored vehicles and nine trucks. They're patrolling the airport perimeter, and there are several machine-gun emplacements. The Russians also seem to be using the local short-haul airliners for moving troops around. We've seen soldiers boarding the little twin-prop birds. I've counted four flights today. We have not seen a Russian chopper since yesterday."

"How's Reykjavik city look?" Doghouse asked.

"It's hard to see into the streets. We can look down a valley towards the airport, but we can only see down a few streets. One armored vehicle is visible in there parked, like, at an intersection. Troops are just hanging around, like cops or something at every intersection we can see. If I had to guess, I'd say most of their troops are around Reykjavik and Keflavik. Not many civilians around, and almost no civilian traffic. There's a lot of movement on the main roads, both along the coast to our west, and also east on Route 1. It's all back-and-forth traffic, like they're patrolling. We've counted a total of fifty-some trips, split about even on the two highways. One other thing. We saw some Russians using a civilian vehicle. We haven't seen a jeep yet, except a few of ours on the airport grounds. The Russians have jeeps-their kind, I mean-right? I think they've commandeered the people's four-by-fours. That's practically the national vehicle here, and a lot of them are moving around on the roads."

"Any more incoming transport flights?"

"Five. We have clear skies, and we can watch them going in towards Keflavik. Four were IL-76s, and the other one looked kind of like a C-130. I don't know the designation for that one."

"Are the fighters flying?"

"We saw one take off two hours ago. I'd say they have a patrol up, and have fighters here and Keflavik both. That's a guess, but I'll bet money on it. I'd also say the fighters we're looking at can roll off in less than five minutes. Looks a lot like a hot-pad alert status."

"Okay, copy that, Beagle. How is your situation?"

"We're pretty well concealed, and the sarge has two escape routes scouted. We haven't seen the Russians beat any bushes yet. Mostly they seem to be hanging in populated areas and on the roads. If they start heading this way, we'll be bugging out."

"Exactly right, Beagle. We will probably be ordering you off that hill soon anyway. You're doing good, boy. Hang in there. Out."

"The kid's doing all right," the major said. He was in an awkward position-an American officer in a NATO communications post run by Brit intelligence types who were evenly split on Edwards's reliability.

"I'd say he's doing bloody marvelously," nodded the senior Brit. He'd lost an eye, quite some time ago by the look of it, but was still one tough looking bastard, the major thought. "Notice how he discriminates between what his observations and opinions are."

"Weather forecaster," snorted another. "We must get some professionals in there. How quickly can we whistle some up?"

"Perhaps by tomorrow. The Navy wants to put them in by submarine, though, and I agree. A bit dicey for a parachute infiltration, you know. Iceland's covered with rocks, the place is made to break ankles and legs. Then there's the Soviet fighters. No hurry on putting troops there, is it? We've got to reduce their air assets first and generally make life as difficult for them as we can."

"That starts tonight," the major said. "Nordic Hammer Phase Two will hit around the local sunset time."

"Hope it works better than Phase One did, old boy."

"So how are things going up here?" Toland asked his Royal Air Force counterpart. Right before boarding the flight he'd sent the telegram to Marty: I'M ALL RIGHT. ON THE BEACH FOR A WHILE. LOVE. He hoped that would reassure her. Probably the news of the carrier battle was already in the papers.

"Could be better. We've lost eight Tornados trying to assist the Norwegians. We're about down to a bare minimum for local defense, and Ivan's begun to attack our northern radar installations. Sorry about what happened to your aircraft carrier, but I must say we're very happy indeed to have you chaps with us for a bit."

Nimitz's interceptors and radar birds were split among three RAF bases. The maintenance crews were still arriving by transport aircraft, and some hitch had developed with the missiles, but the F-14s each carried a full load for one engagement, and they could use RAF Sparrows to reload. Operating off a land base, the fighter could carry a larger load of fuel and ordnance, packing a heavier punch than off a ship. The fighter crews were in a foul humor. Having used their aircraft and precious missiles to kill drones, they had returned to the formation to see the fearful results of the mistake. The total loss of life was still uncertain, but scarcely two hundred men had escaped from Saipan, and only a thousand from Foch. In terms of casualties this had been the bloodiest defeat in the history of the United States Navy, with thousands of men gone and not a single kill to offset the losses. Only the French had scored against the Backfires, succeeding with twenty-year-old Crusaders where the vaunted Tomcats had failed.

Toland sat in on their first briefing, conducted by the RAF. The fighter pilots were absolutely silent. He had trouble gauging their mood. No jokes. No whispered remarks. No smiles. They knew that the error had not been theirs, that it was not their fault at all, but that didn't seem to matter. They were shaken by what had happened to their ship.

As was he. Toland's mind kept coming back to the image of the four-inch-thick flight deck steel bent into the sky like cellophane, a blackened cavern below it where the hangar deck used to be. The rows of bags-crewmen who had died aboard the world's most powerful warship…

"Commander Toland?" An airman tapped him on the shoulder. "Would you come with me, please?" The two men walked to the operations room. Bob noted instantly that a new raid was being plotted. The operations officer, a flight lieutenant, motioned for Toland to join him.

"One regiment, perhaps less. One of your EP-3s is snooping up there and caught their radio chatter while they were refueling north of Iceland. They'll be going for one of these convoys, we think."

"You want the Tomcats to ambush them on the way home? The timing's going to be tricky."

"Extremely. Another complication. They will use Iceland as a navigational check and a secure assembly point. We know Ivan has fighters there, and now it's reported that he has fighters operating from these two airfields on Iceland."

"Is the source for this something called Beagle?"

"Ah, you've heard about that one. Yes."

"What kind of fighters?"

"Twin tails, is what your chap reported. Could be MiG-25s, — 29s, or -31s."

"Fulcrums," Toland said. "The others are interceptors. Didn't the B-52s get a look at them?" The briefing he'd just left had gone over the Air Force mission against Keflavik. More good news to cheer the troops up.

"Evidently not a good one, and superficially they are quite similar. I agree they're probably Fulcrums, and the sensible thing for Ivan to do is have the fighters establish a safe corridor for his bombers."

"They might have to tank coming back… go for the tankers?"

"We've thought of that. But they have a million square miles of ocean to use." The area on the chart was obvious. "The timing for that will be damned near impossible, but we think it would be worth the effort some time in the future. For the moment our primary concern is air defense. After that, we think Ivan may be planning an amphibious operation for Norway. If his surface fleet sorties, it's our job to hammer it."

"Raid warning, skipper," the executive officer said. "There's about twenty-five Backfires downbound, target unknown."

"Well, they won't be going after the carrier group, not with twenty-five aircraft now that they're under NATO fighter cover. Where are they now?"

"Probably over Iceland. Three to five hours off. We're not the biggest convoy in range, but we are the most exposed."

"On the other hand, if they go for all those independents out there, they can hunt undefended ships in open ocean. But I wouldn't. Our ships are carrying war materiel…" The convoy had only five SAM-equipped ships. A ripe target.

"Contrails, Doghouse, we have contrails overhead, looks like twenty or so. Passing overhead right now."

"Can you get an ID?"

"Negative. Large aircraft with no engines visible on the wings, but I can't be sure of the type. They're pretty high, heading south. Can't gauge the speed, either-no sonic booms, though if they were busting Mach 1, we should have heard it by now."

"Repeat your count," Doghouse ordered.

"I count twenty-one sets of contrails, two-one sets, heading about one-eight-zero. All the fighters at Reykjavik lifted off and went north about thirty minutes before they passed overhead. They still haven't landed back here yet, but we do not know where they are. The bombers do not appear to be escorted. Nothing else new to report."

"Roger, Beagle. Let us know when the fighters land. Might be nice to get a feel for their cycle time. Out." The major turned to his sergeant. "Get that one out in the printer right now. Confirm the one-regiment Backfire raid downbound, over Reykjavik right now, estimated course one-eight-zero. Possibly with fighter escort… yeah, better put that in, too."

The NATO communications center was about the only thing working as planned. The communications satellites in their as-yet unreachable orbits over the equator were supplying information to units all over the world, and here in Scotland was one of the main "nodes," military parlance for a high-tech telephone exchange.

A good day for contrails, Morris saw. Just the right mixture of temperature and humidity at high altitude, it would cause condensation in the hot exhaust from aircraft engines. They could see the tracks of air traffic crossing the Atlantic. The big twenty-power binoculars usually kept on the bridge wings for surface lookout work had been moved to the flying bridge atop the forward superstructure, and his lookouts were using them to identify the aircraft. They were mainly looking for Bears, the Soviet search aircraft that scouted targets for the Backfires.

Everyone was tense, and no relief was in sight. The submarine threat was bad enough, but with the carrier group savaged the day before, the convoy was virtually naked to air attack. They were too far at sea for any hope of land-based fighter protection. Pharris had only the most rudimentary air defenses. She could barely protect herself and was of no use whatever to anyone else. The ships equipped with surface-to-air missiles were now assembling in line on the north side of the convoy, twenty miles south of the frigate, while Pharris continued her antisubmarine search. All the frigate could do was keep watch on her threat-warning instruments and radio any data developed. They were sure that Ivan would be using his own Big Bulge search radars aboard the Bears to locate and classify the target. The convoy commander's plan was to use the SAM-ships as an additional row of targets, formed up just like the merchantmen. With luck, an especially curious Bear might mistake them for unarmed ships and be lured in for a visual search. A long shot, it was the only card they had to play…

"Contact! We have a Big Bulge radar bearing zero-zero-nine. Signal strength is low."

"Miss us, you bastard," the tactical action officer breathed.

"Not much chance of that," Morris said. "Get the data to the escort commander."

The Bear was on a southerly heading, using its radar only two minutes out of every ten as it approached the convoy. Soon another was detected slightly to the west. Plotting teams estimated their positions, and a report was sent via satellite to CINCLANTFLT in Norfolk with an urgent request for assistance. Norfolk receipted their message; ten minutes later they learned that no help was available.

Pharris manned her gun mount. The point-defense missile system and Gatling gun radar aft were switched to standby. Other radar was kept off. The radar operators in the combat information center sat nervously at their posts, fingering their switches while listening to the ESM reports and stealing an occasional look at the plot.

"Both of them probably have us now."

Morris nodded. "Next come the Backfires."

The captain thought of the battles he had studied at the naval academy-early in World War II, when the Japanese fleet had had air superiority, or when the Germans had used long-range Condors to circle convoys, radioing their positions to any interested party, and not a thing the Allies back then could do about. He'd never expected to be in the same fix. The same tactical situation repeating itself after forty years? It was absurd, Morris told himself. Absurd and terrifying.

"We have a visual sight on a Bear, just over the horizon at two-eight-zero," the talker said.

"Director, use your optics to track the target aft," the tactical action officer said at once. He looked over to Morris. "Maybe he'll fly close enough for a shot."

"Don't light off any radars just yet. He might just wander into somebody's missile envelope if he's not careful."

"No way he'll be that dumb."

"He will try to evaluate the convoy defenses," Morris said quietly. "He can't have them visually yet, not quite yet. Then for a while all he'll be able to see is bumps with wakes behind them. Not easy to identify a ship from an airplane, mister. Let's see just how curious this guy is…"

"Aircraft just changed course," the talker reported. "Turning east towards us."

"Air action starboard! Right standard rudder. All ahead full! Come to new course one-eight-zero," Morris ordered immediately. He turned south to lure the Bear closer to the SAM ships. "Illuminate the target. Weapons free! Engage when he gets within range."

Pharris heeled hard to the left as she changed course. Forward, the five-inch gun mount rotated clockwise as the ship brought her stem across the target bearing. As soon as the gun mount was unmasked, firecontrol radars gave it a target solution, and the long-barrel gun elevated to thirty degrees and locked on the target. The point-defense missile mount on the fantail did the same.

"Target is at thirty thousand feet, range fifteen miles and closing."

The escort commander still had not authorized a missile launch. Better to have Ivan shoot his missiles first, before he knew what lay in his path. Data from the carrier battle was already out to the fleet. The big Russian air-to-surface missiles were not especially hard targets to hit, since they ran straight for their targets, though you did have to react in a hurry: they were mighty fast. He figured that the Bear was still doing a target evaluation and did not yet know the strength of the escort force. The longer he was kept in the dark, the better, because the Backfires would not have much time to loiter this far from their bases. And if the Bear came in just a little closer…

"Commence firing!" the TAO shouted.

Pharris's gun mount went to full-automatic mode, firing a round every two seconds. The Bear was barely within range of her gun, and there was scant chance of a kill, but it was time to give him something to worry about.

The first five rounds fell short, exploding harmlessly a mile from the Bear, but the next three came closer, one exploding only two hundred yards from his left wing. The Soviet pilot instinctively turned right to evade. That was a mistake. He didn't know that the nearest row of "merchantmen" carried missiles.

Seconds later, two missiles launched and the Bear immediately dove to evade, a shower of chaff in her wake as she headed right for Pharris, which gave the frigate's gun crew another chance to score a kill. They fired off twenty new rounds as the plane approached. Perhaps two were close enough to damage the bomber, but there was no visible result. The missiles came in next, tiny white darts trailing columns of gray smoke. One missed and detonated in the chaff cloud, but the second detonated a hundred yards away from the bomber. The warhead expanded explosively like a watchspring, breaking into thousands of fragments, and several ripped into the Bear's port wing. The massive propJet lost power in one engine and suffered major wing damage before the pilot regained control just outside Pharris's gun range. She headed off north, trailing smoke.

The other Bear remained discreetly out of everyone's range. The raid commander had just learned a lesson that he'd pass on to his regimental intelligence officer.

"More radars coming on. Down Beats!" warned the ESM technician. "I count ten-count is increasing. Fourteen-eighteen!" the air-search radar operator sang out next.

"Radar contacts, bearing zero-three-four, range one-eight-zero miles. I count four targets, now five-six targets. Course two-one-zero, speed six hundred knots."

"Here come the Backfires," TAO said.

"Radar contact!" came the next call. "Vampire! Vampire! We have inbound missiles."

Morris cringed inwardly. The escorts all switched on their radar transmitters. Missiles trained out on the incoming targets. But Pharris was not part of that game. Morris ordered his ship to flank speed, turning north to race away from the missiles' probable target area.

"The Backfires are turning back. The Bear is holding position. We have some radio chatter. Now twenty-three inbound missiles. Bearing changing on all contacts," TAO said. "They're all headed for the convoy. Looks like we're in the clear."

Morris could hear the crew in the Combat Information Center take one deep collective breath. He watched the radar display with marginal relief. The missiles were streaking in from the northeast, and the SAMs were coming up to meet them. The convoy was again ordered to scatter, the merchantmen racing away from the center of the target. What followed had an eerie resemblance to an arcade game. Of the twenty-three Soviet-launched missiles, nine broke through the SAMs and dove into the convoy. They hit seven merchantmen.

All seven were lost. Some disintegrated at once under the hammering impact of the thousand-kilogram warheads. The others lingered long enough for their crews to escape with their lives. The convoy had left the Delaware with thirty ships. Only twenty were left, and there was almost fifteen hundred miles of open ocean between them and Europe.

Two Backfires ran short of fuel and decided to land at Keflavik. Behind them was the damaged Bear. It circled Reykjavik waiting for the Backfires to clear the runway. Edwards reported it in as a propeller aircraft with a damaged engine. The sun was low over the northwestern horizon, and the Bear gleamed yellow against the cobalt-blue sky.

"Stay on the air, Beagle," Doghouse ordered. Three minutes later, Edwards saw why.

This time there was no standoff jamming to warn the Soviets. Eight FB-111s swept in over the rocks, southwest from the island's rocky center. They skimmed down the bottom of Selja Valley in elements of two, their green and gray camouflage making them almost invisible to the fighters circling overhead. The lead pair turned due west, with another pair half a mile behind it. The remaining four went south around Mt. Hus.

"Holy shit." Smith saw them first, two fast-moving tail fins to the south. Just as Edwards found them, the lead aircraft popped up and launched a pair of TV-guided bombs. The wingman did the same, and both attackers turned north. The four bombs homed in on the transformer station below them, and all landed within the fence perimeter. As though a single switch had been thrown, every light in view went out. The second pair of Aardvarks roared low over Highway 1, blazing over the rooftops of Reykjavik to line up on their target. The leader lofted his own smart-bombs, and his wingman broke left for the airport tankfarm on the waterfront. Moments later, the control tower exploded, along with a hangar, and Rockeye cluster-bombs blew the fuel tanks apart. Caught by surprise, the Russian gun and missile crews fired too late.

The defense troops at Keflavik were surprised, too, first by the sudden loss of electrical power, then by the bombers, which arrived only a minute later. Here, too, the control tower and hangars were the primary targets, and most came apart under the impact of two-thousand-pound bombs. The second team found two parked Backfires and a missilelaunch vehicle for their Rockeyes to hit, and sprinkled more softballsized bomblets over the runways and taxiways. Meanwhile, the FB-111s continued west on afterburner, with gunfire and missiles chasing them-and fighters. Six Fulcrums dove for the retreating Varks, whose protective jammers filled the sky with electronic noise.

Free of their ordnance loads, the American bombers blazed away at seven hundred knots, a scant hundred feet over the wavetops, but the Soviet fighter commander would not turn away from this one. He'd seen what they had done to Keflavik, and he was furious at having been caught unaware despite having his fighters aloft. The Fulcrums had a slight speed advantage and closed the gap slowly. They were over a hundred miles offshore when their missile radars burned through the Americans' jamming. Two fighters immediately launched missiles, and the American aircraft jinked up, then down to lose them. One FB-111 took a hit and cartwheeled into the sea, and the Soviets were preparing a second volley when their threat receivers came on.

Four American Phantoms were waiting in ambush for them. In a moment eight Sparrow missiles were diving toward the Fulcrums. Now it was time for the Soviets to run. The MiG-29s wheeled and ran back for Iceland on afterburner. One was felled by a missile, and another damaged. The battle had lasted all of five minutes.

"Doghouse, this is Beagle. The electrical station is gone! The Varks knocked it flat, guy. One hell of a fire at the southwest edge of the airport, and looks like the tower got chopped in half. Two hangars look shot up. I see two, maybe three burning aircraft, civilian types. The fighters got off half an hour ago. Damn, that tank farm is burning like a sonuvagun! Lots of people running around on the ground below us." As Edwards watched, a dozen vehicles with headlights blazing ran back and forth over the roads below him. Two stopped a kilometer away and dismounted troops. "Doghouse, I think it's time for us to leave this hill."

"That's a roger, Beagle. Head northeast towards Hill 482. We'll expect to hear from you in ten hours. Get moving, boy! Out."

"Time to leave, sir." Smith tossed the lieutenant his pack and motioned for the privates to move. "Looks like we can score one for the good guys."

The MiGs landed on the still undamaged runway one-eight, the base's longest. They had barely stopped rolling when ground crews began the process of turning them around for further combat operations. The colonel was surprised to see the base commander still alive.

"How many did you get, Comrade Colonel?"

"Only one, and they got one of mine. Didn't you get anything on radar?" the colonel demanded.

"Not a thing. They hit Reykjavik first. Two groups of aircraft, they came in from the north. The bastards must have flown between the rocks," the major snarled. He pointed to the big mobile radar that sat in the open between two runways. "They missed it completely. Amazing."

"We must move it. Someplace high, very high. We'll never get an airborne radar, and unless we improve radar warning, this low-level business will eat us up. Find a good hilltop. How badly are our facilities damaged?"

"Many small holes in the runways from these bomblets. We'll have them all patched in two hours. The loss of the tower will hinder our ability to operate large numbers of aircraft. When we lost electrical power, we lost the ability to move fuel through our pipeline, probably lost the local telephone service." He shrugged. "We can make adjustments, but it's a major inconvenience. Too much work, too few men. We must disperse the fighters, and we must make alternate arrangements for fueling. The next target will be the fuel dumps."

"Did you expect this to be easy, Comrade?" The colonel looked over at the blazing pyres that only thirty minutes before had been a pair of Tu22M Backfires. The damaged Bear was just touching down. "Their timing was too good. They caught us when half my fighters were escorting a bomber force off the north coast. Luck, perhaps, but I do not believe in luck. I want ground troops to check for enemy infiltrators around all the airports. And I want better security arrangements. I-what the hell is that?"

A Rockeye bomblet lay on the concrete not twenty feet from them. The major took a plastic flag from his jeep and set it near the bomb.

"The Americans set some for delayed detonation. My men are already searching for them. Be at ease, Comrade, all your fighters have landed safely. Your dispersal areas are clear."

The colonel drew back a few feet. "What do you do with them?"

"We've already practiced this. We'll use a specially fitted bulldozer to push them off the concrete. Some will explode, some won't. Those that do not go off of their own accord will be detonated by a marksman with a rifle."

"The tower?"

"Three men were on duty. Good men." The major shrugged again. "You must excuse me. I have work to do."

The colonel took a last look at the bomblet before walking toward his fighters. He'd underestimated the major.

"There's a light on our hill," Garcia said. Everyone dropped to the ground. Edwards got next to the sergeant.

"Some bastard just lit a cigarette," Smith observed sourly. He'd finished his last one several hours before and was going through withdrawal symptoms. "Now you see why we're carrying our trash with us?"

"They're looking for us?" Edwards asked.

"Figures. That attack was pretty cute. They'll wonder if the airedales had any help. I'm surprised they didn't do it sooner. Guess they were pretty busy with other stuff."

"Think they can see us?" Edwards didn't like that idea.

"From two miles? Pretty dark for that, and if they're smoking, they're being pretty casual. Relax, Lieutenant. It isn't all that easy to find four guys. Lots of hills to check out on this rock. We want to be careful where we walk. Keep off the ridges, like. Even if they got low-light gear, we won't be easy to see if we keep to the valleys. Let's move it out, troops, and keep low."

One last merchant was burning. Her crew had abandoned ship two hours before, but still she burned on the western horizon. More deaths, Morris thought. Only about half of the crews had been saved, and there wasn't time for a more careful search. The convoy had sailed without a designated rescue ship. The helicopters had pulled many out of the water, but most of them were still needed to hunt submarines. He held a dispatch saying that Orions out of Lajes had prosecuted and probably killed an Echo-class missile submarine in their path. Some good news, but intelligence reported indications of two more.

The loss of Iceland was a disaster whose dimensions were only now becoming apparent. The Soviet bombers had a clear lane to reach into the trade route. Their submarines were racing through the Denmark Strait even as the NATO navies were trying to position their submarines to reform the barrier they had lost-the barrier upon which the convoys depended. The Air Force and Navy would soon try to rearrange fighter coverage to harass the Backfires, but those measures were an stopgaps. Until Iceland was fully neutralized, or better yet retaken, the Third Battle of the North Atlantic hung in an uneven balance.

At the Pacific fleet bases of San Diego and Pearl Harbor, darkened ships stood out to sea. Once in open ocean they all headed south toward Panama.