Red Storm Rising Part 30

One MiG-29 was flying. The others were in the hardened shelters the Americans had only just finished at the end of runway eleven. The fighter's mission was twofold. It was a standing combat air patrol aircraft should an incoming raid be detected, but more importantly, it was being tracked carefully by the ground radar controllers: their radar needed to be calibrated. Iceland's irregular terrain made for troublesome radar performance, and as with the surface-to-air missiles, the instruments themselves had been badly jostled by the trip aboard the Fucik. The fighter flew circles around the airport while the radar operators determined that what their instruments told them was correct.

The fighters were fully fueled and armed, their pilots resting on cots near them. At the moment, the bowsers were fueling the Badger bomber that had given the fighters navigational and electronic support. Soon it would be leaving to bring in nine more. The Air Force detachment was rapidly finis.h.i.+ng their job of clearing the airfield. All but one of the runways was swept clear of fragments now. The remains of the American aircraft had been bulldozed off the pavement. The fuel pipeline would be repaired in an hour, the engineers said.

"Quite a busy day," the major said to the fighter commander.

"It's not over yet. I'll feel better when we get the rest of the regiment in," the colonel observed quietly. "They should have hit us already."

"How do you expect them to attack?"

The colonel shrugged. "Hard to say. If they're really serious about closing this field, they'll use a nuclear warhead."

"Are you always so optimistic, Comrade Colonel?"

The raid was an hour away. The eighteen B-52H bombers had left Louisiana ten hours before and landed to refuel at Sondrestrom Air Force Base on Greenland's west coast. Fifty miles ahead of them were a single Raven EF-111 jamming aircraft and four F-4 Phantoms configured for defense-suppression.

The radar was about halfway calibrated, though what had been done was the easy part. The fighter that had just landed had flown racetrack ovals from due north around the western horizon to due south of Keflavik. The area to the west of the air base, though not exactly flat, was nearly so, with low rocky hills. Next came the hard part, plotting radar coverage of the eastern arc over Iceland's mountainous center, a solid collection of hills that worked up to the island's tall central peak. Another Fulcrum rolled off the runway to begin this task, its pilot wondering how long it might take to map all the nulls-areas blanked to radar coverage by the steep valleys-areas that an attacking aircraft could use to mask its approach to Keflavik.

The radar officers were plotting probable troublesome spots on their topographical maps when an operator shouted a warning. Their clear radar screens had just turned to hash from powerful electronic jammers. That could mean only one thing.

The klaxons sounded in the fighter shelters at the end of runway eleven. Fighter pilots who had been dozing or playing dominos jumped to their feet and raced to their aircraft.

The tower officer lifted the field phone to give more exact warning to the fighters, then called up the missile battery commander: "Incoming air raid!"

Men leaped into action all across the air base. The fighter ground crews. .h.i.t the built-in self-starters, turning the jet engines even as the pilots climbed into the c.o.c.kpits. The SAM battery turned on its search and fire-control systems while the launch vehicles slewed their missiles into firing position.

Just under the radar horizon, eighteen B-52 bombers had just lit off their ECM jamming systems. They were deployed in six groups of three each. The first skimmed over the top of Mt. Snaefells, sixty miles north of Keflavik, and the rest came from all around the west side of the compa.s.s, converging on the target behind a wall of electronic noise provided by their own systems and the supporting EF-111 Raven jammer.

The Russian fighter just lifting off climbed to alt.i.tude, the pilot keeping his radar off as he scanned the sky visually, waiting for intercept information from the ground-based radar. His comrades were even now taxiing into the open, racing straight down the runway and into the sky. The aircraft that had just landed taxied to a fuel bowser, its pilot gesturing and cursing at the ground crewmen who were struggling to fuel his fighter. In their haste, they spilled ten gallons of fuel over the wing. Amazingly, it did not ignite, and a dozen men ran in with CO2 extinguishers to prevent an explosion as the fighter drank in a full load of fuel.

HILL 152, ICELAND.

Edwards's head jerked up at the noise, the distinctive roar of jet fighters. He saw a dark trail of smoke approaching in from the east, and the silhouettes pa.s.sed within a mile. The shapes were heavy with ordnance, the up-angled wingtips making identification easy.

"F-4s!" he hooted. "They're our guys!"

They were Phantom jets of the New York Air National Guard, configured as Wild Weasel SAM-killers. While Russian attention was on the converging bomber raid, they skimmed over hilltops and down valleys, using the crenellated landscape to mask their low-level approach. The back-seat crewman in each aircraft counted the missile radars, selecting the most dangerous targets. When they got to within ten miles of Keflavik, they popped up high and fired a salvo of Standard-ARM antiradar missiles.

The Russians were caught by surprise. Laboring to direct missile fire at the bombers, they didn't expect a two-part raid. The incoming missiles were not detected. Three of the ARMs found targets, killing two search radars and a missile-launch vehicle. One launch commander turned his vehicle around and trained manually on the new threat. The Phantoms jammed his fire-control radar, leaving behind a series of chaff clouds as they came in at thirty-foot height. As each pilot raced to the target area a.s.signed to him, he conducted a hasty visual search. One saw an undamaged SAM launcher and streaked toward it, dropping Rockeye cl.u.s.ter-bomb canisters that fell short but spread over a hundred bomblets all over the area. The SA-11 launcher exploded in his wake; its crew never knew what had happened. A thousand yards beyond it was a mobile antiaircraft gun vehicle. The Phantom engaged it with his own cannon, badly damaging it as he swept across the rest of the peninsula and escaped back over the sea, a cloud of chaff and flares in his wake. It was a letter-perfect Weasel mission. All four aircraft were gone before the Soviet missile crews were able to react. The two SAMs that were launched exploded harmlessly in chaff clouds. The battery had lost two-thirds of its launcher vehicles and all of its search radars. Three of the mobile guns were also destroyed or damaged. The bombers were now a mere twenty miles out, their powerful ECM jamming systems drowning the Soviet radar with electronic noise.

They could not defeat the radar on the mobile guns, however. The new system had a radar for which they were not equipped, but it didn't matter. The guns had been designed to deal with small fighters, and when their radars tried to lock on the huge bombers, they found a target so large that their radar signals traced from one part to another. The computers could not decide what the target range was, and kept recycling automatically, rendering the electronics package useless. The gun crews cursed as one man and switched over to manual fire-control, using their eyes to sight in on the ma.s.sive incoming targets.

The bombers popped up to nine hundred feet now, hoping to avoid the worst of the gunfire and escape without loss. They had not been warned of a possible fighter presence. Their mission was to wreck Keflavik before fighters could get there.

Now surprise was on the Soviet side. The Fulcrums dived out of the sun at the bombers. Their own fire-control radars were nearly useless as they approached, but half their missiles were infrared-guided, and the American bombers gave off enough heat to attract the attention of a blind man in a fur coat.

The southbound flight of three never saw them coming in. Two took missile hits and exploded in midair. The third radioed for fighter cover, jinking his aircraft hard-too hard. His second dive bottomed out too late, and the aircraft disintegrated on the ground north of Keflavik in a fireball visible to Edwards thirty miles away.

The Russian fighters were experiencing an airman's dream. All eight aircraft had individual targets, and they split to hunt them singly before Keflavik absorbed too many bomb hits. The bomber crews pressed in on their targets. It was too late to run away, and all that they could do was scream for the fighters to come back and support them.

The ground-based gunners joined in. Firing over open sights, a young sergeant hit a bomber just dropping its load. The bomb bay took a dozen rounds, and the aircraft vanished in a deafening explosion that shook the sky and damaged yet another B-52. One missile-launch crew successfully switched their missile-control systems to the backup infrared mode and fired a single rocket at a bomber. It hit just after the bombs were released. The bomber's wing erupted in flame and the aircraft swooped east trailing a black river of smoke.

They watched it approach their hill, a wounded monster whose right wing trailed burning fuel. The pilot was trying to maintain alt.i.tude so that his crew could eject, but all four of his right engines were gone and the burning wing collapsed. The bomber staggered in the air and dropped, rolling into the west face of Hill 152. None of the crew escaped. Edwards didn't have to give an order. In five seconds, his men had packed their gear and were running northeast.

The remaining bombers were now over the target and screaming for help from their escorting fighters. Eight successfully dropped their bombloads before turning clear of the area. The Soviet fighters had claimed five by now, and the surviving crews were desperate to escape the unexpected hazard. The Russians were now out of missiles, and attempting to engage with their cannon. That was dangerous. The B-52s retained their tail guns, and one Fulcrum was damaged by machine-gun fire from his target and had to break off.

The final element of confusion was the return of the American Phantoms. They carried only three Sparrow missiles each, and when they lit off their missile-intercept radars, the Soviet fighters all received warning tones from their defense systems. The Fulcrums scattered before the twelve incoming missiles and dove for the ground. Four dropped down right on top of Edwards's group, swooping low over a crashed B-52 east of Hafnarfjrdur. When they came back up, the sky was clear again. The Phantoms were short on fuel. They could not press their attack and turned away without a single kill. The surviving bombers were now safely hidden in the cloud of jamming. The Soviets re-formed and moved back to Keflavik.

Their first impression was a bad one. Fully two hundred bombs had fallen within the airport perimeter, and nine of them had found runway targets. But runway eleven was unscarred. As they watched, the single Fulcrum left on the ground roared off into the sky, its pilot frantic with rage, demanding a vector to a target. He was ordered to patrol as the rest of the squadron landed to refuel.

The first battle had mixed results. The Americans lost half their bomber force in return for damaging three of Keflavik's five runways. The Soviets had most of a SAM battery smashed to little gain, but Keflavik was still usable. Already the ground personnel were running to the runway-repair equipment left behind by the Americans. At the end of each runway was a pile of gravel, and a half-dozen bunkers contained steel mats. Heavy equipment would bulldoze the debris back into the holes, even it out, then cover it over with gravel and steel. Keflavik was damaged, but its runways would be fully operational again before midnight.

USS PHARRIS.

"I think this one's for-real, Captain," the ASW officer said quietly. The line of colored blocks on the pa.s.sive sonar display had lasted for seven minutes. Bearing was changing slowly aft, as though the contact were heading for the convoy, but not Pharris.

The frigate was steaming at twelve knots, and her Prairie/Masker systems were operating. Sonar conditions were better today. A hard thermocline layer at two hundred feet severely impeded the utility of a surface sonar. Pharris was able to deploy her towed-array sonar below it, however, and the lower water temperature there made for an excellent sound channel. Better still, the layer worked in both directions. A submarine's sonar had as much trouble penetrating the thermocline as a surface sonar. Pharris would be virtually undetectable to a submarine below the layer.

"How's the plot look?" the tactical action officer asked.

"Firming up," ASW answered. "Still the distance question. Given the water conditions and our known sonar performance, our sonar figure of merit gives us a contact distance of anything from five to fourteen miles on direct path, or into the first convergence zone. That predicts out from nineteen to twenty-three miles ..." A convergence zone is a trick of physics. Sound traveling in water radiates in all directions. Noise that traveled down was gradually turned by water temperature and pressure into a series of curves, rising to the surface, then bending again downward. While the frigate could hear noise out from herself for a distance of about fourteen nautical miles, the convergence zone was in the shape of an annulus-the area between two concentric circles-a donut-shaped piece of water that began nineteen miles and ended twenty-three miles away. The distance to the submarine was unknown, but was probably less than twenty-three miles. That was already too close. The submarine could attack them or the convoy they guarded with torpedoes, or with surface-to-surface missiles, a technology pioneered by the Soviets.

"Recommendation, gentlemen?" Morris asked. The TAO spoke first.

"Let's put the helicopter up for the near solution, and get an Orion working the far one."

"Sounds good," ASW agreed.

Within five minutes, the frigate's helo was five miles out, dropping Lofar-type son.o.buoys. On striking the water, these miniature pa.s.sive sonar sets deployed a nondirectional sonar transducer at a preselected depth. In this case all dipped above the thermocline layer to determine if the target was close. The data was relayed back to Pharris's combat information center: nothing. The pa.s.sive sonar track, however, still showed a submarine or something that sounded like a submarine. The helo began moving outward, dropping son.o.buoys as it went.

Then the Orion arrived. The four-engine aircraft swooped low along the frigate's reported bearing-to-target. The Orion carried over fifty son.o.buoys, and was soon dropping them in sets both above and below the layer.

"I got a weak signal on number six and a medium on number five," a sonar operator reported. Excitement crept into his voice.

"Roger, confirm that," the tactical coordinator on Bluebird-Three agreed. He'd been in the ASW game for six years, but he was getting excited, too. "We're going to start making MAD runs."

"You want our helo to back you up?"

"Roger that, yes, but tell him to keep low."

Seconds later the frigate's SH-2F Sea Sprite helicopter sped off north, her magnetic anomaly detector trailing out by cable from a shroud on the right side of the aircraft. Essentially a highly sensitive magnetometer, it could detect the disturbance in the earth's magnetic field made by a large chunk of ferrous metal-like the steel hull of a submarine.

"Signal on number six is now medium-strength. Signal on seven remains medium." The plotting team took this to mean that the submarine was heading south.

"I can give you a working range figure," ASW said to the TAO. "Forty-two to forty-five thousand yards, bearing three-four-zero to three-three-six." The frigate relayed this at once to the Orion.

As they watched on radar, the P-3C quartered the area, flying very precise tracks across the box of ocean defined by Pharris's sonar data as the probable location of the submarine. A computer system plotted the lines as they extended to the south.

"Pharris, this is Bluebird. Our data indicates no friendly subs in the area. Please confirm, over."

"Roger that, Bluebird. We confirm no reports of friendlies in the area." Morris had checked that himself half an hour before.

"Signal strength increasing on number six. We now have a weak signal on number five. Number seven is fading out." The technician was really struggling to be professionally impa.s.sive now.

"Range is firming up. Estimate target speed roughly eight knots, distance forty-three thousand yards."

"Transient! Transient!" called the s.h.i.+p sonar operator. A metallic noise had come from the target bearing. A closing hatch, a dropped tool, an opening torpedo tube door-something had made a uniquely man-made sound.

"Confirm mechanical transient, copied on buoys five and six," the aircraft called immediately.

"Confirmed," Pharris's TAO answered. "We got that on the towed-array, too. We evaluate the contact as positive submarine at this time."

"Concur," the Orion replied. "Positive Redboat cla.s.sification-madman! Madman, madman, smoke away! We have a MAD contact." A big spike appeared on the MAD readout. Instantly, a crewman flipped a switch to deploy a smoke marker and the aircraft turned hard right to circle back on the contact point.

"Plotted!" The tactical action officer marked the position on his tactical display scope with a large V symbol.

The helo raced in on the contact as the Orion circled back.

"Madman!" its systems operator called out, and the helo dropped its own smoke bomb, slightly south and west of the Orion's.

The data was now being relayed to the frigate's torpedo-tube and ASROC attack directors. Neither had anything like the range to engage the target, but that could change quickly.

"Patience," Morris breathed from his chair in the CIC, then louder: "Take your time, people. Let's lock this guy in before we fire."

The Orion's tactical coordinator agreed, forcing himself to relax and take the time needed. The P-3 and the helicopter made another MAD run north to south. This time the Orion got a reading and the helo did not. Another run, and both had the contact's course line. Next came an east-to-west run. At first, both missed, but on the second run both had him. The contact was no longer an it. Now it was a he, a submarine being driven by a man. Control of the operation now pa.s.sed exclusively to the tactical coordinator on the Orion. The big patrol aircraft orbited two miles away as the helicopter lined up for the final pa.s.s. The pilot made a very careful check of his tactical display, then locked his eyes on the gyrocompa.s.s.

The helo began the last MAD run, with the Orion two miles behind it.

"Madman, madman, smoke away!" The final smoke marker dropped, a green flare floating on the surface. The Sea Sprite banked hard to the right to clear the area as the Orion came in low. The pilot watched the smoke's movement to figure wind drift as he lined up on the target. The P-3C's bomb bay doors opened. A single Mk-46 ASW torpedo was armed for launch.

"Torp away!"

The torpedo dropped cleanly, its braking parachute trailed out of the tail to make sure the weapon entered the water nose down. The Orion also dropped an additional son.o.buoy, this time a directional DIFAR.

"Strong signal, bearing one-seven-niner."

The torpedo dove to two hundred feet before beginning its circular search. Its high-frequency sonar came on as it reached search depth. Things started happening quickly.

The submarine had been oblivious to the activity over her head. She was an old Foxtrot. Too old and too noisy for front-line operations, she was there nonetheless, hoping to catch up with the convoy reported to her south. Her sonar operator had noted and reported a possible overhead splash, but the captain was busy plotting the position of the convoy he had been ordered to approach. The torpedo's homing sonar changed that. Instantly, the Foxtrot went to flank speed, turning hard to the left in a pre-planned evasion maneuver. The suddenly increased noise of her cavitating screws was discernible to several son.o.buoys and Pharris's tactical sonar.

The torpedo was in ping-and-listen mode, using both active and pa.s.sive sonar to find its target. As it completed its first circle, the pa.s.sive receptors in the nose heard the cavitation noises of the submarine and homed in on them. Soon the active sonar pings were reflecting off the submarine's stern as it dodged left and right trying to get away. The torpedo automatically went to continuous pinging, increasing to maximum speed as it homed in on its target like the remorseless robot it was.

The sonar operators on the aircraft and the frigate had the best picture of what was happening. As they watched, the bearing lines of the submarine and torpedo began to converge. At fifteen knots, the Foxtrot was too slow to run away from the forty-knot torpedo. The submarine began a radical series of turns with the torpedo in pursuit. The Mk-46 missed its first attempt for a kill by twenty feet, and immediately turned for another try. Then the submarine's captain made a mistake. Instead of continuing his left turn, he reversed it, hoping to confuse the oncoming torpedo. He ran directly into its path . . .

Immediately overhead, the helicopter crew saw the water appear to leap, then froth, as the shock wave of the explosion reached the surface.

"We have warhead detonation," the pilot reported. A moment later his systems operator dropped a pa.s.sive buoy. The sound came into them in less than a minute.

The Foxtrot was dying. They heard the sounds of air blowing into her ballast tanks and continued flank power from her electric motors, her propellers struggling to overcome the weight of water entering the hull and drive the wounded submarine to the surface. Suddenly the engine sounds stopped. Two minutes later, they heard the metallic scream of internal bulkheads being torn asunder by water pressure as the submarine fell below crush depth.

"This is Bluebird. We score that one as a kill. Can you confirm, over?"

"Roger, Bluebird," the ASW officer answered. "We copied blowing air and breakup noises. We confirm your kill." The crewmen cheered, forgetting the decorum that went with duty in CIC.

"All right! That's one less to worry about. We'll give you a big a.s.sist on that one, Pharris. Nice job from your sonar folks and the helo. Out." The Orion increased power and returned to her patrol station forward of the convoy.

"a.s.sist, h.e.l.l!" snorted the ASW officer. "That was our contact. We could have dropped the torp on him just as easy as he did." Morris punched him in the shoulder and went up the ladder to the pilothouse.

The bridge crew was all grins. Soon the bosun's mate would paint half of a red submarine silhouette next to the pilothouse door. It had not struck them yet that they had just helped in the killing of a hundred young men not at all unlike themselves, their lives cut short by the hammering pressure of the North Atlantic.

"What's that?" called a lookout. "Possible explosion on the starboard beam!"

Morris grabbed his binoculars and raced out the open door. The lookout pointed.

A column of black smoke was reaching into the sky from the direction of the convoy. Someone else had just gotten his first kill.

USS NIMITZ.

Toland had never seen so many welding torches operating. Under the supervision of the executive officer and three damage-control experts, crewmen were using acetylene torches to cut away the damaged portions of Nimitz's flight deck and its supporting steel beams. What had been bad enough became worse on more thorough examination. Six of the enormous frames under the flight deck had been wrecked, and the damage extended two decks below that. A third of the hangar deck was burned out. Most of the plane-fueling network and all of the ordnance elevators had to be repaired. CIC was gone, and with it all of the computers and communications needed to fight the s.h.i.+p. The arrester wire systems would have to be fully replaced. The main search radar was gone. The list went on.

Tugs were pus.h.i.+ng the wounded carrier into Southampton's Ocean Dock, a task made doubly hard because of the s.h.i.+p's induced ten-degree list. Water cascaded from the carrier's clifflike hull into the harbor while more entered the bilges below. Already a senior Royal Navy repair expert and the chief of the Vesper s.h.i.+p Repair Yard were aboard, reviewing the damage below and cataloging the material needed to enable the s.h.i.+p to operate again. Captain Svenson watched the messenger lines being shot off to handlers who would secure the s.h.i.+p. He was an angry man, Toland noted. Five hundred of his men known dead, another three hundred wounded, and the count was nowhere near complete. The most grievous losses were in the flight deck crews, many of whose shelters had been immolated by the two Soviet missiles. They would also have to be replaced before Nimitz could sail and fight again.

"Toland, you'll be heading to Scotland."