Red Storm Rising Part 22

"I know this. Watch, my friend."

The black-hulled vessel was turning radically to starboard. As she did so, the s.h.i.+p heeled in the opposite direction, the same way a car rolls away from a turn on a flat road, which artificially raised the waterline on the vulnerable portside.

Some enterprising officers aboard fired signal flares, hoping to decoy the missile away, but all the missile's microchip brain cared about was the enormous blip that occupied the center of its radar seeker head. It noted that the s.h.i.+p's heading was changing slightly, and altered its own course accordingly. Half a mile from the target, the Harpoon lurched upward from its ten-foot alt.i.tude in its programmed "pop-up" terminal maneuver. The troopers aboard the Fucik instantly fired an even dozen SAMs. Three locked onto the Harpoon's engine exhaust plume, but were unable to turn rapidly enough to hit the incoming missile, and continued past it. The Harpoon tipped over and dove.

PENGUIN 8.

"All right . . ." the pilot whispered. There was no stopping it now.

The missile struck the Fucik's hull six feet above the waterline, slightly abaft the bridge. The warhead exploded at once, but the missile body kept moving forward, spreading two hundred pounds of jet fuel that fireballed into the lowest cargo deck. In an instant, the s.h.i.+p disappeared behind a wall of smoke. Three paratroopers, thrown off their feet by the impact, accidentally triggered their SAMs straight up.

"Tacco, your bird hit just fine. We got warhead detonation. Looks like . . ." The pilot's eyes strained at his binoculars to a.s.sess the damage.

MV JULIUS FUCIK.

"Rudder amids.h.i.+ps!" Kherov had expected to be knocked from his feet, but the missile was a small one, and Julius Fucik still had thirty-five thousand tons of ma.s.s. He ran out to the bridge wing to survey the damage. As the s.h.i.+p returned to an even keel, the ragged hole in her side rose ten feet from the lapping waves. Smoke poured from the hole. There was fire aboard, but the s.h.i.+p should not flood from the blow, the captain judged. There was only one danger. Kherov rapidly gave orders to his damage-control teams, and the General sent one of his own officers to a.s.sist. A hundred of the paratroopers had been trained over the last ten days in s.h.i.+pboard firefighting. They would now put what they had learned to use.

PENGUIN 8.

The Fucik emerged at twenty knots from the smoke, a fifteen-foot hole in the s.h.i.+p's side. Smoke poured from the opening, but the pilot knew at once that the damage would not be fatal. He could see hundreds of men on the upper deck, some of them already running toward ladders to fight the fire below.

"Where are those fighters?" the pilot asked. The tactical coordinator didn't answer. He switched his radio circuits.

"Penguin Eight, this is Cobra One. I got two birds. Our missiles are all gone, but we both got a full load of twenty-mike-mike. I can give you two pa.s.ses, then we gotta bingo to Scotland."

"That's a roge, Cobra Lead. The target has some helos spooling up. Watch out for hand-held SAMs. I seen 'em fire about twenty of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

"Roger that, Penguin. Any further word of Keflavik?"

"We're gonna have to find a new home for a while."

"Roger, copy. Okay, keep clear, we're coming in from up-sun, on the deck."

The Orion continued to orbit three miles out. Her pilot didn't see the fighters until they started firing. The two Eagles were a few feet apart, perhaps twenty feet over the water as their noses sparkled with the flash from their 20mm rotary cannon.

MV JULIUS FUCIK.

n.o.body aboard saw them come in. A moment later, the water around the Fucik's side turned to froth from short-falling rounds, then her main deck was hidden with dust. A sudden orange fireball announced the explosion of one of the Russian helicopters, and burning jet fuel splattered over the bridge, narrowly missing the General and captain.

"What was that?" Kherov gasped.

"American fighters. They came in very low. They must only have their cannon, else they'd have bombed us already. It is not over yet, my captain."

The fighters split, pa.s.sing left and right of the s.h.i.+p, which continued to move at twenty knots in a wide circle. No SAMs followed the Eagles away, and both turned, re-formed, and closed on the Fucik's bow. The next target was the superstructure. A moment later, the freighter's bridge was peppered with several hundred rounds. Every window was blown away, and most of the bridge crew killed, but the s.h.i.+p's watertight integrity hadn't been damaged a whit.

Kherov surveyed the carnage. His helmsman had been blown apart by a half-dozen exploding bullets and every man present on the bridge was dead. It took a second for him to overcome the shock and notice a crippling pain in his own abdomen, his dark jacket darkening further with blood.

"You are hit, Captain." Only the General had had the instinct to duck behind something solid. He looked at the eight mutilated bodies in the pilothouse and wondered once again why he was so lucky.

"I must get the s.h.i.+p to port. Go aft. Tell the first officer to continue landing operations. You, Comrade General, supervise the fires topside. We must get my s.h.i.+p to port."

"I will send you help." The General ran out the door as Kherov went to the wheel.

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND.

"Stop, hold it right here!" Edwards screamed.

"What now, Lieutenant?" the sergeant demanded. He stopped the jeep by the BOQ parking lot.

"Let's get my car. This jeep's too friggin' conspicuous." The lieutenant jumped out of the jeep, pulling his car keys from his pants pocket. The Marines just looked at each other for a moment before running after him.

His car was a ten-year-old Volvo that he'd purchased from a departing officer a few months before. It had seen rugged service on Iceland's mainly unpaved roads, and it showed. "Well, get in!"

"Sir, what the h.e.l.l are we doing, exactly?"

"Look, Sarge, we gotta clear the area. What if Ivan's got helicopters? What do you suppose a jeep looks like from the air?"

"Oh, okay." The sergeant nodded. "But what are we doing, sir?"

"We'll drive at least as far as Hafnarfjrdur, ditch the car, and start walking back into the boonies. Soon as we get to a safe place, we'll radio in. That's a satellite radio I got. We have to let Was.h.i.+ngton know what's happening here. That means we gotta be able to see what Ivan's got coming in. Our people are gonna at least try to take this rock back. Our mission, Sergeant, is to stay alive, report in, and maybe make that easier." Edwards hadn't thought this out until a few moments before he said it. Would they try to take Iceland back? Would they be able to try? What else was going wrong all over the friggin' world? Did any of this make sense? He decided it didn't have to make sense. One thing at a time, he told himself. He for d.a.m.ned sure didn't want to be a prisoner of the Russians, and maybe if they could radio some information in they could get even for what had happened to Keflavik.

Edwards started up the car and drove east up Highway 41. Where to ditch the car? There was a shopping center at Hafnarfjrdur . . . and Iceland's only Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. What better place to ditch a car than that? The young lieutenant smiled in spite of himself. They were alive, and they had the most dangerous weapon known to man-a radio. He'd work out the problems as they arose. His mission, he decided, was to stay alive and report in. After they did that, someone else could tell them what to do. One thing at a time, he repeated to himself, and pray to G.o.d somebody knows what the h.e.l.l is going on . . .

PENGUIN 8.

"Looks like the fire's under control," the copilot commented sourly.

"Yeah, how do you think they managed that? s.h.i.+t, that boat should've gone up like-but it didn't." As they watched, a second load of troops was dispatched on the four hovercraft. The pilot hadn't thought of having the two available Eagle fighters-now heading for England-shoot them up instead of this huge black s.h.i.+p. Some f.u.c.king officer you are, he told himself. Penguin 8 carried eighty son.o.buoys, four Mk-46 ASW torpedoes, and some other high-technology weapons-none of which were of the least use against a simple large target like this merchie. Unless he wanted to play kamikaze . . . the pilot shook his head.

"If you want to head for Scotland, we got another thirty minutes of fuel," the flight engineer advised.

"Okay, let's take a last look at Keflavik. I'm going up to six thousand. Oughta keep us out of SAM range."

They were over the coast in two minutes. A Lebed was approaching the SOSUS and SIGINT station opposite Hafnir. They could just make out some movement on the ground, and a wisp of smoke coming from the building. The pilot didn't know much about the SIGINT activities, but SOSUS, the oceanic Sonar Surveillance System, was the princ.i.p.al means of detecting targets for the P-3C Orion crews to pounce on. This station covered the gaps from Greenland to Iceland, and from Iceland to the Faroe Islands. The main picketline needed to keep Russian subs out of the trade routes was about to go permanently off the air. Great.

They were over Keflavik a minute after that. Seven or eight aircraft had not gotten off the ground. All were burning. The pilot examined the runways through binoculars and was horrified to see that it was uncratered.

"Tacco, you got a Sentry on the line?"

"You can talk to one right now, Flight. Go right ahead, you got Sentry Two."

"Sentry Two, this is Penguin 8, do you read, over?"

"Roger, Penguin 8, this is the senior controller. We show you over Keflavik. What's it look like?"

"I count eight birds on the ground, all broke and burning. The missiles did not, repeat not, crater the airfield."

"You sure about that, Eight?"

"Affirmative. A whole lot of blast damage, but I don't see any holes in the ground. The in-close fuel tanks appear undamaged, and nothing at all seems to have hit the tank farm at Hakotstangar. We left our friends a whole s.h.i.+tload of jet fuel and an airfield. The base-let's see. Tower's still standing. Lots of smoke and fire around Air/Ops . . . base looks pretty badly beat-up, but those runways are sure as h.e.l.l usable. Over."

"How about the s.h.i.+p you shot at?"

"One solid hit, I eyeballed the missile in, and two of your '15s strafed his a.s.s, but it ain't enough. She'll probably make port. I'd guess she'll try to come into Reykjavik, maybe Hafnarfjrdur, to unload. She's gotta be carrying a lot of stuff. It's a forty-thousand-ton s.h.i.+p. She can make port in two or three hours unless we can whistle up something to take her out."

"Don't count on it. What's your fuel state?"

"We gotta head for Stornoway right now. My camera guys have shot pictures of the area, and that s.h.i.+p. About all we can do."

"Okay, Penguin 8. Go find yourself a place to land. We're leaving in a few minutes, too. 'Luck. Out."

HAFNARFJRDUR, ICELAND.

Edwards parked the car in the shopping center. There had been some people outside along the drive in, mainly looking west toward Keflavik. Awakened by the noise a few miles away and wondering what was happening. Just like us, Edwards thought. Fortunately, there seemed to be no one about right here yet. He locked the car and pocketed the keys without thinking about it.

"Where to, Lieutenant?" Sergeant Smith asked.

"Sergeant, let's straighten a few things out. You're the ground-pounder. You got any ideas, I want to know about 'em, okay?"

"Well, sir, I'd say we oughta head straight east for a while, to get away from the roads, like, and find you a place to play with that radio. An' do it quick."

Edwards looked around. There was no one on the streets here yet, but they'd want to get into the back country before being noticed by anybody who might tell someone about it afterward. He nodded, and the sergeant directed a private to lead off. They took off their helmets and slung their rifles to appear as harmless as possible, each sure that a hundred pairs of eyes were locked on them from behind the curtained windows. What a way to start a war, he thought.

MV JULIUS FUCIK.

"The fires are out, by G.o.d!" General Andreyev proclaimed. "There is much damage to our equipment, mainly from water, but the fires are out!" His expression changed when he saw Kherov.

The captain was ghostly pale. An Army medic had bandaged his wound, but there had to be internal bleeding. He struggled to hold himself erect over the chart table.

"Come right to zero-zero-three."

A junior officer was on the wheel. "Right to zero-zero-three, Comrade Captain."

"You must lie down, my captain," Andreyev said softly.