Red Storm Rising Part 39

They had to stop the Soviets from taking Bod in Norway. Once emplaced there, Russian aircraft could attack Scotland, draining resources from the German front and hampering efforts to interdict the bomber forces heading into the Atlantic. Toland shook his head. Once the Russian force was located, they'd pound h.e.l.l out of it. They had the right weapons, the right doctrine. They could launch their missiles outside the Russian SAM envelopes, just as Ivan was doing to the convoys. It was about time things changed.

The tanker lifted off first, followed half an hour later by the fighter. Toland and his British counterpart sat in the intelligence center napping, oblivious to the teletype printer that chattered in the corner. If anything important came in, the junior watch officers would alert them, and senior officers needed their sleep, too.

"Huh?" Toland started when the man tapped his shoulder.

"Coming in, sir-your Tomcat is arriving, Commander." The RAF sergeant handed Bob a cup of tea. "Fifteen minutes out. Thought you might wish to freshen up."

"Thanks, Sergeant." Toland ran a hand over his unshaven face and decided not to shave. The group captain did, mainly to preserve the look that went with an RAF mustache.

The F-14 came in gracefully, its engines idling and wings outstretched as though grateful for the chance for a landing on something larger than a carrier. The pilot taxied into a hard shelter and quickly dismounted. Technicians were already removing the film cartridge from the camera pod.

"Nothing on their fleet, guys," he said at once. The radar-intercept officer came down behind him.

"G.o.d, there's fighters up there!" the RIO said. "Haven't seen so much activity since the last time we went through aggressor school."

"And I got one of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, too. But no joy on the fleet. We covered the coast from Orland to Skagen before we turned back, not one surface s.h.i.+p visible."

"You're certain?" the group captain asked.

"You can check my film, Captain. No visual sightings, nothing on infrared, no radar emissions but airborne stuff-nothing, but lots of fighters. We started finding those just south of Stokke and counted-what was it, Bill?"

"Seven flights, mainly MiG-23s, I think. We never got a visual, but we picked up a lot of High Lark radars. One guy got a little close and I had to pop him with a Sparrow. We saw the flash. That was a hard kill. In any case, guys, our friends ain't coming to Bod unless it's by submarine."

"You turned back at Skagen?"

"Ran out of film, and we were low on fuel. The fighter opposition really started picking up north of Bod. If you want a guess, we need to check out Andya, but we need something else to do it, SR-71 maybe. I don't think I can get in and out of there except on burner. I'd have to tank right close to there even to try that, and-like I said, lots of fighters were operating there."

"Hardly matters," the group captain said. "Our aircraft haven't the legs for a strike that far without ma.s.sive tanker support, and most of our tankers are committed elsewhere."

25.

Treks

ICELAND.

Once clear of the meadow, they were back in what the map called wasteland. It was level for the first kilometer, then the uphill effort began in earnest on the Glymsbrekkur, a seven-hundred-foot climb. So soon your legs forget, Edwards thought. The rain hadn't let up, and the deep twilight they had to guide them forced a slow pace. Many of the rocks they tried to walk on were loose. The footing was treacherous, and a misstep could easily be fatal. Their ankles were sore from the constant twists on the uneven ground, and their tightly laced boots didn't seem to help anymore.

After six days in the back country, Edwards and his Marines were beginning to understand what fatigue was. At each step their knees gave just an inch or so too much, making the next step that much more of an effort. Their pack straps cut cruelly into their shoulders. Their arms were tired from carrying their weapons and from constantly adjusting their gear. Necks sagged. It was an effort to look up and around, always having to be alert for a possible ambush.

Behind them the glow of the house fire disappeared behind a ridgeline, the first good thing that had happened. No helicopters yet, no vehicles investigating the fire. Good, but how long would that last? How soon would the patrol be missed? they all wondered.

All but Vigdis. Edwards walked a few yards in front of her, listening to her breathing, listening for sobs, wanting to say something to her, but not knowing what. Had he done the right thing? Was it murder? Was it expediency? Or was it justice? Did that matter? So many questions. He set them aside. They had to survive. That mattered.

"Take a break," he said. "Ten minutes."

Sergeant Smith checked to see where the others were, then sat down beside his officer.

"We done good, Lieutenant. I figure four, maybe five miles in the past two hours. I think we can ease up a little."

Edwards smiled wanly. "Why not just stop and build a house here?"

Smith chuckled in the darkness. "I hear you, skipper."

The lieutenant studied the map briefly, looking up to see how well it matched with what he could see. "What say we go left around this marsh? The map shows a waterfall here, the Skulafoss. Looks like a nice deep canyon. Maybe we'll get lucky and find a cave or something. If not, it's deep. No choppers'll come in there, and we'll have shadows to hide in. Five hours?"

" 'Bout that," Smith agreed. "Roads to cross?"

"Nothing shows but foot trails."

"I like it." Smith turned to the girl, who watched them without a word as she sat with her back against a rock. "How do you feel, ma'am?" he inquired gently.

"Tired." Her voice said more than that, Edwards thought. There was no emotion there, none at all. He wondered if this was good or bad. What was the right thing to do for the victims of serious crime? Her parents murdered before her eyes, her own body brutally violated, what kind of thoughts were going through that head? Get her mind off it, he decided.

"How well do you know this area?" the lieutenant asked.

"My father fish here. I come with him many times." Her head leaned back into a shadow. Her voice cracked and dropped into quiet sobs.

Edwards wanted to wrap an arm around her, to tell her things were all right now, but he was afraid it might only make things worse. Besides, who would believe that things were all right now?

"How we fixed for food, Sarge?"

"I figure we got maybe four days' worth of canned stuff. I went through the house pretty good, sir," Smith whispered. "Got a pair of fis.h.i.+ng rods and some lures. If we take our time, we ought to be able to feed ourselves. Lots of good fis.h.i.+n' creeks around here, maybe at this place we're goin'. Salmon and trout. Never could afford to do it myself, but I heard tell that the fis.h.i.+ng's really something. You said your daddy's a fisherman, right?"

"Lobsterman-close enough. You said you couldn't afford-"

"Lieutenant, they charge you like two hundred bucks a day to fish up here," Smith explained. "Hard to afford on a sergeant's pay, you know? But if they charge that much, there must be a s.h.i.+tload of fish in the water, right?"

"Sounds reasonable," Edwards agreed. "Time to move. When we get to that mountain, we'll belly-up for a while and get everybody rested."

"I'll drink to that, skipper. Might make us late getting to-"

"Screw it! Then we're late. The rules just changed some. Ivan's liable to be looking for us. We take it slow from now on. If our friends on the other end of this radio don't like it, too d.a.m.ned bad. We'll get there late, but we'll get there."

"You get it, skipper. Garcia! Take the point. Rodgers, cover the back door. Five more hours, Marines, then we sleep."

USS PHARRIS.

The spray stung his face, and Morris loved it. The convoy of ballasted s.h.i.+ps was steaming into the teeth of a forty-knot gale. The sea was an ugly, foam-whipped shade of green, droplets of seawater tearing off the whitecaps to fly horizontally through the air. His frigate climbed up the steep face of endless twenty-foot swells, then crashed down again in a succession that had lasted six hours. The s.h.i.+p's motion was brutal. Each time the bow nosed down it was as though the brakes had been slammed on a car. Men held on to stanchions and stood with their feet wide apart to compensate for the continuous motion. Those in the open like Morris wore life preservers and hooded jackets. A number of his young crewmen would be suffering from this, ordinarily-even professional sailormen wanted to avoid this sort of weather-but now mainly they slept. Pharris was back to normal Condition-3 steaming, and that allowed the men to catch up on their rest.

Weather like this made combat nearly impossible. Submarines were mainly a one-sensor platform. For the most part, they detected targets on sonar and the cras.h.i.+ng sea noise tended to blanket the s.h.i.+p sounds submarines listened for. A really militant sub skipper could try running at periscope depth to operate his search radar, but that meant running the risk of broaching and momentarily losing control of his boat, not something a nuclear submarine officer looked kindly upon. A submarine would practically have to ram a s.h.i.+p to detect it, and the odds against that were slim. Nor did they have to worry about air attacks for the present. The sea's crenellated surface would surely confuse the seeker head of a Russian missile.

For their own part, their bow-mounted sonar was useless, as it heaved up and down in a twenty-foot arc, sometimes rising completely clear of the water. Their towed-array sonar trailed in the placid waters a few hundred feet below the surface, and so could theoretically function fairly well, but in practice, a submarine had to be moving at high speed to stand out from the violent surface noise, and even then engaging a target under these conditions was no simple matter. His helicopter was grounded. Taking off might have been possible, but landing was a flat impossibility under these conditions. A submarine would have to be within ASROC torpedo range-five miles-to be in danger from the frigate, but even that was a slim possibility. They could always call in a P-3 Orion-two were operating with the convoy at present-but Morris did not envy their crews a bit, as they buffeted through the clouds at under a thousand feet.

For everyone a storm meant time off from battle, for both sides to rest up for the next round. The Russians would have it easier. Their long-range aircraft would be down for needed maintenance, and their submarines, cruising four hundred feet down, could keep their sonar watches in comfort.

"Coffee, skipper?" Chief Clarke came out of the pilothouse, a cup in his hand with a saucer on top to keep the salt.w.a.ter out.

"Thanks." Morris took the cup and drained half of it. "How's the crew doing?"

"Too tired to barf, sir." Clarke laughed. "Sleeping like babies. How much longer this slop gonna last, Cap'n?"

"Twelve more hours, then it's supposed to clear off. High-pressure system right behind this." The long-range weather report had just come in from Norfolk. The storm track was moving farther north. Mostly clear weather for the next two weeks. Wonderful.

The chief leaned outboard to see how the forward deck fittings were taking the abuse. Every third or fourth wave, Pharris dug her nose in hard, occasionally taking green water over the bow. This water slammed into things, and the chief's job was to get them fixed. Like most of the 1052s a.s.signed to the stormy Atlantic, Pharris had been given spray strakes and higher bow plating on her last overhaul, which reduced but did not entirely eliminate the problem known to sailors since men first went to sea: the ocean will try very hard to kill you if you lack the respect she demands. Clarke's trained eye took in a hundred details before he turned back.

"Looks like she's riding this one out okay."

"h.e.l.l, I'd settle for this all the way back," Morris said after finis.h.i.+ng off his coffee. "After it's over, we'll have to round up a lot of merchies, though."

Clarke nodded agreement. Station-keeping was not especially easy in this kind of weather.

"So far, so good, Captain. Nothing big has come loose yet."

"How 'bout the tail?"

"No sweat, sir. I got a man keeping an eye on that. Should hold up nice, 'less we have to speed up." Both men knew they wouldn't speed up. They were making ten knots, and the frigate couldn't run much faster than that in these seas no matter what the cause. "Heading aft, sir."

"Okay. Heads up." Morris looked aloft to check that his lookouts were still alert. Probabilities or not, there was danger out there. All kinds.

STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND.

"Andya. They weren't heading for Bod after all," Toland said as he pored over the satellite photographs of Norway.

"How many troops on the ground do you think?"

"At least a brigade, Group Captain. Maybe a short division. Lots of tracked vehicles here, lots of SAMs, too. They're already basing fighters at the airfield. Be bombers next-maybe there by now. These shots are three hours old." The Russian naval force was already headed back to the Kola Fjord. They could reinforce by air now. He wondered what had happened to the regiment of Norwegians supposed to be based there.

"Their Blinder light bombers can reach us from there. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds can dash in and out at high-mach numbers, be b.l.o.o.d.y difficult to intercept." The Soviets had launched a systematic attack on the RAF radar stations arrayed on the Scottish coast. Some attacks were by air-to-surface missiles, others by submarine-launched cruise missiles. One had even been by fighter-bombers with ma.s.sive jamming support-but that one had been costly. RAF Tornados had killed half of the raiders, mainly on the return leg. Twin-engine Blinder bombers could deliver their heavy bombloads after running in low and fast. Probably why Ivan wanted Andya, Toland thought. Perfectly located for them. Easy to support from their own northern bases, and just a little too far for fighter-bombers in Scotland to counterattack without heavy tanker support.

"We can get there," the American said, "but it means getting half our attack birds loaded up with buddy stores."

"No chance. They'll never release them from the reserve force." The group captain shook his head.

"Then we have to start running a heavy patrol over the Faroes, and that keeps us from bothering Iceland too much." Toland looked around the table. "Don't you just love it when a plan comes together? How do we take the initiative away from these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds? We're playing their game. We're reacting to their actions, not doing what we want to do. That's how you lose, people. Ivan's got his Backfires standing down because of this front moving across the central Atlantic. They'll be flying again tomorrow after a good day's rest, gunning for our convoys. If we can't hit Andya, and we can't do much about Iceland, what the h.e.l.l are we going to do, just sit here and worry about defending Scotland?"

"If we allow Ivan to establish air superiority over us-"

"If Ivan can kill the convoys, Group Captain, we lose the f.u.c.king war!" Toland pointed out.

"True. You're quite correct, Bob. The problem is, how do we hit the Backfires? They appear to be flying directly down over Iceland. Fine, we have a known area of transit, but it's protected by MiGs, laddy. We'd end up sending fighters to battle fighters."

"So we try something indirect. We gun for the tankers they're using."

The fighter pilots present, two squadron operations officers had silently been watching the intelligence types talk.

"How the h.e.l.l are we going to find their tankers?" one asked now.

"You think they can refuel thirty or more bombers without some radio chatter?" Toland asked. "I've listened in on Russian tanker ops by satellite, and I know there's chatter. Let's say we can get a snooper up there, and he finds out where they're tanking. Why not then put some Toms astride their flightpath home?"

"Hit them after they tank the strike . . ." the fighter jock mused.

"It won't do diddly for the strike today, say, but it'll hurt the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds tomorrow. If we succeed even once, then Ivan has to change his operational pattern, maybe send fighters out with them. If nothing else, we'll have them reacting to us for a change."

"And perhaps take the heat off us," the group captain went on. "Right, let's look at this."

ICELAND.

The map didn't begin to show how hard it would be. The Skula River had carved a series of gorges over the centuries. The river was high, and the falls generated a cloud of spray from which a rainbow arched in the morning sun. It made Edwards angry. He'd always liked rainbows before, but this one meant the rocks they had to climb down were slick and wet. He figured it to be two hundred feet down to a floor of granite boulders. It looked a lot farther than that.

"You ever do any rock climbin', Lieutenant?" Smith asked.