Red Storm Rising Part 84

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC.

"It's taken too long to get them moving," Alekseyev growled to his operations officer.

"It's still three divisions, and they are moving now."

"But how many reinforcements have arrived?"

The operations man had warned Alekseyev against trying to coordinate a two-p.r.o.nged attack, but the General had stuck to the plan. Beregovoy's A tank division was now in place to strike from the west, while the three C reserve divisions. .h.i.t from the east. The regular tank force had no artillery-they'd had to move too fast to bring it-but three hundred tanks and six hundred personnel carriers were a formidable force all by themselves, the General thought... but what were they up against, and how many vehicles had been destroyed or damaged by air attack on the approach march?

Sergetov arrived. His cla.s.s-A uniform was rumpled from his traveling.

"And how was Moscow?" Alekseyev asked.

"Dark, Comrade General. The attack, how did it go?"

"Just starting now."

"Oh?" The major was surprised at the delay. He looked rather closely at the Theater Operations Officer, who hovered over the map table, frowning at the dispositions while the plotting officers prepared to mark the progress of the attack.

"I have a message from high command for you, Comrade General." Sergetov handed over an official-looking form. Alekseyev scanned it-and stopped reading. His fingers went taut on the paper briefly before he regained self-control.

"Come to my office." The General said nothing more until the door was closed. "Are you sure of this?"

"I was told by Director Kosov himself."

Alekseyev sat on the edge of his desk. He lit a match and burned the message form, watching the flame march across the paper almost to his fingertips as he twisted it in his hand.

"That f.u.c.king weasel. Stukach!" An informer on my own staff! "What else?"

Sergetov related the other information he'd learned. The General was silent for a minute, computing his fuel requirements against fuel reserves.

"If today's attack fails . . . we've-" He turned away, unwilling, unable, to make himself say it aloud. I have not trained my whole life to fail! He remembered the first notice he'd had of the campaign against NATO. I told them to attack at once. I told them that we needed strategic surprise, and that we'd have difficulty achieving it if we waited so long. I told them that we'd have to close the North Atlantic to prevent resupply of the NATO forces. So. Now that we've accomplished none of these, my friend is in a KGB prison and my own life is in jeopardy because I may fail to do what I told them we could not do-because I was right all along!

Come now, Pasha. Why should the Politburo listen to its soldiers when it can just as easily shoot them?

The Theater Operations Officer stuck his head through the door. "The troops are moving."

"Thank you, Yevgeny Ilych," Alekseyev answered amiably. He rose from the desk. "Come, Major, let's see how quickly we can smash through the NATO lines!"

ALFELD, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY.

"Bar fight," Woody said from his gunner's position.

"Looks like it," Mackall agreed.

They'd been told to expect two or three Soviet reserve divisions. Together they had perhaps the artillery strength of two regular units, and they were firing at both sides of the river. The miserable visibility hurt both sides. The Russians could not direct their artillery fire well, and the NATO troops would have minimal air support. As usual, the worst part of the preliminary bombardment was the rockets, which lasted two minutes, the unguided missiles falling like hail. Though men died and vehicles exploded, the defending force was well prepared and casualties were light.

Woody switched on his thermal-imaging sights. It allowed him to see roughly a thousand yards, double the visual range. On the left side of the turret, the loader sat nervously, his foot resting lightly on the pedal that controlled the doors to the ammo compartment. The driver in his coffin-sized box under the main gun drummed his fingers on the control bar.

"Heads up. Friendlies coming in," Mackall told his crew. "Movement reported to the east."

"I see 'em," Woody acknowledged. Just a few infantrymen were returning from their forward listening posts. Not as many as there should have been, Mackall thought. So many casualties over the past- "Target tank, twelve o'clock," Woody said. He squeezed the triggers on his yoke, and the tank seemed to leap from its first shot.

The spent round ejected from the breech. The loader stomped his foot on the pedal. The door slid clear of the ammo compartment and he pulled out another sabot round, turning it in a narrow circle to slam it in the breech.

"Ready!"

Woody already had another target. He was largely on his own while Mackall watched out for the whole platoon's front. The troop commander was calling in artillery fire. Immediately behind the first row of tanks, they saw dismounted infantrymen running to keep up with the tanks. Eight-wheeled infantry carriers were mixed in as well. The Bradleys engaged them with their 25mm guns as proximity-fused artillery rounds began to detonate twenty feet off the ground, showering the infantrymen with fragments.

They couldn't miss. The Russian tanks advanced at half the normal hundred-yard interval, concentrating on a narrow front. They were old T-55s, Woody saw, with obsolete 100mm guns. He killed three before they could even see the NATO positions. One sh.e.l.l landed in the stone pile ahead of their tank, sending a mix of steel fragments and stone chips over the vehicle. Woody dispatched that tank with a HEAT round. Smoke rounds began falling-they didn't help the Russians at all. The electronic sights on the NATO vehicles saw right through it. More artillery fire landed on the Cav now that the Russians could see well enough to direct fire in on their positions, and that began an artillery duel as NATO guns searched for the Russian batteries.

"Antenna tank! Sabot!" The gunner locked his sights on the T-55 and fired. The round missed this time and they reloaded another round. The second shot blew the turret into the sky. The thermal sight showed the bright dots of ant.i.tank missiles running downrange, and the fountaining explosions of the vehicles they hit. Suddenly the Russians stopped. Most of the vehicles died in place, but some turned and ran off.

"Cease fire, cease fire!" Mackall told his platoon. "Report in."

"Three-two has a track blown off," one replied. The others were intact, protected by their stone revetments.

"Nine rounds fired, boss," Woody said. Mackall and the loader opened their hatches to vent the acrid propellant smell out of the turret. The gunner pulled off his leather helmet and shook his head. His sandy hair was filthy. "You know, there's one thing I miss from the M-60."

"What's that, Woody?"

"We ain't got no hatch in the bottom. Nice to be able to take a p.i.s.s without climbing outside."

"Did you have to say that!" the driver moaned.

Mackall laughed. It was a moment before he realized why. For the first time they'd stopped Ivan cold, without having to pull back at all-a good thing since their current position didn't allow for that possibility! And how did the crew react? They were making jokes.

USS REUBEN JAMES.

O'Malley lifted off again. He was averaging ten flight hours per day. Three s.h.i.+ps had been torpedoed, two more hit by submarine-launched missiles in the past four days, but the Russians had paid dearly for that. They'd sent perhaps as many as twenty submarines into Icelandic waters. Eight had died trying to get through the picket line of submarines that was the fleet's outer defense. More had fallen to the line of towed-array s.h.i.+ps whose helicopters were now backed up by those of HMS Ill.u.s.trious. A bold Tango skipper had actually penetrated one of the carrier groups and put a fish into America's tough hide, only to be pounced on and sunk by the destroyer Caron. The carrier could now make only twenty-five knots, barely enough to conduct flight operations, but she was still there.

Mike Force-Reuben James, Battleaxe, and Ill.u.s.trious-was escorting a group of amphibs south for another landing. There were still bears in the woods, and Ivan would go for the amphibious-warfare s.h.i.+ps as soon as he had the chance. From a thousand feet, O'Malley could see Na.s.sau and three others to the north. Smoke rose from Keflavik. The Russian troops were getting no rest at all.

"Won't be easy for them to track in on us," Ralston thought aloud.

"You suppose those Russian troops have radios?" O'Malley asked.

"Sure."

"You suppose maybe they can see us from those hills-and maybe radio a submarine what they see?"

"I didn't think of that," the ensign admitted.

"That's all right. I'm sure Ivan did." O'Malley looked north again. There were three thousand Marines on those s.h.i.+ps. The Marines had saved his a.s.s in Vietnam more than once.

Reuben James and O'Malley had the insh.o.r.e side of the small convoy while the British s.h.i.+ps and helos guarded to seaward. It was relatively shallow water. Their towed-array sonars were reeled in.

"w.i.l.l.y, drop-now, now, now!" The first active son.o.buoy was ejected into the water. Five more were deployed in the next few minutes. The pa.s.sive buoys used for open-ocean search were the wrong choice here. Stealth was not in the cards if the Russian subs were being informed where to go. Better to scare them off than to try finesse.

Three hours, O'Malley thought.

"Hammer, this is Romeo," Morris called. "Bravo and India are working a possible contact to seaward, two-nine miles bearing two-four-seven."

"Roger that, Romeo." O'Malley acknowledged. To Ralston: "b.a.s.t.a.r.d's within missile range. That oughta make the Marines happy."

"Contact! Possible contact on buoy four," w.i.l.l.y said, watching the sonar display. "Signal is weak."

O'Malley turned his helo and moved back up the line.

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND.

"Where do you suppose they are?" Andreyev asked his naval liaison officer. The position of the formation had been plotted on the map from the reports of several mountaintop lookout stations.

The man shook his head. "Trying to get to the targets."

The General remembered his own time aboard s.h.i.+p, how vulnerable he'd felt, how dangerous it had been. A distant part of his consciousness felt sympathy for the American Marines. But gallantry was a luxury the General could not afford. His paratroopers were heavily engaged, and he didn't need more enemy troops and heavy equipment-of course!

His division was deployed to keep the Americans away from the Reykjavik-Keflavik area as long as possible. His original orders remained operative: deny the Keflavik Air Base to NATO. That he could do, though it would mean the probable annihilation of his elite troopers. His problem was that Reykjavik airport would be equally useful to the enemy, and one light division wasn't enough to cover both places.

So now the Americans trailed their coats in plain view of his observers-a full regiment of troops plus heavy weapons and helicopters that they could land anywhere they wished. If he redeployed to meet this threat, he risked disaster when he disengaged his forward units. If he moved his reserves, they would be in the open where naval guns and aircraft could ma.s.sacre them. This unit was being moved, not to join the others deployed against his airborne infantrymen, but to exploit a weakness within minutes instead of hours. Once in place, the landing s.h.i.+ps could wait for relative darkness or a storm and race unseen across the water to landbound troops. How could he deploy his own forces to deal with that? His radars were finished, he had a single remaining SAM launcher, and the battles.h.i.+ps had systematically exterminated most of his artillery.

"How many submarines out there?"

"I don't know, Comrade General."

USS REUBEN JAMES.

Morris watched the sonar plot. The son.o.buoy contact had faded off after a few minutes. A school of herring, perhaps. The ocean waters abounded with fish, and enough of them on active sonar looked like a sub. His own sonar was virtually useless as his s.h.i.+p struggled just to keep up with the 'phibs. A possible submarine to seaward-every sub contact was a possible cruise-missile sub-was all the Commodore needed to go to full speed.

O'Malley was dipping his sonar now, trying to reacquire the lost contact. He was the only one who could keep up with things.

"Romeo, this is Bravo. Be advised we are prosecuting a possible missile-carrying submarine." Doug Perrin had to a.s.sume the worst case.

"Roger that, Bravo." According to the data-link picture, three helicopters were backing Battleaxe up, and the British frigate had interposed herself on the line from the contact to the amphibious s.h.i.+ps. Be careful, Doug.

"Contact!" w.i.l.l.y said. "I have an active sonar contact bearing three-zero-three, range two three hundred."

O'Malley didn't have to look at his tactical display. The submarine was between him and the 'phibs.

"Up dome!" The pilot hovered while the sonar transducer was winched in. The contact was alerted now. That made it harder. "Romeo, Hammer, we have a possible contact here."

"Roger, understood." Morris was looking at the display. He ordered the frigate to close at flank speed. Not a smart tactic, he had no choice but to pounce on the contact before it got within range of the 'phibs. "Signal Na.s.sau we're working a possible contact."

"Down dome!" O'Malley ordered. "Drop it to four hundred and hammer!"

w.i.l.l.y activated the sonar as soon as the proper depth was reached. He got a screenful of echoes. The transducer was so close to the rocky bottom that nearly twenty rocky spires showed up. A swiftly running tide didn't help matters. Flow noise around the rocks gave numerous false readings on the pa.s.sive plot also.

"Sir, I got a whole lot of nothing here."

"I can feel him, w.i.l.l.y. The last time we pinged, I bet we had him at periscope depth and he ducked down deep while we came over."

"That fast?" Ralston asked.

"That fast."

"Skipper, one of these things might be moving a little."

O'Malley keyed his radio and got permission to launch from Morris. Ralston set the torpedo for circular search, and the pilot dropped it into the sea. The pilot keyed the sonar into his headphones. He heard the whine of the torpedo's propellers, then the high-frequency ping of its homing sonar. It continued to circle for five minutes, then switched over to continuous pinging-and exploded.