The Nimitz battle group, in company with Sarotoga and the French carrier Foch, was escorting a marine amphibious unit, called a MAU, to reinforce the ground defenses on Iceland. A three-day run. If the war started soon after they made their delivery, their next mission would be to support the GIUK barrier defense plan, the critically important link that covered the ocean between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom. Carrier Task Force 21 was a powerful force. But would it be powerful enough? Doctrine required a four-carrier group to fight and survive up here, but the fleet had not yet been fully a.s.sembled. Toland was getting reports on frantic diplomatic activity aimed at averting the war that appeared about to start, much as everyone hoped it wouldn"t. How would the Soviets react to four or more carriers in the Norwegian Sea? It seemed that no one in Was.h.i.+ngton wanted to find out, but Toland was wondering if it would matter at all. As it was, Iceland had approved the reinforcements they were escorting only twelve hours before, and this NATO outpost needed immediate reinforcement.
USS CHICAGO.
McCafferty was thirty miles north of the entrance to the Kola Fjord. The crew was relatively happy to be here after a tense sixteen-hour run from Cape Svyatoy. Though the Barents Sea was alive with antisubmarine s.h.i.+ps, immediately after making their report they had been withdrawn from the entrance to the White Sea for fear of fomenting a major incident. Here there was a hundred thirty fathoms of water and room to maneuver, and they were confident in their ability to keep out of trouble. There was supposed to be a pair of American subs within fifty miles of Chicago, plus a Brit and two Norwegian diesel boats. His sonarmen couldn"t hear any of them, though they could hear a quartet of Grisha-cla.s.s frigates pinging away at something to the southeast. The allied submarines here were a.s.signed to watch and listen. It was a nearly ideal mission for them, since they only had to creep along, avoiding contact with surface s.h.i.+ps, which they could detect from a good, long distance.
There was no hiding it now. McCafferty didn"t even consider not telling his men the significance of what they had learned about the Russian boomers. Submarines have no long-lived secrets. It looked like they were about to fight a war. The politicians in Was.h.i.+ngton and the strategists in Norfolk and elsewhere might still have their doubts, but there, at the sharp end of the lance, the officers and men aboard Chicago discussed the way the Soviets were using their s.h.i.+ps and came up with a single answer. The submarine"s torpedo tubes were loaded with MK-48 torpedoes and Harpoon missiles. Her vertical missile tubes forward of the pressure hull held twelve Tomahawks, three nuclear-tipped land-attack missiles, and nine conventional antis.h.i.+p models. When a s.h.i.+pboard machine showed the first suggestion of a fault, a technician immediately tore it down to fix it. McCafferty was pleased and not a little surprised by his crew. So young they were-the average age on his submarine was twenty-one-to have to adapt to this.
He stood in the sonar room, forward and to starboard of the attack center. A few feet from him, a ma.s.sive computer system sifted through an avalanche of waterborne sound, a.n.a.lyzing individual frequency bands known from experience to mark the acoustical signature of a Soviet vessel. The signals were displayed on a visual screen called a waterfall display, a monocolor curtain of yellow whose brighter lines indicated the bearing to a sound that might be a source of interest. Four lines indicated the Grishas, and offset dots marked the pings from their active sonars. McCafferty wondered what they were after. His interest was mainly academic. They weren"t pinging his s.h.i.+p, but there was always something to learn from how the enemy did his job. A team of officers in the attack center was plotting the movement of the Soviet patrol s.h.i.+ps, carefully noting their formation patterns and hunting technique for later comparison with intelligence estimates.
A new series of dots appeared at the bottom of the screen. A sonarman punched a b.u.t.ton for a more selective frequency setting, altering the display slightly, then plugged in a pair of microphones. The display was on fast-speed image generation, and McCafferty saw the dots grow to lines around bearing one-nine-eight, the direction to the Kola channel.
"Lots of confused noise, skipper," the sonarman reported. "I read Alfas and Charlies coming out, with other stuff behind them. Blade count on one Alfa is something like thirty knots. Lots of noise behind them, sir."
The visual display confirmed it a minute later. The frequency-or tone-lines were in the areas known to depict specific cla.s.ses of submarines, all moving at high speed to clear the harbor. The bearing-to-contact lines spread apart as the boats fanned out. The boats had already dived, he noted. Usually Soviet submarines didn"t dive until they were well offsh.o.r.e.
"s.h.i.+p count is over twenty, sir," the chief sonarman said quietly. "We have a major sortie here."
"Sure looks like it." McCafferty moved back to the attack center. His men were already entering the contact positions into the fire-control computer, and sketching paper tracks on the chart table. The war hadn"t started yet, and though it appeared it could come at any time, McCafferty"s orders were to keep clear of any Soviet formation until the Word came. He didn"t like it-better to get his blows in quick-but Was.h.i.+ngton had made it clear they wanted no one to cause an incident that might prevent some kind of diplomatic settlement. That made sense, the captain admitted to himself. Maybe the lace-panty folks could still get things under control. A faint hope, but a real one. Real enough to overcome his tactical desire to hold an attack position.
He ordered his submarine moved farther offsh.o.r.e. In half an hour, things were clearer still, and the captain had a SLOT-buoy launched. The buoy was programmed to allow Chicago thirty minutes to clear the area, then it started sending a series of burst transmissions on a UHF satellite band. From ten miles away, he listened to Soviet s.h.i.+ps going berserk around the radio buoy, doubtlessly thinking it was the location of the submarine. The game was becoming all too real.
The buoy operated for over an hour, continuously sending its data to a NATO communications satellite. By nightfall the data was being broadcast to all NATO units at sea. The Russians are coming.
16.
Last Moves/First Moves
USS NIMITZ.
The speaker had announced sunset two hours before, but Bob had to finish his work. Sunsets at sea far away from the polluted city air, with a sharp horizon for the sun to slide under, were always something he enjoyed watching. What he saw now was almost as good. He stood with his hands on the rail, first looking down at the foam alongside the carrier"s sleek hull, then after a brief moment of preparation, up. Born and raised in Boston, Toland hadn"t known what the Milky Way was until joining the Navy, and the discovery of the wide, bright belt of stars overhead was always a source of wonder to him. There were the stars he"d learned to navigate by, with s.e.xtant and trigonometric tables-largely replaced now by electronic aids like Omega and Loran-but they were still beautiful to behold. Arcturus, and Vega, and Altair, all blinking at him with their own colors, their own unique characteristics that made them benchmarks in the night sky.
A door opened, and a sailor dressed in what looked like a purple plane-fueler"s s.h.i.+rt joined him on the flight deck catwalk.
"Darkened s.h.i.+p, sailor. I"d dump that cigarette," Toland said sharply, more annoyed to have his precious solitude destroyed.
"Sorry, sir." The b.u.t.t sailed over the side. The man was silent for a few minutes, then looked at Toland. "You know about the stars, sir?"
"What do you mean?"
"This is my first cruise, sir, an" I grew up in New York. Never saw the stars like this, but I don"t even know what they are-the names, I mean. You officers know all that stuff, right?"
Toland laughed quietly. "I know what you mean. Same with my first time out. Pretty, isn"t it?"
"Yes, sir. What"s that one?" The boy"s voice sounded tired. Small wonder, Toland thought, with all the flight operations they"ve been through today. The youngster pointed to the brightest dot in the eastern sky, and Bob had to think for a few seconds.
"That"s Jupiter. A planet, not a star. With the quartermaster"s spygla.s.s, you can pick out her moons-some of them anyway." He went on to point out some of the stars used for navigation.
"How do you use "em, sir?" the sailor asked.
"You take a s.e.xtant and plot their height above the horizon-sounds harder than it is, just takes some practice-and you check that against a book of star positions."
"Who does that, sir?"
"The book? Standard stuff. I imagine the book we use comes from the Naval Observatory in D.C., but people have been measuring the tracks of the stars and planets for three or four thousand years, long before telescopes were invented. Anyway, if you know the exact time, and you know where a particular star is, you can plot out where you are on the globe pretty accurately, within a few hundred yards if you really know your stuff. Same thing with the sun and the moon. That knowledge has been around for hundreds of years. The tricky part was inventing a clock that kept good time. That happened about two hundred and some years ago."
"I thought they used satellites and stuff like that."
"We do now, but the stars are just as pretty."
"Yeah." The sailor sat down, his head leaning way back to watch the curtain of white points. Beneath them the s.h.i.+p"s hull churned the water to foam with the whispering sound of a continuously breaking wave. Somehow the sound and the sky matched each other perfectly. "Well, at least I learned something about the stars. When"s it gonna start, sir?"
Toland looked up at the constellation of Sagittarius. The center of the galaxy was behind it. Some astrophysicists said there was a black hole in there. The most destructive force known to physics, it made the forces under man"s control appear puny by comparison. But men were a lot easier to destroy.
"Soon."
USS CHICAGO.
The submarine was far offsh.o.r.e now, west of the surging Soviet submarine and surface forces. They"d heard no explosions yet, but it couldn"t be far off. The nearest Soviet s.h.i.+p was about thirty miles off to the east, and a dozen more were plotted. All were blasting the sea with their active sonars.
McCafferty was surprised by his Flash operational order. Chicago was being pulled out of the Barents Sea and s.h.i.+fted to a patrol area in the Norwegian Sea. Mission: to interdict Soviet submarines expected to head south toward the North Atlantic. A political decision had been made: It must not appear that NATO was forcing the Soviets into a war. In a stroke, the pre-war strategy of engaging the Soviet Fleet in its own backyard had been tossed away. Like every pre-war battle plan in this century, the sub skipper reflected, this one too was being torn up because the enemy wasn"t going to cooperate and do what we thought he"d do. Of course. He was putting many more submarines in the Atlantic than had been expected-even worse, we were making it easier for him! McCafferty wondered what other surprises were in store. The submarine"s torpedoes and missiles were now fully armed, her fire-control systems continuously manned, her crew standing Condition-3 wartime watch routine. But their orders at present were to run away. The captain swore to himself, angry with whoever had made this decision, yet still hoping in a quiet corner of his mind that somehow the war could be stopped.
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM.
"It"s gotta happen soon," COMAIRCENT observed. "s.h.i.+t, they got their troops as ready as I"ve ever seen. They can"t wait until all our Reforger units are fully in place. They have to hit us soon."
"I know what you"re saying, Charlie, but we can"t move first."
"Any word on our visitors?" The Air Force general referred to Major Chernyavin"s team of Spetznaz commandos.
"Still sitting tight." A unit of the elite GSG-9 German border guards had the safe house under continuous surveillance, with a second English ambush team between them and their supposed target in Lammersdorf. Intelligence officers from most of the NATO countries were part of the surveillance team, each with a direct line to his government. "What if they"re bait, trying to get us to strike first?"
"I know we can"t do that, General. What I want is a green light to initiate Dreamland when we know it"s all for-real. We have to get our licks in fast, boss."
SACEUR leaned back. Trapped by his duties in his underground command post, he hadn"t been to his official residence in ten days. He wondered if any general officer in the whole world had gotten any sleep in the past two weeks.
"If you put the orders up, how fast can you react?"
"I have all the birds loaded and ready now. My crews are briefed. If I order them to stand to, I can have Dreamland running thirty minutes from your signal."
"Okay, Charlie. The President has given me authority to react to any attack. Tell your people to stand to."
"Right."
SACEUR"s phone rang. He lifted it, listened briefly, and looked up. "Our visitors are moving," he told COMAIRCENT. To his operations officer, "The code word is Firelight." NATO forces would now go to maximum alert.
AACHEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY.
The Spetznaz team left the safe house in two small vans and drove south on the road to Lammersdorf. With their leader killed in a traffic accident, the second in command, a captain, had been delivered copies of the papers his boss had died to get, and fully briefed his men. They were quiet and tense. The officer had taken pains to explain to his men that their escape had been carefully planned, that once clear of the target they"d get to another safe house and wait for their Red Army comrades to arrive in five days. They were the cream of the Red Army, he"d told them, thoroughly trained to carry out dangerous missions behind enemy lines, hence valuable to the State. Every man had combat experience fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan, he reminded them. They were trained. They were ready.
The men accepted this speech as elite troopers usually did, in total silence. Chosen most of all for their intelligence, each of them knew that the speech was merely that. The mission depended largely on luck, and their luck had already gone bad. Every one of them wished that Major Chernyavin were there, and wondered if somehow the mission might have been blown. One by one, they set these thoughts aside. Soon every man was reviewing his part in the mission to destroy Lammersdorf.
The drivers were KGB agents well experienced at working in foreign lands, and wondering exactly the same thing. Both vehicles stayed together, driving conservatively, wary of vehicles that followed them. Each had a scanner radio tuned to the local police frequencies, and another for communicating with each other. The KGB officers had discussed the mission an hour before. Moscow Center had told them that NATO was not yet fully alerted. The lead driver, whose regular cover job was driving a taxi, wondered if a "full" NATO alert meant a parade through Red Square.
"Turning right now. Car three, close in. Car one, turn left at the next intersection and get ahead of them." Colonel Weber spoke over a tactical radio of the sort used by FIST-fire-support team-units. The ambush had been ready for several days now, and as soon as their targets had emerged from their safe house, the word had been flashed all over the Federal Republic. NATO establishments already on alert were brought to full battle-readiness. This could only be the opening move in a shooting war . . . unless, Weber admitted to himself, they were simply moving from one secure place to wait further in another one. He didn"t know which way things would turn, though surely it had to begin soon. Didn"t it?
The two trucks were now in a rural part of Western Germany, driving southeast through the German-Belgian Nature Park, a scenic route often traveled by tourists and sightseers. They had chosen this side road to avoid the military traffic on the major highways, but as they pa.s.sed through Mulartshutte, the lead driver frowned as he saw a military convoy of tanks on low-hauler trailers. Strangely, the tanks were loaded backwards, with their ma.s.sive guns facing aft. British tanks, he saw, new Challengers. Well, he hadn"t expected to see any German Leopard tanks on the Belgian border. There had never been any possibility of preventing a German mobilization, and he tried to convince himself that the rest of the NATO countries had not moved as quickly as they could have. Ah, if this mission were successful, then NATO"s communications would be seriously damaged, and maybe the armored spearheads would indeed come to rescue them. The convoy slowed. The driver considered pulling around them, but his orders were to be inconspicuous.
"Everyone ready?" Weber asked from his chase car.
"Ready." b.l.o.o.d.y complex op, this, Colonel Armstrong thought. Tankers, SAS, and the Germans all working together. But worth it to bag a bunch of Spetznaz. The convoy slowed and stopped at a picnicking area. Weber halted his car a hundred meters away. It was now in the hands of the English ambush team.
Flares erupted around the two small vans.
The KGB driver cringed at being in the center of so much light. Then he looked forward to see the barrel of the tank just fifty meters ahead of him rise from its travel-rest and center on his winds.h.i.+eld.
"Attention," a voice called in Russian over a megaphone. "Spetznaz soldiers, attention. You are surrounded by a company of mechanized troops. Come out of your vehicles singly and unarmed. If you open fire, you will be killed within seconds." A second voice began speaking.
"Come out, Comrades, this is Major Chernyavin. There is no chance."
The commandos exchanged looks of horror. In the lead vehicle the captain started to pull the pin on a grenade. A sergeant leaped on him and wrapped his hand around the captain"s.
"We cannot be taken alive! Those are our orders!" the captain shouted.
"The devil"s mother we can"t!" the sergeant screamed. "One at a time, Comrades-out with hands high. And be careful!"
A private emerged from the back door of the van, one slow foot at a time.
"Come to the sound of my voice, Ivanov," Chernyavin said from a wheelchair. The major had told much to earn the chance to save his detachment. He had worked with these men for two years, and he could not let them be slaughtered to no purpose. It was one thing to be loyal to the State, another to be loyal to the men he"d led in combat operations. "You will not be hurt. If you have any weapons, drop them now. I know about the knife you carry, Private Ivanov . . . Very good. Next man."
It went quickly. A joint team of Special Air Service and GSG-9 commandos collected their Soviet counterparts, hand-cuffed them, and led them off to be blindfolded. Soon only two were left. The grenade made it tricky. By this time the captain had seen the futility of his action, but it proved impossible to locate the pin for the grenade. The sergeant shouted a warning to Chernyavin, who wanted to come forward himself, but couldn"t. The captain came out last. He wanted to throw the grenade at the officer who, he thought, had betrayed his country, only to see a man whose legs were swathed in plaster.
Chernyavin could see the look on the man"s face.
"Andrey Ilych, would you prefer that your life should end for nothing?" the major asked. "The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds drugged me and learned enough to kill you all. I could not let them do this."
"I have a live grenade!" the captain said loudly. "I will throw it into the truck." This he did before anyone could shout to stop him. A moment later the truck exploded, destroying the group"s maps and plans for escape. For the first time in a week, Chernyavin"s face broke into a wide grin. "Well done, Andrushka!"
Two other Spetznaz groups were less lucky, and were intercepted within sight of their targets by German units privy to Chernyavin"s capture. But twenty additional groups were in the Federal Republic, and not every NATO site had gotten the word in time. A score of vicious firefights erupted on both sides of the Rhein. A war to involve millions began with squad- and platoon-sized units fighting desperate actions in the dark.
17.
The Frisbees of Dreamland