Red Storm Rising Part 50

At NATO headquarters, staff officers looked at the same maps and reached the same conclusions with less enthusiasm. Reserves were dangerously low-yet there was no choice. Men and guns converged on Alfeld in ever increasing numbers.

PANAMA.

It was the biggest transit of U.S. Navy s.h.i.+ps in years. The gray hulls used both sides of each lock system, preventing westbound traffic from moving. They were in a hurry. Helicopters moved the Ca.n.a.l pilots to and from s.h.i.+ps; speed restrictions were broken, regardless of the erosion problems at the Gaillard Cut. Those s.h.i.+ps needing refueling had it done as soon as they exited the Ca.n.a.l at the Gatun Locks, then formed an antisubmarine barrier outside Limn Bay. The formation's transit from Pacific to Atlantic lasted twelve hours under ruthless security. Finished, they departed north at a fleet speed of twenty-two knots. They had to go through the Windward Pa.s.sage at night.

30.

Approaches

BOSTON, Ma.s.sACHUSETTS.

They call it the smell of the sea, Morris thought, but really it's not. It's the smell of land. It came from the tidal marshes-all the things that lived and died and rotted at the water's edge, all the smells that fermented in the marginal wetlands and when released blew out to sea. Sailors considered it a friendly odor because it meant that land, port, home, family were near. Otherwise it was something to be neutralized with Lysol.

As Morris watched, the tug Papago shortened her towline for better control in the restricted waters. Three harbor tugs came alongside, their crews throwing messenger lines to the frigate's sailors. When they were secured, Papago cast off and proceeded up the river to refuel.

"Good afternoon, Captain." The harbor pilot had come out on one of the tugs. He looked to have been bringing s.h.i.+ps in and out of Boston for fifty years.

"And to you, Captain," Morris acknowledged.

"I see you killed three Russian subs?"

"Only one by ourselves. The others are a.s.sists."

"How much water are you drawing forward?"

"Just under twenty-five feet-no," Morris had to correct himself. The sonar dome was at the bottom of the Atlantic now.

"You did well to bring her back, Captain," the pilot said, looking forward. "My 'can didn't survive. Before you were born, I guess. Callaghan, seven ninety-two. a.s.sistant gunnery officer, I'd just made j.g. We got twelve j.a.p planes, but just after midnight the thirteenth kamikaze got through on us. Forty-seven men-well." The pilot took the walkie-talkie from his pocket and started giving directions to the tugs. Pharris began to move sideways toward a pier. A medium-sized drydock was straight ahead, but they were not moving that way.

"Not the drydock?" Morris asked, surprised and angry that his s.h.i.+p was being moved to an ordinary pier.

"Mechanical problems in the dock. They're not ready for you yet. Tomorrow, day after for sure. I know how you feel, Captain. Like your kid's hurt and they won't let her in the hospital. Cheer up, I watched mine sink."

It made no sense to grumble, Morris knew. The man was right. If Pharris hadn't sunk during the tow, she was safe enough alongside the pier for a day or two. The pilot was an expert. His trained eye measured the wind and the tide, and he gave the proper orders to the tug captains. Within thirty minutes the frigate was secured to the cargo pier. Three TV news crews were waiting for them behind a screen of sailors in sh.o.r.e patrol livery. As soon as the brow was rigged, an officer hurried aboard and came right to the bridge.

"Captain, I'm Lieutenant Commander Anders. I have this for you, sir." He handed over an official-looking envelope.

Morris tore it open and found a standard Navy dispatch form. The message ordered him in terse Navy prose to Norfolk by the quickest available transport.

"I have a car waiting. You can catch the shuttle to D.C., then hop a short-hauler to Norfolk."

"What about my s.h.i.+p?"

"That's my job, Captain. I'll take good care of her for you."

Just like that, Morris thought. He nodded and went below to pack his gear. Ten minutes later he walked without speaking past the TV cameras and was taken to Logan International Airport.

STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND.

Toland went over the satellite photographs of Iceland's four airfields. Strangely, the Russians were not making any use of the old Keflavik field, preferring instead to base their fighters at Reykjavik and the new NATO base. Occasionally, a Backfire or two were landing at Keflavik, bombers with mechanical problems or running short of fuel, but that was it. The northerly fighter sweeps had had their effect, too-the Russians were doing their tanking farther north and east now, which had produced a marginal but nevertheless negative effect on the Backfires' range. The experts estimated that it cut twenty minutes off the time they had to search for convoys. Despite the searching done by the Bears and satellite reconnaissance, only two-thirds of the raids actually launched attacks. Toland didn't know why. Was there a problem with Soviet communications? If so, could they find a way to exploit it?

The Backfires were still hurting the convoys, and badly. After considerable Navy prodding, the Air Force was starting to base fighters in Newfoundland, Bermuda, and the Azores. Supported by tankers borrowed from the Strategic Air Command, they were trying to maintain a combat air patrol over those convoys they could reach. There was no hope of actually breaking up a Backfire raid, but they could start thinning the Bears out. The Soviets had only about thirty of the wide-ranging Bear-D reconnaissance aircraft. Roughly ten flew every day with their powerful Big Bulge radars turned on to guide the bombers and submarines in on the convoys, which made them relatively easy to find, if a fighter could be put out there to find them. After much experimentation, the Russians had fallen into a predictable pattern of air operations. They would be made to pay for that. Tomorrow the Air Force would have a two-plane patrol over six different convoys.

The Russians would be made to pay a toll for basing aircraft on Iceland, too.

"I make it a regiment, say twenty-four to twenty-seven aircraft. All MiG-29 Fulcrums," Toland said. "We never seem to see more than twenty-one on the ground. I figure they're running a fairly steady combat air patrol, say four birds aloft almost around the clock. They also appear to have three ground-based radars, and they're moving them around a lot. That probably means that they're set up for ground-controlled intercepts. Any problem jamming the search radars?"

A fighter pilot shook his head. "With the right support, no."

"So we'll just have to flush the MiGs off the ground and kill some." The commanders of both Tomcat squadrons were with Toland, examining the maps. "Want to keep clear of those SAMs, though. From what the guys in Germany say, the SA-11 is very bad news."

The first Air Force effort to flatten Keflavik with B-52s had been a disaster. Follow-up efforts with smaller, faster FB-111s had hara.s.sed the Russians but could not put Keflavik totally out of business. SAC was unwilling to part with enough of its fastest strategic bombers to do this. There still had not been a successful mission against the main fuel-storage site. It was too close to a populated area, and satellite photos revealed that the civilians were still there. Of course.

"Let's get the Air Force to try another B-52 mission," one fighter jock suggested. "They come in like before, except . . ." He outlined some changes in the attack profile. "Now that we have our Queers with us, it might work out all right."

"If you want my help, Commander, you might at least be a little polite about it." The Prowler pilot in the room clearly didn't like to have his forty-million-dollar aircraft referred to by that nickname. "I can knock those SAM radars back some, just keep in mind that SA-11 has a backup infrared tracker system. You get within ten miles of the launchers, they have an even-money chance of smoking your Tomcat right out of the sky." The really nasty thing about the SA-11, pilots had learned, was that it left almost no exhaust trail, which made it very hard to spot, and it was even harder to evade a SAM you couldn't see.

"We'll stay clear of Mr. SAM. First time, gentlemen, we got the odds on our side." The fighter pilots started putting a plan together. They now had solid intelligence of how Russian fighters operated in combat. The Soviets had good tactics, but they were also predictable. If the American aircraft could contrive to present a situation for which the Russians were trained, they knew how Ivan would react to it.

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC.

He had never expected it to be easy, but neither had Alekseyev expected NATO air forces to have control of the night skies. Four minutes after midnight, an aircraft that had never registered on their radar had obliterated the radio transmitter station for CINC-WEST'S headquarters. They'd only had three alternate stations, each more than ten kilometers from the underground bunker complex. Now they had one, plus a mobile transmitter that had already been bombed once. The underground telephone cables were still being used, of course, but advances into enemy territory had made telephone communications unreliable. Too often, the cables strung by Signal Corps troops were being destroyed by air attack and badly driven vehicles. They needed the radio links, and NATO was systematically eliminating them. They'd even attempted an attack on the bunker complex itself-the decoy site set exactly between two transmitter stations had been hit by eight fighter-bombers and liberally sprinkled with napalm, cl.u.s.ter munitions, and delay-fused high explosives. If the attack had been on the real complex, the ordnance experts said, there might have been casualties. So much for the skill of our engineers. The bunkers were supposed to withstand a near-miss from a nuclear warhead.

He now had a full fighting division across the Leine-the remains of one, he corrected himself. The two reinforcing tank divisions were trying to cross now, but the ribbon bridges had been bombed overnight along with the advancing divisions. The NATO reinforcements were beginning to arrive-their road advances had also suffered from air attacks, though at ghastly cost to the Soviet fighter-bombers. The tactics . . . no, amateurs discuss tactics, Alekseyev thought wryly. Professional soldiers study logistics. The key to his success would pivot on his ability to maintain bridges on the river Leine and to run traffic efficiently down the roads to Alfeld. The traffic-control system had already broken down twice before Alekseyev had dispatched a team of colonels to handle things.

"We should have picked a better place," Alekseyev muttered.

"Excuse me, Comrade General?" Sergetov asked.

"There's only one good road into Alfeld." The General smiled ironically. "We should have made our breakthrough at a town with at least three."

They watched wooden counters march-creep-down the line on the map. Each counter was a battalion. Missile and antiaircraft-gun units lined the corridor north and south of this road, and the road itself constantly swept to rid it of the remotely deployed mines that NATO was using in large numbers for the first time.

"Twentieth Tanks has taken a serious mauling," the General breathed. His troops. It might have been a quick breakthrough-should have been but for NATO aircraft.

"The two reinforcing divisions will complete the maneuver," Sergetov predicted confidently.

Alekseyev thought him right. Unless something else went wrong.

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA.

Morris sat across the deck from COMNAVSURFLANT: Commander, Naval Surface Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. A three-star admiral, he'd spent his whole career in what he liked to call "the real Navy," frigates, destroyers, and cruisers. The small gray s.h.i.+ps lacked the glamour of aviation and the mystery of the submarines, but right now they were the key to getting the convoys across the Atlantic.

"Ivan's changed tactics on us-a h.e.l.l of a lot faster than we thought he was able to. They're going for the escorts. The attack on your frigate was deliberate, you didn't just stumble across him. He was probably laying for you."

"They're trying to roll back the escorts?"

"Yes, but with particular attention to the s.h.i.+ps with tails. We've hurt their submarine force-not enough, but we have hurt them. The towed-array pickets have worked out very well. Ivan picked up on that and he's trying to take them out. He's looking for the SURTa.s.s s.h.i.+ps, too, but that's a harder proposition. We've killed three submarines that tried to move in on them."

Morris nodded. The Surface Towed-Array Sonar s.h.i.+ps were modified tuna clippers that trailed enormous pa.s.sive sonar cables. There weren't enough of them to provide coverage for more than half the convoy routes, but they fed good information into ASW headquarters in Norfolk. "Why don't they send Backfires after the s.h.i.+ps?"

"We've wondered about that, too. Evidently the Russians don't think they're worth the diversion of that much effort. Besides, we've got a lot more electronic capability built into them than anyone thought. They're not easy to locate on radar." The Admiral went no further than that, but Morris wondered if stealth technology-which the Navy had been working on for years-had been applied to the SURTa.s.s force. If the Russians were limiting their effort to locate and kill the tuna boats with submarines, he thought, so much the better.

"I'm putting you in for a decoration, Ed. You did very well. I've only got three skippers who've done better, and one of them was killed yesterday. So how bad was your damage?"

"She may be a total loss, sir. It was a Victor. We took one hit in the bow. The keel let go, and-the bow tore off, sir. We lost everything forward of the ASROC launcher. Lots of shock damage, but most of it's already fixed. Before she'll sail again, we have to build her a new bow." The Admiral nodded. He'd already seen the casualty reports.

"You did well to save her, Ed. d.a.m.ned well. Pharris doesn't need you for the moment. I want you here with my operations people. We have to change tactics, too. I want you to look over what intelligence and operational information we have and feed me some ideas."

"For starters, we might stop those d.a.m.ned Backfires."

"That's being worked on." The reply held both confidence and skepticism.

THE WINDWARD Pa.s.sAGE.

To the east was Haiti on the island of Hispaniola. To the west was Cuba. Blacked out, radar systems fully energized but placed on standby, the s.h.i.+ps sailed in battle formation, escorted by destroyers and frigates. Missiles were hung on launchers and trained out to port, while the launch controllers sweated in their air-conditioned battle stations.

They didn't expect trouble. Castro had gotten word to the American government that he had had no part in this, and was angered that the Soviets had not informed him of their plans. It was diplomatically important, however, that the American fleet traverse the pa.s.sage in darkness so that the Cubans could say truthfully that they had seen nothing. As a sign of good faith, Castro had also alerted the Americans to the presence of a Soviet submarine in the Florida Straits. To be used as a va.s.sal was one thing, to have his country used as a base for a war without being informed was too much.

The sailors didn't know all of this, just that no serious opposition was expected. They took it with a grain of salt, as they did all intelligence reports. Their helicopters had laid a string of son.o.buoys, and their ESM radar receivers listened for the pulsing signal of a Soviet-made radar. Aloft, lookouts trained clumsy starlight scopes around the sky, searching for aircraft that might be hunting them visually-which would not be hard. At twenty-five knots, every s.h.i.+p left a foaming wake that seemed to fluoresce like neon in the darkness.

Maalox didn't work anymore, one frigate captain grumbled to himself. He sat in the command chair in his s.h.i.+p's Combat Information Center. To his left was the chart table, in front of him (he faced aft) the young tactical action officer stood over his plotting scope. The Cubans were known to have surface-to-surface missile batteries arrayed on their coastline like the fortresses of old. At any moment the s.h.i.+ps might detect a swarm of incoming vampires. Forward, his single-arm missile launcher was loaded and trained out, as were his three-inch gun and CIWS topside. The coffee was a mistake, but he had to stay alert. The price was a stabbing pain in his upper abdomen. Maybe I should talk to the corpsman, he thought, and shrugged it off. There wasn't time for that. He'd been working around the clock for three months to get his s.h.i.+p ready for action, racing through the acceptance trials and conducting continuous workups, working his men and s.h.i.+p hard, but working himself hardest of all. He was too proud to admit that he'd pushed too hard, even to himself.

It came just as he finished his third cup of coffee. For all the warnings, it was a pain as severe and surprising as a thrown knife. The captain doubled over and vomited on the tiled deck of CIC. A sailor mopped it up at once, and it was too dark to see that there'd been blood on the tile. He couldn't leave his post, despite the pains, despite the sudden chill from the blood loss. The captain made a mental note to keep off the coffee for a few hours. Maybe he'd see the corpsman when he got the chance. If he got the chance. There'd be a three-day layover in Norfolk. He could rest a little then. He knew he needed rest. The fatigue that had been building for days hammered at him. The captain shook his head. Throwing up was supposed to make you feel better.

VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA.

Morris found his home empty. At his suggestion, his wife had gone home to Kansas to stay with her family. No sense having you and the kids home worrying about me, he'd told her. He regretted it now. Morris needed the company, needed a hug, needed to see his kids. Within a minute of opening the door, he was on the phone. His wife already knew what had happened to his s.h.i.+p, but had withheld it from the kids. It took two minutes to a.s.sure her that he was indeed all right, at home, and uninjured. Then came the kids, and finally the knowledge that they couldn't arrange a flight home. All the airliners were either ferrying men and supplies overseas or booked solid until mid-August. Ed saw no sense in having his family drive all the way from Salinas to Kansas City to wait on standby. Good-byes were hard.

What came next was harder. Commander Edward Morris donned his whites and from his wallet took a list of family calls he had to make. They'd all been officially notified, but another of the duties that came with command was to make the trips himself. The widow of his executive officer lived only half a mile away. A good man with a barbecue, the XO, Morris remembered. How many weekends had he spent in their backyard watching steaks sizzle over charcoal? What would he tell her now? What would he tell the rest of the widows? What would he tell the kids?

Morris walked to his car and was mocked by the license plate, FF-1094. Not every man got to carry his failure around with him. Most were fortunate enough to leave it behind. As he started the engine, Morris wondered if he'd ever be able to sleep without the fear of reliving again that moment on the bridge of his s.h.i.+p.