The twelve Tomcats of the Jolly Rogers were strung on a line at thirty thousand feet. On command they activated their missile-guidance radars.
"American fighters!" shouted a number of Russian pilots. Their threat receivers instantly told the pilots that fighter-type radars were locked on their aircraft.
The Soviet fighter commander was not surprised. Surely the Americans would not risk their heavy bombers again without a proper escort. He"d ignore these and bore in for the B-52s, as his training dictated. The MiG radars were heavily jammed, their ranges cut in half and as yet unable to track any targets at all. He ordered his pilots to be alert for incoming missiles, confident that they could avoid those that they saw, and had all his aircraft increase power. Next, he ordered all but two of his reserve force to leave Keflavik and come east to support him.
The Americans needed only seconds to lock onto targets. Each Tomcat carried four Sparrows and four Sidewinders. The Sparrows went first. There were sixteen MiGs in the air. Most had at least two missiles targeted, but the Sparrows were radar-guided. Each American fighter had to remain pointed at its target until the missile hit. This ran the risk of closing within range of Soviet missiles, and the Tomcats were not equipped with protective jammers.
The Americans had taken position up-sun from the Russians. Just as their radars began to burn through the American jamming, the Sparrows arrived, the first directly from the sun, exploding its MiG in midair and warning everyone in its flight. The Soviet aircraft began radical jinks up and down, some pilots breaking into hard turns as they saw the seven-inch wide missiles racing in, but four more found their targets, and in moments there were three hard kills and one severely damaged aircraft that turned to limp for home.
The Jolly Rogers turned as soon as their missiles were spent and ran northeast with the Soviets in pursuit. The Russian commander was relieved that the American missiles had performed so poorly, yet still enraged at the loss of five aircraft. His remaining aircraft bore in on afterburner as their targeting radars began to defeat the American jamming. The American fighter escort had had its turn, he knew. Now it was his turn. They ran northeast, their visored eyes alternating between squints into the sun and quick looks at their radarscopes to pick out targets. They never looked down. The lead MiG finally had a target and launched two missiles.
Twenty thousand feet below them, s.h.i.+elded from ground radar by a pair of mountains, twelve Tomcats of the Black Aces went to afterburner, their radars shut off as the twin-engined fighters rocketed skyward. Within ninety seconds the pilots began to hear the growling signal that indicated their Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles were tracking targets. Seconds later, sixteen missiles were fired from a range of two miles.
Six Russian pilots never knew what hit them. Of the eleven MiGs, eight were hit in a matter of seconds. The commander"s luck remained briefly as he jerked his fighter around, causing a Sidewinder to break lock and fly into the sun, but now what could he do? He saw two Tomcats running south, away from his remaining fighters. It was too late to organize an attack-his wingman was gone, and the only friendly aircraft he could see was to his north-so the colonel reefed his MiG into an eight-g turn and dove at the American, oblivious to the warning buzz of his threat receiver. Both Sparrows launched from the second group of Black Aces struck his wing. The MiG came apart around him.
The Americans had no time to gloat. The mission commander reported a second group of MiGs heading their way and the American squadrons regrouped to meet them, forming a solid wall of twenty-four aircraft, their radars shut down for two minutes as the MiGs raced into the cloud of jamming. The Russian second-in-command was making a serious error. His fellow pilots were in danger. He had to go to their rescue. One group of Tomcat volleyed off its remaining Sparrows; the other fired Sidewinders. A total of thirty-eight missiles closed in on eight Soviet aircraft who had no clear picture of what they were running into. Half of them never did, blotted out of the sky by American air-to-air missiles; three more were damaged.
The Tomcat pilots all wanted to close, but the commander ordered them off. They were all short of fuel, and Stornoway was seven hundred miles off. They turned east, ducking through the cloud of aluminum chaff left by the B-52s. The Americans would claim thirty-seven kills, quite a score since they had expected a total of only twenty-seven Russian aircraft. In fact, of twenty-six MiGs, only five undamaged aircraft remained. A stunned air base commander immediately began rescue operations. Soon the parachute division"s attack helicopters were flying northeast, searching for downed pilots.
STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC.
Thirty kilometers from Alfeld to Hameln, Alekseyev thought. An hour"s drive in a tank. Elements of three divisions were making that drive now, and since the crossing had been achieved, they"d advanced a total of only eighteen kilometers. This time it was the English: the tanks of the Royal Tank Regiment and 21st Lancers had stopped his leading elements cold halfway to Hameln and hadn"t budged in eighteen hours.
There was real danger here. For a mechanized formation, safety lay in movement. The Soviets were feeding units into the gap, but NATO was using its air power to the utmost. The bridges on the Leine were being destroyed almost as fast as they could be repaired. Engineers had prepared crossing points on the riverbanks, and the Russians were able to swim their infantry carriers across now, but the tanks couldn"t swim, and every attempt to run them across underwater-as they were supposedly equipped to do-had been a failure. Too many units had had to be deployed to protect the breach in NATO"s lines, and too few were able to exploit it. Alekseyev had achieved a perfect textbook breakthrough-only to see that the other side had its own textbook for containing and smas.h.i.+ng it. Western Theater had a total of six reserve cla.s.s-A divisions to send into the fighting. After that they would have to start using cla.s.s-B units composed of reservists, with older men and equipment. There were many of them, but they would not-could not-perform as well as the younger soldiers. The General bridled at the necessity of committing units to battle that would certainly take higher casualties than normal. But he had no choice. His political masters wanted it, and he was only the executor of political policy.
"I have to go back forward," Alekseyev told his boss.
"Yes, but no closer than five kilometers to the front line, Pasha. I cannot afford to lose you now."
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM.
The Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, looked at his own tally sheet. Nearly all of his reserves were committed to the fighting now, and the Russians seemed to have an endless supply of men and vehicles moving forward. His units had no time to reorganize and redeploy. NATO faced the nightmare of all armies: they could only react to the moves of their opponent, with almost no chance to launch their own initiatives. So far things were holding together-but only barely. Southeast of Hameln his map showed a British brigade. In fact it was nothing more than a reinforced regiment composed of exhausted men and damaged equipment. Artillery and aircraft were all that allowed him to prevent a collapse, and even that would not be enough if his units didn"t get much more replacement equipment. More ominously, NATO was now down to two weeks of ordnance, and the resupply coming from America had been seriously impeded by attacks on the convoys. What could he tell his men? Reduce munitions expenditures-when the only thing stopping the Russians was the profligate use of every weapon at hand?
His morning intelligence brief was starting. The chief NATO intelligence officer was a German general who was accompanied by a Dutch major carrying a videotape ca.s.sette. For something this important, the intel officer knew, SACEUR wanted to see the raw data, not just the a.n.a.lysis. The Dutch officer set up the machine.
A computer-generated map appeared, then units showed up. The tape took under two minutes to display five hours of data, repeating it several times so that the officers could discern patterns.
"General, we estimate that the Soviets are sending six full divisions toward Alfeld. The movement you see here on the main road from Braunschweig is the first of them. The others come from their theater reserve, and these two coming south are reserve formations from their northern army group."
"So you think that they are making this their main point of attack?" SACEUR asked.
"Ja." The German General nodded. "The Schwerpunkt is here."
SACEUR frowned. The rational thing to do would be to withdraw behind the river Weser to shorten his defensive line and reorganize his forces. But that would mean abandoning Hannover. The Germans would never accept that. Their own national strategy of defending each home and field had cost the Russians dear-and stretched NATO forces to the breaking point. Politically they would never accept such a strategic withdrawal. West German units would fight on alone if they had to: he could see it clearly enough in the eyes of his own intelligence chief. And if somebody invaded New Hamps.h.i.+re, he admitted to himself, would I withdraw into Pennsylvania?
An hour later, half of the existing NATO reserves were heading east from Osnabrck to Hameln. The battle for Germany would be won or lost on the right bank of the Weser.
STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND.
The returning Tomcats got little rest. As soon as they landed, the British and American ground crewmen refueled and rearmed the fighters. The Russians were raiding the British northern airfields more carefully now. The American airborne radar aircraft supporting the British Nimrods and Shackletons were making life hard on the twin-engine Blinder bombers flying out of Andya in Norway. Royal Air Force Tornados flew combat air-patrol missions two hundred miles offsh.o.r.e while the American pilots rested, a few enterprising crew chiefs painted red stars underneath the c.o.c.kpits, and intelligence officers evaluated gunsight videotapes and recordings of Soviet missile radars.
"Looks like we hurt them," Toland judged. The kill claims were too high, but with fighter pilots they always were.
"Bet your a.s.s!" replied the commander of the Jolly Rogers. The Navy commander chewed on a cigar. He claimed personal credit for a pair of MiGs. "Question is, will they reinforce? It worked once, but they won"t fall for that gag again. You tell me, Toland: can they replace what we culled out?"
"I don"t think so. The MiG-29 is about the only fighter they can stage out that far. The rest of those are in Germany, and they"ve taken a beating there, too. If the Russians decide to cut loose some MiG-31s, I think they can reach that far, but I don"t see them releasing their prime bomber-interceptor for this kind of mission."
The Jolly Rogers"s skipper nodded agreement. "Okay. Next step then is we put a combat air patrol close to Iceland and start beating on those Backfire raids for-real."
"They might just come looking for us, too," Toland warned. "They have to know now what we did, and where we did it from." The commander of VF-41 looked out the window. One of his Tomcats sat half a mile away between two piles of sandbags. Four missiles were visible on the airframe. He fingered the Ace of Spades emblem on his chest and turned back.
"Good. If they want to fight us on our turf, in our radar cover, fine."
ALFELD, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY.
Alekseyev left his helicopter on the outskirts of the town and climbed into yet another BMP infantry carrier. Two ribbon bridges were operating. Fragments of at least five others littered the riverbanks, along with countless burned-out tanks and trucks. The commander of 20th Tanks rode with them.
"NATO air attacks are murderous," General Beregovoy said. "I"ve never seen anything like it. Even with our SAMs they close in. We get our share, but it"s not enough, and things only get worse as we approach the front."
"What progress have you made today?"
"The main opposition at the moment is English. At least a brigade of tanks. We"ve pushed them back two kilometers since dawn."
"There"s supposed to be a Belgian force out there also," Sergetov pointed out.
"They"ve disappeared. We don"t know where they are-and, yes, that worries me also. I"ve placed one of the new divisions on our left flank to guard against counterattack. The other will join 20th Tanks when we resume the attack this afternoon."
"Strength?" Alekseyev asked.
"The Twentieth is down to ninety working tanks. Maybe less," the General said. "That number is four hours old. Our infantry has done better, but the division is now under fifty-percent nominal strength."
Their vehicle angled down onto the floating ribbon bridge. Each boxlike segment was bolted to two others, and the vehicle bobbed up and down like a small boat in the surf as they drove across the Leine. All three officers controlled their feelings, but none liked being locked inside a steel box over the water. The BMP infantry a.s.sault vehicle was technically amphibious, but many had sunk without warning and it was rare for anyone to escape when that happened. They could hear distant artillery fire. Air attacks at Alfeld happened without warning. It took just over a minute to complete the crossing.
"In case you"re curious, that bridge we just crossed holds the record for the longest survival." He checked his watch. "Seven hours."
"What of that major you requested the gold star for?" Alekseyev asked.
"He was wounded in an air attack. He"ll live."
"Give him this. Perhaps it will speed his recovery." Alekseyev reached into a pocket and came out with a five-pointed gold star attached to a blood-red ribbon. He handed it to the General. That major of engineers was now a Hero of the Soviet Union.
USS CHICAGO.
All the boats slowed on reaching the icepack. McCafferty inspected it through his periscope, a thin white line less than two miles away. There was nothing else visible. Few s.h.i.+ps lingered so near the ice, and no aircraft were visible.
Sonar reported a gratifying amount of noise. The serrated fringe of the pack was composed of thousands of individual floes, slabs of ice a few feet thick, ranging in size from a few square feet to several acres. Every year they came loose with the spring thaw and drifted at random until the freeze began again. While loose in the brief arctic summer, they drifted at random, grinding against one another in a process that destroyed some of the smaller floes, which added to the never-ending groans and pops of the solid ice that went across the top of the pole all the way to the North Slope of Alaska.
"What"s that?" McCafferty adjusted the scope slightly, turning the handle to the twelve-power setting. He"d glimpsed what might have been a periscope for the merest instant. It was gone now and-reappeared: the swordlike dorsal fin of a male killer whale. A puff of spray marked its breath, condensing to vapor in the polar air, then a few more whales appeared. What was it they called a family of orcas? A school-no, a pod. Up here hunting seals, probably. He wondered if the omen was good or bad. Orcinus orca was the scientific name: Bringer of Death.
"Sonar, do you have anything at one-three-nine?"
"Conn, we have eleven killer whales on that bearing. I make it three males, six females, and two adolescents. Pretty close in, I think. Bearing is changing slowly." The sonar chief responded as if insulted. There were standing orders not to report "biologicals" unless specifically ordered otherwise.
"Very well." McCafferty had to grin in spite of himself.
The other submarines of Operation Doolittle were strung out on a line more than ten miles across. One by one they went deep and headed under the pack. An hour later the freight train headed east, five miles inside the nominal edge of the pack. Twelve thousand feet below them was the floor of the Barents Abyssal Plain.
ICELAND.
"Haven"t seen a chopper all day," Sergeant Smith observed.
Conversation, Edwards noted, made a nice distraction from the fact that they were eating raw fish. He checked his watch. It was time to call in again. It had gotten so that he could a.s.semble the radio antenna in his sleep.
"Doghouse, this is Beagle, and things could be a lot better, over."
"Beagle, we read you. Where are you now?"
"About forty-six kilometers from our objective," Edwards replied. He gave them map coordinates. There was one road yet to cross, and only one more row of hills, according to the map. "Nothing much to report except we have not seen any choppers today. In fact we haven"t seen any aircraft at all." Edwards looked up. The sky was pretty clear, too. Usually they spotted fighters once or twice a day as they patrolled overhead.
"Roger that, Beagle. Be advised that the Navy sent some fighters over and beat them up pretty good around dawn."
"All right! We haven"t seen any Russians since the chopper looked us over." In Scotland his controller shuddered at that. Edwards went on, "We"re down to eating fish we catch, but the fis.h.i.+ng"s pretty good."
"How"s your lady friend?"
Mike had to smile at that one. "She"s not holding us back, if that"s what you mean. Anything else?"
"Negative."
"Okay, we"ll be back if we see anything. Out." Edwards flipped the power switch on the radio pack. "Our friends say the Navy chewed up some Russian fighters today."
" "Bout time," Smith said. He was down to his last five cigarettes and stared at one now, deciding whether or not to reduce his supply to four. As Edwards watched, he opened his lighter to poison himself again.
"We go to Hvammsfjrdur?" Vidgis asked. "Why?"
"Somebody wants to know what"s there," Edwards said. He unfolded the tactical map. It showed the entrance to the bay to be crammed with rocks. It took him a moment to realize that while the land elevations were in meters, the depth curves on the map were in fathoms . . .
KEFLAVIK.
"How many?"
The fighter regiment commander was lowered gently from the helicopter, his arm tied across his chest. Ejecting from his disintegrating aircraft, the colonel had dislocated his shoulder, and then his parachute had landed him on a mountainside, giving him a sprained ankle plus several facial cuts. It had taken eleven hours to find him. On the whole, the colonel considered himself lucky-for a fool who had allowed his command to be ambushed by a superior force.