Red Storm Rising

41. Targets of Opportunity

Three copies were made of the tape. One went to one of SACEUR's intelligence staff for a separate translation to be checked against Toland's. Another was taken to French intelligence for electronic analysis. The third was analyzed by a Belgian psychiatrist who was fluent in Russian. While that was going on, half of the intelligence officers at NATO headquarters updated all their information about Soviet fuel consumption to date. CIA and other national intelligence services began a frantic investigation into Soviet oil production and utilization. Toland predicted the outcome hours before it came in: insufficient data. The range of possible conclusions predicted that the Russians had enough fuel for several months―or had already run out!

SACEUR took his time before accepting the data at face value. Prisoner interrogations had given his intelligence people a wealth of information-most of it patently false or contradictory. Since supply officers naturally lagged behind the fighting troops, few of them had been captured. It was the Air Force that bought the story first. They knew that enemy fuel-supply dumps were smaller than expected. Instead of the One Big Facility so prevalent throughout Russian society (and after the big dump at Wittenburg had been blown up), the Russians had gone to small ones, accepting the price of increased air-defense and security requirements. NATO's deep-strike air missions had been concentrating on airfields, munitions dumps, transport junctions, and the tank columns approaching the front… more lucrative targets than the smaller-than-expected fuel depots, which were also harder to spot. The traffic signatures associated with the large fuel-posts usually showed hundreds of trucks cycling in and out. The small ones, with fewer trucks involved, were harder for the look-down radar aircraft to locate. All these factors militated to a different targeting priority.

After fifteen minutes' discussion with his Air Chief, SACEUR changed all that.

"I can't do both things," Alekseyev whispered to himself He'd spent the last twelve hours trying to find a way, but it wasn't there. It was a marvel what it meant finally to be in command himself, no longer the aggressive subordinate. He was now responsible for success or failure. A mistake was his mistake. A failure was his failure. It had been much more comfortable the other way. Like his predecessor, Alekseyev had to mark his orders, even though his orders were impossible. He had to maintain the salient and continue the advance. He had the resources to do one or the other, but not both. You will advance northwest from the Weser, cutting off the forces on the right-flank of the advancing troops and preparing the way for a decisive attack into the Ruhr Valley. Whoever issued the orders either didn't know or didn't care that this was impossible.

But NATO knew. Their air power had smashed convoys on every road between R?hle and Alfeld. The two B tank divisions guarding Beregovoy's northern flank had been caught off-balance and routed. Battalion-sized blocking forces occupied the major crossroads while the NATO commanders reinforced the regiment at Alfeld. Probably two full tank divisions lurked in the forests north of R?hle, but for the present they had not attacked Beregovoy. Instead their inaction both dared him to cross and invited him to counterattack north.

Alekseyev remembered an important lesson from the Frunze Academy: the Kharkov Offensive of 1942. The Germans had allowed the advancing Red Army forces to penetrate deep-then cut them off and chewed them up. High Command [meaning Stalin] ignored the objective realities of the situation (hence violating the Second Law of Armed Combat), concentrating instead on subjective perceptions of apparent progress that unfortunately proved false, the lesson concluded. The General wondered if this battle would be an object lesson for some future class of captains and majors who would then write their test answers and essays in bluebooks, pointing out what an ass General Colonel Pavel Leonidovich Alekseyev was!

Or he could pull them back… and admit defeat, and perhaps be shot, and then be remembered, if at all, as a traitor to the Motherland. It was so fitting. After sending so many thousands of boys into fire, now he faced death as well, though from an unexpected direction.

"Major Sergetov, I want you to go back to Moscow to tell them in person what I am. up to. I am going to detach one division from Beregovoy and drive it east to open the way at Alfeld again. The attack on Alfeld will be from two directions, and after it succeeds, we will be able to continue the Weser crossing without fear of having our spearhead cut off."

"A skillful compromise," the major said hopefully.

That's just the thing I need to hear!

Twelve Frisbees were left. Twice they'd been pulled out of action briefly to determine what new tactics would lessen the hazards-with some success, Colonel Ellington told himself A few of the Soviet systems had proved to have unsuspected capabilities, but half of his losses were unexplained. Were they the kind of accidents that accompanied flying heavily loaded aircraft at minimum altitude or simply the laws of probability catching up with everyone? A pilot might think a 1-percent chance of being shot down on a given mission acceptable, then realize that fifty such missions made it a 40 percent chance.

His flight crews were unnaturally quiet. The elite Frisbee squadron was a tight family of men, a third of whom were gone. The professionalism that allowed them to shut this out and do their weeping in private had its limits. That limit had been passed. Mission performance was down. But combat requirements were not, and Ellington knew that sentiment's place in the great military scheme of things fell below the need to hit targets.

He rotated the aircraft off the pavement and headed east alone. Tonight he carried no weapons save Sidewinders and antiradar missiles for self-defense. His F-19A was burdened with fuel tanks instead of bombs. He settled to an initial flight altitude of three thousand feet and checked his instruments, making a slight adjustment in the aircraft's trim before starting a slow descent to five hundred feet. That was his altitude on crossing the Weser.

"Got some activity on the ground, Duke," Eisly reported. "Looks like a column of tanks and troop carriers heading northeast on Highway 64."

"Report it in." In this sector, everything that moved was a target. A minute later, they crossed the Leine north of Alfeld. They could see the distant flashes of artillery, and Ellington banked left to keep clear. A six-inch shell in its ballistic arc didn't care if the Frisbee was invisible or not.

This ought to be safer than a strike mission, Ellington told himself. They flew east, two miles from a secondary road that Eisly kept under surveillance with their nose-mounted television camera. The threat-warning receiver was lit up from SAM radars sweeping the sky for intruders.

"Tanks," he said quietly. "Lots of 'em."

"Moving?"

"Don't think so. Looks like they're sitting alongside the road near the treeline. Wait-missile-launch warning! SAM three o'clock!"

Ellington pushed the stick down and to the left. In a matter of seconds he had to dive his aircraft one way, turn his head the other to see the incoming missile, then turn back to make sure he didn't plow a furrow in the dirt with his fifty-million-dollar aircraft. All he saw of the SAM was a yellow-white gout of flame, and it was heading for him. As soon as he leveled out, he wrenched the Frisbee into a hard right turn. In the back Eisly had his eyes on the missile.

"Veering off, Duke-yeah!" The missile leveled out at the treetops behind the F19, then dipped and exploded in the woods. "The instruments say that was a SA-6. The search radar is one o'clock and very close."

"Okay," Ellington said. He activated a single Sidearm antiradar missile and fired it at the transmitter from a range of four miles. The Russians were slow to detect it. Ellington saw the detonation. Take that, Darth Vader!

"I think you're right on how they're getting us, Duke."

"Yeah." The Frisbee was designed to defeat overhead radars. Something looking up had a much better chance of detecting them. They could defeat that by flying very low, but then they couldn't see as well as they wanted to see. He turned for another look at the tanks. "How many you think, Don?"

"Lots, over a hundred."

"Tell 'em." Ellington turned back north while Major Eisly made his report. In minutes some German Phantom jets would visit the tank assembly point. That many tanks sitting still probably meant a fueling point, he thought. Either the fuel trucks were already there or they were en route. Fuel trucks were now his primary targets, a surprising change after weeks of going for supply dumps and moving columns… What's that?

"Trucks dead ahead!" The Duke watched the enhanced view on his Head-Up Display. A long line of… fuel trucks, traveling in a tight column, blacked out and moving fast. The curved metal tops made the identification easy. He turned the fighter again to circle two miles from the road. Eisly's infrared picture showed the glow of engines and exhaust piping, hotter than the cool night air. It was like a procession of ghosts down the tree-lined road.

"I count fifty or so, Duke, and they're heading for that tank park."

Five thousand gallons per truck, Ellington thought. Two hundred fifty thousand gallons of diesel fuel… enough to fill every tank in two Soviet divisions. Eisly called that one in also.

"Shade Three," the AWACS controller radioed back. "We have eight birds en route, ETA four minutes. Orbit and evaluate."

Ellington did not acknowledge. He put his aircraft right down on the treetops for several minutes, wondering how many trees had Russian soldiers standing nearby with their SA-7 hand-held missiles.

A long time since he'd flown over Vietnam, a long time since he'd first realized that random chance could reach up into the sky and end his life despite all his skill. His years of peacetime flying had allowed him to forget that-Ellington never thought an accident could kill him. But one man with an SA-7 could, and there was no way to know when he was flying over one… Stop thinking about that, Duke.

The Royal Air Force Tornados swept in from the east. The lead aircraft dropped his cluster bombs in front of the column. The rest swept over the road at a shallow angle, raining the bomblets on the convoy. Trucks exploded, sending burning fuel high into the air. Ellington saw the silhouettes of two fighter-bombers against the orange flames as they headed west for home. The fuel spread out on both sides of the road, and he watched the undamaged trucks stop and turn, desperately trying to escape the conflagration. Some were abandoned by their drivers. Others steered clear of the fire and tried to continue south. A few succeeded. Most bogged down, too heavily loaded to move on the soft earth.

"Tell 'em they got about half. Not bad at all."

A minute later, the Frisbee was ordered northeast again.

In Brussels the radar signals downlinked from the ground-search radar aircraft plotted the fuel convoy's path. A computer was now programmed to perform the function of the videotape recorder, and it traced the convoy's movements back to its point of origin. Eight more attack aircraft headed toward this patch of woods. The Frisbee got there first.

"I show SAM radars, Duke," Eisly said. "I'll call it one battery of SA-6 and another of SA-11. They must think this place is important."

"And a hundred little bastards with hand-held SAMs," Ellington added. "ETA on the strike?"

"Four minutes."

Two batteries of SAMs would be very bad news for the strike aircraft "Let's cut those odds down some."

Eisly singled out the SA-11 search/acquisition radar. Ellington headed towards it at four hundred knots, using a road to travel below the trees until he was two miles away. Another Sidearm dropped off the airframe and rocketed toward the radar transmitter. At the same moment, two missiles came their way. The Duke applied maximum power and turned hard to the east, dropping chaff and flares as he did so. One missile went for the chaff and exploded harmlessly. The other locked onto the fuzzy radar signal reflected from the Frisbee and wouldn't let go. Ellington jinked up hard, then pulled the aircraft into a maximum-g turn in hope of outmaneuvering the missile. But the SA-11 was too fast. It exploded a hundred feet behind the Frisbee. The two crewmen ejected from the disintegrating aircraft a moment later, their parachutes opening a scarce four hundred feet off the ground.

Ellington landed at the edge of a small clearing. He quickly detached himself from the chute and activated his rescue radio before drawing his revolver. He caught a glimpse of Eisly's chute dropping into the trees and ran in that direction.

"Fuckin' trees!" Eisly said. His feet were dangling off the ground. Ellington climbed up and cut him down. The major's face was bleeding.

Explosions thundered to the north.

"They got it!" Ellington said.

"Yeah, but who's got us?" Eisly said. "I hurt my back."

"Can you move, Don?"

"Hell, yes!"

The dispersal of fuel reserves into small depots had reduced NATO attacks on them nearly to zero. The resulting sense of security had lasted nearly a month. The attacks on tank columns and munitions stores were serious, but there were plenty of replacements for both. Fuel was a different story.

"Comrade General, NATO has changed its pattern of air attacks."

Alekseyev turned from the map display to listen to his air-intelligence officer. Five minutes later, his supply chief came in.

"How bad is it?"

"Overall, perhaps as much as ten percent of our forward supplies. In the Alfeld sector, over thirty percent."

The phone rang next. It was the general whose divisions were to attack Alfeld in five hours.

"My fuel is gone! The convoy was attacked and destroyed twenty kilometers from here."

"Can you attack with what you have?" Alekseyev asked.

"I can, but I won't be able to maneuver my units worth a damn!"

"You must attack with what you have."

"But-"

"There are four divisions of Soviet soldiers who will die if you do not relieve them. The attack will go as scheduled!" Alekseyev set the phone down. Beregovoy was also short on fuel. A tank could have enough fuel to drive three hundred kilometers in a straight line, but they almost never traveled in a straight line, and despite orders, the crews invariably left the engines running when sitting still. The time needed to start their diesels could mean death if a sudden air attack fell on them. Beregovoy had been forced to give all of his reserve fuel to his eastbound tanks so that they could hit Alfeld in conjunction with the westbound C divisions. The two divisions on the left bank of the Weser were essentially immobilized. Alekseyev was gambling the offensive on his ability to reestablish his supply routes. He told his supply chief to get more fuel. If his attack succeeded he'd need more still.

The transition was ridiculous-less than two hours from Stendal to Moscow by jet, from war to peace, from danger to safety. His father's chauffeur, Vitaly, met him at the military airport and drove at once to the Minister's official dacha in the birch forests outside the capital. He entered the front room to see a stranger with his father.

"So this is the famous Ivan Mikhailovich Sergetov, Major of the Soviet Army."

"Excuse me, Comrade, but I do not think we have met before."

"Vanya, this is Boris Kosov."

The young officer's face betrayed just a fraction of his emotions on being introduced to the Director of the KGB. He leaned back into the easy chair and observed the man who had ordered the bombing of the Kremlin-after arranging for children to be there. It was two in the morning. KGB troops loyal-thought to be loyal, Minister Sergetov corrected himself-to Kosov patrolled outside to keep this meeting a secret.

"Ivan Mikhailovich," Kosov said genially, "what is your assessment of the situation at the front?"

The young officer suppressed a desire to look to his father for guidance. "The success or failure of the operation hangs in the balance-remember that I am a junior officer and I lack the expertise for a reliable evaluation. But as I see things, the campaign could now go either way. NATO is short on manpower but they've had a sudden infusion of supplies."

"About two weeks' worth."

"Probably less," Sergetov said. "One thing we've learned at the front is that supplies get used up much faster than expected. Fuel, ordnance, everything seems almost to evaporate. So our friends in the Navy must keep hitting the convoys."

"Our ability to do this is seriously reduced," Kosov said. "I would not expect-the truth is that the Navy has been defeated. Iceland will soon be back in NATO hands."

"But Bukharin didn't say that!" the elder Sergetov objected.

"He didn't tell us that Northern Fleet's long-range aircraft were nearly exterminated either, but they were. The fool thinks he can keep me from learning this! The Americans have a full division on Iceland now, with massive support from their fleet. Unless our submarines can defeat this collection of ships-and remember that while they are there, they cannot strike at the convoys-Iceland will be lost within a week. That will obviate the Navy's strategy for isolating Europe. If NATO can resupply at will, then what?"

Ivan Sergetov shifted nervously in his chair. He could see where the conversation was leading. "Then possibly we have lost."

"Possibly?" Kosov snorted. "Then we are doomed. We will have lost our war against NATO, we still have only a fraction of our energy needs, and our armed forces are a shadow of their former selves. And what will the Politburo do then?"

"But if the Alfeld offensive succeeds… " Both Politburo men ignored this statement.

"What of the secret German negotiations in India?" Minister Sergetov asked.

"Ah, you noted that the Foreign Minister glossed over that?" Kosov smiled wickedly. He was a man born to conspiracy. "They have not changed their bargaining position a dot. At most it was a hedge against the collapse of NATO forces. It might also have been a trick from the beginning. We're not sure." The KGB Chief poured himself a glass of mineral water. "The Politburo meets in eight hours. I will not be there. I feel an angina attack coming on from my damaged heart."

"So Larionov will deliver your report?"

"Yes." Kosov grinned. "Poor Josef. He is trapped by his own intelligence estimates. He will report that things are not going according to plan, but still going. He will say that NATO's current attack is a desperate attempt to forestall the Alfeld offensive, and that the German negotiations still hold promise. I should warn you, Major, that one of his men is on your staff. I know his name, but I have not seen his reports. It was probably he who provided the information that got the former commander arrested and put your general in his place."

"What will happen to him?" the officer asked.

"That is not your concern," Kosov answered coldly. A total of seven senior officers had been arrested in the past thirty-six hours. All were now in Lefortovo Prison, and Kosov could not have altered their fates even if he'd had the mind to.

"Father, I need to know the fuel situation."

"We are down to minimum national reserves-you have a week's fuel delivered or being shipped now, and roughly one week's supply is available for the forces deployed in Germany, plus a week for the armies detailed to go into the Persian Gulf."

"So tell your commander that he has two weeks to win the war. If he fails, it will mean his head. Larionov will blame the Army for his own intelligence mistakes. Your life will be in danger too, young man."

"Who is the KGB spy on our staff?"

"The Theater Operations Officer. He was co-opted years ago, but his control officer is in the Larionov faction. I don't know exactly what he is reporting."

"General Alekseyev is-technically he's violating orders by taking a unit on the Weser and sending it east to relieve Alfeld."

"Then he is already in danger, and I cannot help him." Not without tipping my hand

"Vanya, you should return now. Comrade Kosov and I have other things to discuss." Sergetov embraced his son and walked him to the door. He watched the red taillights disappear behind the birch trees.

"I don't like using my own son in this!"

"Whom else can you trust, Mikhail Eduardovich? The Rodina faces possible destruction, the Party leadership has gone mad, and I don't even have full control of the KGB. Don't you see: we have lost! We must now save what we can."

"But we still hold enemy territory-"

"Yesterday does not matter. Today does not matter. What matters is one week from today. What will our Defense Minister do when it becomes obvious even to him that we have failed? Have you considered that? When desperate men realize they have failed-and those desperate men have control of atomic weapons, then what?"

Then what, indeed? Sergetov wondered. He pondered two more questions. What do I-we? — do about it? Then he looked at Kosov and asked himself the second.

The Russians were not responding very fast, Mackall was surprised to see. There had been air attacks and several vicious artillery bombardments during the night, but the expected ground assault hadn't materialized. For the Russians this was a crucial mistake. More ammunition had arrived, bringing them to full loads for the first time in weeks. Better still, a full brigade of German panzer Grenadiers had reinforced the depleted troopers of the 11th Cav, and Mackall had learned to trust these men as he trusted his tank's composite armor. Their defensive positions were arrayed in depth to the east and west. The armored forces pushing down from the north could now support Alfeld with their long-range guns. Engineers had repaired the Russian bridges on the Leine, and Mackall was about to move his tanks east to support the mechanized troops guarding the rubble that was Alfeld.

It was strange crossing the Soviet ribbon bridge-it was strange to be moving east at all! Mackall thought-and his driver was nervous, crossing the narrow, flimsy-looking structure at five miles per hour. Once across, they moved north along the river, swinging around the town. It was raining lightly, with fog and low-hanging clouds, typical European summer weather that cut visibility to under a thousand yards. He was met by troops who guided the arriving tanks to selected defensive positions. The Soviets had helped for once. In their constant efforts to clear the roads of rubble, they'd given the Americans neat piles of brick and stone about two meters high, almost exactly the right size for tanks to hide behind. The lieutenant dismounted from his vehicle to check the placement of his four tanks, then conferred with the commander of the infantry company he was detailed to support. There were two battalions of infantry dug in deep and hard on the outskirts of Alfeld, supported by a squadron of tanks. He heard the overhead whistling of artillery shells, the new kind that dropped mines on the fog-shrouded battlefield ahead of him. The whistling changed as he mounted his tank. Incoming.

"It's taken too long to get them moving," Alekseyev growled to his operations officer.

"It's still three divisions, and they are moving now."

"But how many reinforcements have arrived?"

The operations man had warned Alekseyev against trying to coordinate a two-pronged attack, but the General had stuck to the plan. Beregovoy's A tank division was now in place to strike from the west, while the three C reserve divisions hit from the east. The regular tank force had no artillery-they'd had to move too fast to bring it-but three hundred tanks and six hundred personnel carriers were a formidable force all by themselves, the General thought… but what were they up against,

and how many vehicles had been destroyed or damaged by air attack on the approach march?

Sergetov arrived. His class-A uniform was rumpled from his traveling.

"And how was Moscow?" Alekseyev asked.

"Dark, Comrade General. The attack, how did it go?"

"Just starting now."

"Oh?" The major was surprised at the delay. He looked rather closely at the Theater Operations Officer, who hovered over the map table, frowning at the dispositions while the plotting officers prepared to mark the progress of the attack.

"I have a message from high command for you, Comrade General." Sergetov handed over an official-looking form. Alekseyev scanned it-and stopped reading. His fingers went taut on the paper briefly before he regained self-control.

"Come to my office." The General said nothing more until the door was closed. "Are you sure of this?"

"I was told by Director Kosov himself."

Alekseyev sat on the edge of his desk. He lit a match and burned the message form, watching the flame march across the paper almost to his fingertips as he twisted it in his hand.

"That fucking weasel. Stukach!" An informer on my own staff! "What else?"

Sergetov related the other information he'd learned. The General was silent for a minute, computing his fuel requirements against fuel reserves.

"If today's attack fails… we've-" He turned away, unwilling, unable, to make himself say it aloud. I have not trained my whole life to fail! He remembered the first notice he'd had of the campaign against NATO. I told them to attack at once. I told them that we needed strategic surprise, and that we'd have difficulty achieving it if we waited so long. I told them that we'd have to close the North Atlantic to prevent resupply of the NATO forces. So. Now that we've accomplished none of these, my friend is in a KGB prison and my own life is in jeopardy because I may fail to do what I told them we could not do-because I was right all along!

Come now, Pasha. Why should the Politburo listen to its soldiers when it can just as easily shoot them?

The Theater Operations Officer stuck his head through the door. "The troops are moving."

"Thank you, Yevgeny Ilych," Alekseyev answered amiably. He rose from the desk. "Come, Major, let's see how quickly we can smash through the NATO lines!"

"Bar fight," Woody said from his gunner's position.

"Looks like it," Mackall agreed.

They'd been told to expect two or three Soviet reserve divisions. Together they had perhaps the artillery strength of two regular units, and they were firing at both sides of the river. The miserable visibility hurt both sides. The Russians could not direct their artillery fire well, and the NATO troops would have minimal air support. As usual, the worst part of the preliminary bombardment was the rockets, which lasted two minutes, the unguided missiles falling like hail. Though men died and vehicles exploded, the defending force was well prepared and casualties were light.

Woody switched on his thermal-imaging sights. It allowed him to see roughly a thousand yards, double the visual range. On the left side of the turret, the loader sat nervously, his foot resting lightly on the pedal that controlled the doors to the ammo compartment. The driver in his coffinsized box under the main gun drummed his fingers on the control bar.

"Heads up. Friendlies coming in," Mackall told his crew. "Movement reported to the east."

"I see 'em," Woody acknowledged. Just a few infantrymen were returning from their forward listening posts. Not as many as there should have been, Mackall thought. So many casualties over the past-

"Target tank, twelve o'clock," Woody said. He squeezed the triggers on his yoke, and the tank seemed to leap from its first shot.

The spent round ejected from the breech. The loader stomped his foot on the pedal. The door slid clear of the ammo compartment and he pulled out another sabot round, turning it in a narrow circle to slain it in the breech.

"Ready!"

Woody already had another target. He was largely on his own while Mackall watched out for the whole platoon's front. The troop commander was calling in artillery fire. Immediately behind the first row of tanks, they saw dismounted infantrymen running to keep up with the tanks. Eight-wheeled infantry carriers were mixed in as well. The Bradleys engaged them with their 25mm guns as proximity-fused artillery rounds began to detonate twenty feet off the ground, showering the infantrymen with fragments.

They couldn't miss. The Russian tanks advanced at half the normal hundred-yard interval, concentrating on a narrow front. They were old T-55s, Woody saw, with obsolete 100mm guns. He killed three before they could even see the NATO positions. One shell landed in the stone pile ahead of their tank, sending a mix of steel fragments and stone chips over the vehicle. Woody dispatched that tank with a HEAT round. Smoke rounds began failing-they didn't help the Russians at all. The electronic sights on the NATO vehicles saw right through it. More artillery fire landed on the Cav now that the Russians could see well enough to direct fire in on their positions, and that began an artillery duel as NATO guns searched for the Russian batteries.

"Antenna tank! Sabot!" The gunner locked his sights on the T-55 and fired. The round missed this time and they reloaded another round. The second shot blew the turret into the sky. The thermal sight showed the bright dots of antitank missiles running downrange, and the fountaining explosions of the vehicles they hit. Suddenly the Russians stopped. Most of the vehicles died in place, but some turned and ran off.

"Cease fire, cease fire!" Mackall told his platoon. "Report in."

"Three-two has a track blown off," one replied. The others were intact, protected by their stone revetments.

"Nine rounds fired, boss," Woody said. Mackall and the loader opened their hatches to vent the acrid propellant smell out of the turret. The gunner pulled off his leather helmet and shook his head. His sandy hair was filthy. "You know, there's one thing I miss from the M-60."

"What's that, Woody?"

"We ain't got no hatch in the bottom. Nice to be able to take a piss without climbing outside."

"Did you have to say that!" the driver moaned.

Mackall laughed. It was a moment before he realized why. For the first time they'd stopped Ivan cold, without having to pull back at all-a good thing since their current position didn't allow for that possibility! And how did the crew react? They were making jokes.

O'Malley lifted off again. He was averaging ten flight hours per day. Three ships had been torpedoed, two more hit by submarine-launched missiles in the past four days, but the Russians had paid dearly for that. They'd sent perhaps as many as twenty submarines into Icelandic waters. Eight had died trying to get through the picket line of submarines that was the fleet's outer defense. More had fallen to the line of towed-array ships whose helicopters were now backed up by those of HMS Illustrious, A bold Tango skipper had actually penetrated one of the carrier groups and put a fish into America's tough hide, only to be pounced on and sunk by the destroyer Caron. The carrier could now make only twenty-five knots, barely enough to conduct flight operations, but she was still there.

Mike Force-Reuben James, Battleaxe, and Illustrious-was escorting a group of amphibs south for another landing. There were still bears in the woods, and Ivan would go for the amphibious-warfare ships as soon as he had the chance. From a thousand feet, O'Malley could see Nassau and three others to the north. Smoke rose from Keflavik. The Russian troops were getting no rest at all.

"Won't be easy for them to track in on us," Ralston thought aloud.

"You suppose those Russian troops have radios?" O'Malley asked.

"Sure."

"You suppose maybe they can see us from those hills-and maybe radio a submarine what they see?"

"I didn't think of that," the ensign admitted.

"Mat's all right. I'm sure Ivan did." O'Malley looked north again. There were three thousand Marines on those ships. The Marines had saved his ass in Vietnam more than once.

Reuben James and O'Malley had the inshore side of the small convoy while the British ships and helos guarded to seaward. It was relatively shallow water. Their towed-array sonars were reeled in.

"Willy, drop―now, now, now!" The first active sonobuoy was ejected into the water. Five more were deployed in the next few minutes. The passive buoys used for open-ocean search were the wrong choice here. Stealth was not in the cards if the Russian subs were being informed where to go. Better to scare them off than to try finesse.

Three hours, O'Malley thought.

"Hammer, this is Romeo," Morris called. "Bravo and India are working a possible contact to seaward, two-nine miles bearing two-four-seven."

"Roger that, Romeo." O'Malley acknowledged. To Ralston: "Bastard's within missile range. That oughta make the Marines happy."

"Contact! Possible contact on buoy four," Willy said, watching the sonar display. "Signal is weak."

O'Malley turned his helo and moved back up the line.

"Where do you suppose they are?" Andreyev asked his naval liaison officer. The position of the formation had been plotted on the map from the reports of several mountaintop lookout stations.

The man shook his head. "Trying to get to the targets."

The General remembered his own time aboard ship, how vulnerable he'd felt, how dangerous it had been. A distant part of his consciousness felt sympathy for the American Marines. But gallantry was a luxury the General could not afford. His paratroopers were heavily engaged, and he didn't need more enemy troops and heavy equipment-of course!

His division was deployed to keep the Americans away from the Reykjavik/Keflavik area as long as possible. His original orders remained operative: deny the Keflavik Air Base to NATO. That he could do, though it would mean the probable annihilation of his elite troopers. His problem was that Reykjavik airport would be equally useful to the enemy, and one light division wasn't enough to cover both places.

So now the Americans trailed their coats in plain view of his observers — a full regiment of troops plus heavy weapons and helicopters that they could land anywhere they wished. If he redeployed to meet this threat, he risked disaster when he disengaged his forward units. If he moved his reserves, they would be in the open where naval guns and aircraft could massacre them. This unit was being moved, not to join the others deployed against his airborne infantrymen, but to exploit a weakness within minutes instead of hours. Once in place, the landing ships could wait for relative darkness or a storm and race unseen across the water to landbound troops. How could he deploy his own forces to deal with that? His radars were finished, he had a single remaining SAM launcher, and the battleships had systematically exterminated most of his artillery.

"How many submarines out there?"

"I don't know, Comrade General."

Morris watched the sonar plot. The sonobuoy contact had faded off after a few minutes. A school of herring, perhaps. The ocean waters abounded with fish, and enough of them on active sonar looked like a sub. His own sonar was virtually useless as his ship struggled just to keep up with the 'phibs. A possible submarine to seaward-every sub contact was a possible cruise-missile sub-was all the Commodore needed to go to full speed.

O'Malley was dipping his sonar now, trying to reacquire the lost contact. He was the only one who could keep up with things.

"Romeo, this is Bravo. Be advised we are prosecuting a possible missile carrying submarine." Doug Perrin had to assume the worst case.

"Roger that, Bravo." According to the data-link picture, three helicopters were backing Battleaxe up, and the British frigate had interposed herself on the line from the contact to the amphibious ships. Be careful, Doug.

"Contact!" Willy said. "I have an active sonar contact bearing three-zero-three, range two three hundred."

O'Malley didn't have to look at his tactical display. The submarine was between him and the 'phibs.

"Up dome!" The pilot hovered while the sonar transducer was winched in. The contact was alerted now. That made it harder. "Romeo, Hammer, we have a possible contact here."

"Roger, understood." Morris was looking at the display. He ordered the frigate to close at flank speed. Not a smart tactic, he had no choice but to pounce on the contact before it got within range of the 'phibs. "Signal Nassau we're working a possible contact."

"Down dome!" O'Malley ordered. "Drop it to four hundred and hammer!"

Willy activated the sonar as soon as the proper depth was reached. He got a screenful of echoes. The transducer was so close to the rocky bottom that nearly twenty rocky spires showed up. A swiftly running tide didn't help matters. Flow noise around the rocks gave numerous false readings on the passive plot also.

"Sir, I got a whole lot of nothing here."

"I can feel him, Willy. The last time we pinged, I bet we had him at periscope depth and he ducked down deep while we came over."

"That fast?" Ralston asked.

"'That fast."

"Skipper, one of these things might be moving a little."

O'Malley keyed his radio and got permission to launch from Morris. Ralston set the torpedo for circular search, and the pilot dropped it into he sea. The pilot keyed the sonar into his headphones. He heard the whine of the torpedo's propellers, then the high-frequency ping of its homing sonar. It continued to circle for five minutes, then switched over to continuous pinging-and exploded.

"Explosion sounded funny, sir," Willy said.

"Hammer, Romeo-report."

"Romeo, Hammer, I think we just killed a rock." O'Malley paused.

"Romeo, there's a sub here, but I can't prove it just yet."

"What makes you think that, Hammer?"

"Because it's one damned fine place to hide, Romeo."

"Concur." Morris had learned to trust O'Malley's hunches. He called up the amphibious commander on Nassau. "November, this is Romeo, we have a possible contact. Recommend you maneuver north while we prosecute."

"Negative, Romeo," the Commodore replied at once. "India is working a probable, repeat probable contact that's acting like a missile boat.

We're heading for our objective at max speed. Get him for us, Romeo."

"Roger. Out." Morris set the phone back in place. He looked at his tactical action officer. "Continue to close the datum point."

"Isn't this dangerous, rushing after a submarine contact?" Calloway asked. "Don't you have your helicopter to keep them at arm's length?"

"You're learning, Mr. Calloway. It's dangerous, all right. I think they mentioned that the job could get that way when I was at Annapolis… "

Both her jet turbines were running flat-out, and the frigate's knife-edge bow sliced through the water at over thirty knots. The torque from her single screw gave the ship a four-degree list to port as she raced to close the submarine.

"This is getting nasty." O'Malley could see the frigate's mast clearly now, the distinctive crosstrees well above the horizon as he covered fifty feet over the water. "Talk to me, Willy!"

"Lots of bottom echoes, sir. The bottom must look like a city, all these damned things sticking up. We got eddies-we got too many things here, sir. Sonar conditions suck!"

"Go passive." The pilot reached up and flipped the switch to listen in.

Willy was right. Too much flow noise. Think! he told himself The pilot looked at his tactical display. The amphibs were a scant ten miles away. He couldn't hear them on his sonar, but there was about a 30-percent chance that a submarine could. If we had him at antenna depth before, he probably has a fair idea where they are… but not good enough to shoot.

"Romeo, Hammer, can you warn the 'phibs off? Over."

"Negative, Hammer. They are running away from a probable contact to seaward."

"Great!" O'Malley growled over the intercom. "Prepare to raise dome, Willy." A minute later they were heading west.

"This sub-driver's got real balls," the pilot said. "He's got brains, too O'Malley keyed his radio.

"Romeo, Hammer, put November's course track on your tactical display and transmit to my gadget."

It took a minute. O'Malley blessed the unknown engineer who'd built this feature into the Seahawk's tactical computer. The pilot drew an imaginary line from their only contact on the sub and Nassau's projected course. Figure the sub is going at twenty- to twenty-five knots… The pilot reached down and stabbed his finger on the glass tube.

"That's where the bastard is!"

"How do you know?" Ralston asked. O'Malley already had the Seahawk heading that way.

"'Cause if I was him, that's where I'd be! Willy, next time we dip, keep the dome at exactly one hundred feet. Tell you one other thing, Mr. Ralston-this guy thinks he's beat us." Nobody beats the Hammer! O'Malley circled over the spot he'd selected and brought the Seahawk into hover.

"Down dome, Willy. Passive search only."

"One hundred feet, listening, skipper." Seconds stretched out into minutes while the pilot worked his controls to keep the helicopter stationary. "Possible contact bearing one-six-two."

"Go active?" Ralston asked.

"Not yet."

"Bearing is changing slowly, now one-five-nine."

"Romeo, Hammer, we have a possible submarine contact." The helicopter's onboard computer transmitted the data to Reuben James. Morris altered course to bear down on the contact. O'Malley raised his sonar dome and deployed a sonobuoy to mark the position and hold the contact while he moved to another position. The frigate was now four miles from the helicopter.

"Down dome!" Another minute's wait.

"Contact, bearing one-nine-seven. Buoy six shows contact bearing one-four-two."

"Gotcha, sucker! Up dome, let's go get him!"

Ralston worked the attack system as O'Malley moved south to get right behind the target. He set their last torpedo for a search depth of two hundred feet, and a snake course.

"Down dome!"

"Contact, bearing two-nine-eight."

"Hammer!"

Willy punched the active sonar button. "Positive contact, bearing two-nine-eight, range six hundred."

"Set!" Ralston said immediately, and the pilot jammed his thumb on the red release button. The burnished green torpedo dropped into the water.

And nothing happened.

"Skipper, the torp didn't activate-dead torp, sir."

There wasn't time to curse. "Romeo, Hammer, we just dropped on a positive contact-bad torpedo, negative function on the torp."

Morris clenched his fist on the radiotelephone receiver. He gave course and rudder orders. "Hammer, Romeo, can you continue to track the target?"

"Affirmative, he's running hard on course two-two-zero-wait, turning north… seems to be slowing down now."

Reuben James was now six thousand yards from the submarine. The ships were on converging courses, with each in firing range of the other.

"Crash stop!" Morris ordered. In seconds the entire ship was vibrating from the reverse power. The frigate slowed to five knots inside a minute, and Morris ordered a speed of three knots, bare steerageway. "Prairie/ Masker?"

"Operating, sir," the ship control officer confirmed.

Calloway had kept out of the way with his mouth shut-but this was too much. "Captain Morris, aren't we a sitting duck?"

"Yep." Morris nodded. "But we can stop faster than he can. His sonar should just be coming back on line-and we're not making enough noise to hear. Sonar conditions are bad for everybody. It's a gamble," the captain admitted. He radioed for another helicopter. Illustrious would have one to him in fifteen minutes.

Morris watched O'Malley's helicopter on radar. The Russian sub had slowed and gone deep again.

"Vampire, vampire!" the radar technician called. "Two missiles in the air-"

"Bravo reports her helo just dropped on an SSGN, sir!" the ASW officer sang out.

"This is getting complicated," Morris observed coolly. "Weapons free."

"Bravo has splashed one missile, sir! The other one's heading for the India!"

Morris's eyes focused on the main display. A ^ symbol was marching toward HMS Illustrious-moving very fast.

"Evaluate vampire as SS-N-19-Bravo evaluates her contact as Oscar-class. She reports a hit, sir." Four helicopters were swarming around the submarine contact symbol now.

"Romeo, Hammer, the bastard's right underneath us-bearing just reversed on us."

"Sonar, Yankee-search on bearing one-one-three!" Morris lifted the radiotelephone. "November, turn north now!" he ordered the Nassau.

"India is hit, sir. The vampire scored on India… wait, India helo reports he dropped another torp on the contact!"

Illustrious would have to look out after herself, Morris thought.

"Sonar contact, sir, bearing one-one-eight, range fifteen hundred." The data went into the fire-control director. The solution light blinked on.

"Set!"

"Shoot!" Morris paused for a moment. "Bridge, combat: all ahead flank! Come right to zero-one-zero."

"Bloody hell," observed Mr. Calloway.

On the frigate's starboard side, the triple torpedo tube mount swung out and loosed a single fish. Below, the engineers listened to their engines go from idle to maximum power. The frigate settled at the stem as the propeller churned the water to foam. The powerful jet turbines accelerated the ship almost like an automobile.

"Romeo, Hammer: warning, warning, the target just fired a fish at you!"

"Nixie?" Morris asked. The ship was moving too fast for her own sonar to work.

"One in the water and another ready to stream, sir," a petty officer responded.

"That's it, then," Morris said. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette, looked at it, then tossed the whole pack into a waste can.

"Romeo, Hammer, this contact is a Type-Two engine plant. I evaluate this contact as a Victor-class. Now at full speed, turning north. Your torp is pinging the target. We've lost the fish he sent your way."

"Roger, stick with the sub, Hammer."

"Aren't you one cool bastard!" O'Malley said into the intercom. He could see smoke rising from HMS Illustrious. Idiot, the pilot said to himself. You shouldn't have dropped the first torp! All he could do now was ping.

"Skipper, the torp just went to continuous ping. It seems to be closing the target, ping interval is shortening. Hull-popping noise, the sub is changing depth again, coming up, I think."

O'Malley saw a disturbance in the water. Suddenly the spherical bow of the Victor came through the surface-the submarine had lost depth control trying to evade the fish. What followed a moment later was the first warhead explosion O'Malley had ever really seen. The submarine was sliding back down when a plume of water appeared a hundred feet from where the bow had poked up.

"Romeo, Hammer, that was a hit-I saw the sunuvabitch! Say again, that's a hit!"

Morris checked with his sonar officer. They hadn't picked up the Russian torpedo's homing sonar. It had missed.

Captain Perrin scarcely believed it. The Oscar had taken three torpedo hits so far and still there were no breaking-up noises. But the machinery noise had stopped, and he had the submarine on his active sonar. Battleaxe closed at fifteen knots when the black shape appeared amid a mass of bubbles on the surface. The captain ran to the bridge and put his binoculars on the Russian ship. The sub was a bare mile away. A man appeared atop the submarine's sail, waving wildly.

"Check fire! Check fire!" he screamed. "Ship Control, bring us alongside quick as you can!"

He didn't believe it. The Oscar showed a pair of jagged rents on her upper hull and floated with a 30-degree list from the ruptured ballast tanks. Men were scrambling out of the sail and the forward deck hatch.

"Bravo, Romeo. We just killed a Victor-class inshore. Please advise your situation, over."

Perrin lifted the phone. "Romeo, we have a wounded Oscar on the surface, the crew is abandoning ship. He fired two missiles. Our Sea Wolves splashed one. The other hit India in the bows. We are preparing to conduct rescue operations. Tell November that he may continue his promenade. Over."

"Way to go, Bravo! Out." He switched channels. "November, this is Romeo, did you copy Bravo's last transmission, over?"

"Affirmative, Romeo. Let's get this parade to the beach."

General Andreyev took the report from the observation post himself before handing the radiophone to his operations officer. The American landing ships were now five kilometers from Akranes lighthouse. They'd proceed probably to the old whaling station in Hvalfj" rdur to wait their chance.

"We will resist to the end," the KGB colonel said. "We'll show them how Soviet soldiers can fight!"

"I admire your spirit, Comrade Colonel." He walked over to the corner and picked up a rifle. "Here, you may take this to the front yourself."

"But-"

"Lieutenant Gasporenko, get the colonel a driver. He's going to the front to show the Americans how Soviet soldiers fight." Andreyev watched with dark amusement. The chekist could not back down. After he was gone, the General summoned his divisional communications officer. All long-range radio transmitters except for two would be destroyed. Andreyev knew he could not surrender yet. His troopers would have to pay a bill in blood first, and the General would suffer for every drop. But he knew it would soon reach a point at which further resistance was futile, and he would not sacrifice his men for nothing.

It was over for a while. The second attack had nearly done it, Mackall thought. The Russians had run their tanks flat-out and gotten to within fifty yards of the American positions, close enough that their old, obsolete cannon had destroyed half of the troop's tanks. But that attack had faltered on the brink of success, and the third attack at dusk was a halfhearted affair executed by men too tired to advance into the kill zone. He could hear the noise behind him of another action under way. The Germans west of the town were under heavy attack.

"General Beregovoy reports a heavy counterattack from the north-towards Alfeld."

Alekseyev accepted the news impassively. His gamble had failed. That's why it's called gambling, Pasha

Now what?

It was very quiet in the map room. The junior officers who plotted the movements of friendly and enemy forces had never talked much, and now were not even looking over to the other map sectors. It was no longer a race to see whose forces got to their objectives first.

The word you're looking for is gloom, Pasha The General stood next to his operations officer.

"Yevgeny Ilych, I am open to suggestions."

He shrugged. "We must continue. Our troops are tired. So are theirs."

"We're throwing inexperienced troops against veterans. We have to change that. We will take officers and NCOs from the A units that are off the line and use them to beef up the C units now arriving. These reservists must have experienced combat soldiers to leaven their ranks, else we send them like cattle to the slaughter. Next, we will temporarily suspend offensive operations-"

"Comrade General, if we do that-"

"We have enough strength for one last hard push. That push will be at the time and place of my choosing, and it will be a fully prepared attack. I will order Beregovoy to escape the best way he can-I cannot trust that order to the radio. Yevgeny Ilych, I want you to fly to Beregovoy's headquarters tonight. He'll need a good operational brain to assist him. That will be your assignment." I'll give you a chance to redeem yourself, you traitorous bastard Use it well. More importantly, it got the KGB informer out of the way. The operations officer walked off to arrange transport. Alekseyev took Sergetov back into his office.

"You're going back to Moscow."