Tom Clancy
Red Storm Rising
10/29/2000

Table Of Contents

Red Storm Rising

by Tom Clancy

1 - The Slow Fuse

NIZHNEVARTOVSK, R.S.F.S.R.

They moved swiftly, silently, with purpose, under a
crystalline, star-filled night in western Siberia. They were Muslims, though
one could scarcely have known it from their speech, which was Russian, though
inflected with the singsong Azerbaijani accent that wrongly struck the senior
members of the engineering staff as entertaining. The three of them had just
completed a complex task in the truck and train yards, the opening of hundreds
of loading valves. Ibrahim Tolkaze was their leader, though he was not in
front. Rasul was in front, the massive former sergeant in the MVD who had
already killed six men this cold night-three with a pistol hidden under his
coat and three with his hands alone. No one had heard them. An oil refinery is
a noisy place. The bodies were left in shadows, and the three men entered
Tolkaze's car for the next part of their task.

Central Control was a modern three-story building fittingly
in the center of the complex. For at least five kilometers in all directions
stretched the cracking towers, storage tanks, catalytic chambers, and above all
the thousands of kilometers of large-diameter pipe which made Nizhnevartovsk
one of the world's largest refining complexes. The sky was lit at uneven
intervals by waste-gas fires, and the air was foul with the stink of petroleum
distillates: aviation kerosene, gasoline, diesel fuel, benzine, nitrogen
tetroxide for intercontinental missiles, lubricating oils of various grades,
and complex petrochemicals identified only by their alphanumeric prefixes.

They approached the brick-walled, windowless building in
Tolkaze's personal Zhiguli, and the engineer pulled into his reserved parking
place, then walked alone to the door as his comrades crouched in the back seat.

Inside the glass door, Ibrahim greeted the security guard,
who smiled back, his hand outstretched for Tolkaze's security pass. The need
for security here was quite real, but since it dated back over forty years, no
one took it more seriously than any of the pro forma bureaucratic complexities
in the Soviet Union. The guard had been drinking, the only form of solace in
this harsh, cold land. His eyes were not focusing and his smile was too fixed.
Tolkaze fumbled handing over his pass, and the guard lurched down to retrieve
it. He never came back up. Tolkaze's pistol was the last thing the man felt, a
cold circle at the base of his skull, and he died without knowing why-or even
how. Ibrahim went behind the guard's desk to get the weapon the man had been
only too happy to display for the engineers he'd protected. He lifted the body
and moved it awkwardly to leave it slumped at the desk-just another swing shift
worker asleep at his post-then waved his comrades into the building. Rasul and
Mohammet raced to the door.

"It is time, my brothers." Tolkaze handed the
AK-47 rifle and ammo belt to his taller friend.

Rasul hefted the weapon briefly, checking to see that a
round was chambered and the safety off. Then he slung the ammunition belt over
his shoulder and snapped the bayonet in place before speaking for the first
time that night: "Paradise awaits."

Tolkaze composed himself, smoothed his hair, straightened
his tie, and clipped the security pass to his white laboratory coat before
leading his comrades up the six flights of stairs.

Ordinary procedure dictated that to enter the master control
room, one first had to be recognized by one of the operations staffers. And so
it happened. Nikolay Barsov seemed surprised when he saw Tolkaze through the
door's tiny window.

"You're not on duty tonight, Isha."

"One of my valves went bad this afternoon and I forgot
to check the repair status before I went off duty. You know the one-the
auxiliary feed valve on kerosene number eight. If it's still down tomorrow
we'll have to reroute, and you know what that means."

Barsov grunted agreement. "True enough, Isha." The
middle-aged engineer thought Tolkaze liked the semi-Russian diminutive. He was
badly mistaken. "Stand back while I open this damned hatch."

The heavy steel door swung outward. Barsov hadn't been able
to see Rasul and Mohammet before, and scarcely had time now. Three 7.62mm
rounds from the Kalashnikov exploded into his chest.

The master control room contained a duty watch crew of
twenty, and looked much like the control center for a railroad or power plant.
The high walls were crosshatched with pipeline schematics dotted with hundreds
of lights to indicate which control valve was doing what. That was only the
main display. Individual segments of the system were broken off onto separate
status boards, mainly controlled by computer but constantly monitored by half
the duty engineers. The staff could not fail to note the sound of the three
shots.

But none of them were armed.

With elegant patience, Rasul began to work his way across
the room, using his Kalashnikov expertly and firing one round into each watch
engineer. At first they tried to run away-until they realized that Rasul was
herding them into a corner like cattle, killing as he moved. Two men bravely
got on their command phones to summon a fast-response team of KGB security
troops. Rasul shot one of them at his post, but the other ducked around the
line of command consoles to evade the gunfire and bolted for the door, where
Tolkaze stood. It was Boris, Tolkaze saw, the Party favorite, head of the local
kollektiv, the man who had "befriended" him, making him the special
pet native of the Russian engineers. Ibrahim could remember every time this
godless pig had patronized him, the savage foreigner imported to amuse his
Russian masters. Tolkaze raised his pistol.

"Ishaaa!" the man screamed in terror and shock.
Tolkaze shot him in the mouth, and hoped Boris didn't die too quickly to hear
the contempt in his voice: "Infidel." He was pleased that Rasul had
not killed this one. His quiet friend could have all the rest.

The other engineers screamed, threw cups, chairs, manuals.
There was nowhere left to run, no way around the swarthy, towering killer. Some
held up their hands in useless supplication. Some even prayed aloud-but not to
Allah, which might have saved them. The noise diminished as Rasul strode up to
the bloody corner. He smiled as he shot the very last, knowing that this
sweating infidel pig would serve him in paradise. He reloaded his rifle, then
went back through the control room. He prodded each body with a bayonet, and
again shot the four that showed some small sign of life. His face bore a grim,
content expression. At least twenty-five atheist pigs dead. Twenty-five foreign
invaders who would no longer stand between his people and their God. Truly he
had done Allah's work!

The third man, Mohammet, was already at his own work as
Rasul took his station at the top of the staircase. Working in the back of the
room, he switched the room systems-control mode from computer-automatic to
emergency-manual, bypassing all of the automated safety systems.

A methodical man, Ibrahim had planned and memorized every
detail of his task over a period of months, but still he had a checklist in his
pocket. He unfolded it now and set it next to his hand on the master
supervisory control board. Tolkaze looked around at the status displays to
orient himself, then paused.

From his back pocket he took his most treasured personal
possession, half of his grandfather's Koran, and opened it to a random page. It
was a passage in The Chapter of the Spoils. His grandfather having been killed
during the futile rebellions against Moscow, his father shamed by helpless
subservience to the infidel state, Tolkaze had been seduced by Russian
schoolteachers into joining their godless system. Others had trained him as an
oil-field engineer to work at the State's most valuable facility in Azerbaijan.
Only then had the God of his fathers saved him, through the words of an uncle,
an "unregistered" imam who had remained faithful to Allah and
safeguarded this tattered fragment of the Koran that had accompanied one of
Allah's own warriors. Tolkaze read the passage under his hand:

And when the misbelievers plotted to keep thee prisoner, or
kill thee, or drive thee forth, they plotted well; but God plotted, too. And
God is the best of plotters.

Tolkaze smiled, certain that it was the final Sign in a plan
being executed by hands greater than his own. Serene and confident, he began to
fulfill his destiny.

First the gasoline. He closed sixteen control valves-the
nearest of them three kilometers away-and opened ten, which rerouted eighty
million liters of gasoline to gush out from a bank of truck-loading valves. The
gasoline did not ignite at once. The three had left no pyrotechnic devices to
explode this first of many disasters. Tolkaze reasoned that if he were truly
doing the work of Allah, then his God would surely provide.

And so He did. A small truck driving  through the loading yard  took a turn too fast, skidded on the
splashing fuel, and slid broadside into a utility pole. It only took one spark
. . . and already more fuel was spilling out into the train yards.

With the master pipeline switches, Tolkaze had a special plan.
He rapidly typed in a computer command, thanking Allah that Rasul was so
skillful and had not damaged anything important with his rifle The main
pipeline from the nearby production field was two meters across, with many
branch lines running to all of the production wells. The oil traveling in those
pipes had its own mass and its own momentum supplied by pumping stations in the
fields. Ibrahim's commands rapidly opened and closed valves. The pipeline
ruptured in a dozen places, and the computer commands left the pumps on. The
escaping light crude flowed across the production field, where only one more
spark was needed to spread a holocaust before the winter wind, and another
break occurred where the oil and gas pipelines crossed together over the river Ob'.

"The greenskins are here!" Rasul shouted a moment
before the quick response team of KGB border guards stormed up the staircase. A
short burst from the Kalashnikov killed the first two, and the rest of the
squad stopped cold behind a turn in the staircase as their young sergeant
wondered what the hell they had walked into.

Already, automatic alarms were erupting around him in the
control room. The master status board showed four growing fires whose borders
were defined by blinking red lights. Tolkaze walked to the master computer and
ripped out the tape spool that contained the digital control codes. The spares
were in the vault downstairs. and the only men within ten kilometers who knew
its combination were in this room-dead. Mohammet was busily ripping out every
telephone in the room. The whole building shook with the explosion of a
gasoline storage tank two kilometers away.

The crashing sound of a hand grenade announced another move
by the KGB troops. Rasul returned fire, and the screams of dying men nearly
equaled the earsplitting fire-alarm klaxons. Tolkaze hurried over to the
corner. The floor there was slick with blood. He opened the door to the
electrical fuse box, flipped the main circuit breaker, then fired his pistol
into the box. Whoever tried to set things aright would also have to work in the
dark.

He was done. Ibrahim saw that his massive friend had been
mortally hit in the chest by grenade fragments. He was wobbling, struggling to
stay erect at the door, guarding his Comrades to the last.

" 'I take refuge in the Lord of the worlds,' "
Tolkaze called out defiantly to the security troops, who spoke not a word of
Arabic. " 'The King of men, the God of men, from the evil of the
whispering devil-' "

The KGB sergeant leaped around the lower landing and his
first burst tore the rifle from Rasul's bloodless hands. Two hand grenades
arched through the air as the sergeant disappeared back around the comer.

There was no place-and no reason-to run. Mohammet and
Ibrahim stood immobile in the doorway as the grenades bounced and skittered
across the tiled floor. Around them the whole world seemed to be catching fire,
and because of them, the whole world really would.

"Allahu akhbar!"

SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA

"God almighty!" the chief master sergeant
breathed. The fire which had begun in the gasoline/diesel section of the
refinery had been sufficient to alert a strategic early-warning satellite in
geosynchronous orbit twenty-four thousand miles above the Indian Ocean. The
signal was down linked to a top-security U.S. Air Force post.

The senior watch officer in the Satellite Control Facility
was an Air Force colonel. He turned to his senior technician: "Map
it."

"Yes, sir." The sergeant typed a command into his
console, which told the satellite cameras to alter their sensitivity. With the
flaring on the screen reduced, the satellite rapidly pinpointed the source of
the thermal energy. A computer-controlled map on the screen adjacent to the
visual display gave them an exact location reference. "Sir, that's an oil
refinery fire. Jeez, and it looks like a real pisser! Colonel, we got a Big
Bird pass in twenty minutes and the course track is within a hundred twenty
kilometers."

"Uh-huh," the colonel nodded. He watched the
screen closely to make sure that the heat source was not moving, his right hand
lifting the Gold Phone to NORAD headquarters, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.

"This is Argus Control. I have Flash Traffic for
CINC-NORAD.

"Wait one," said the first voice.

"This is CINC-NORAD," said the second,
Commander-in-Chief of the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

"Sir, this is Colonel Burnette at Argus Control. We
show a massive thermal energy reading at coordinates sixty degrees fifty
minutes north, seventy-six degrees forty minutes east. The site is listed as a
POL refinery. The thermal source is not, repeat not moving. We have a KH-11
pass close to the source in two-zero minutes. My preliminary evaluation,
General, is that we have a major oil-field fire here."

"They're not doing a laser-flash on your bird?"
CINC-NORAD asked. There was always a possibility the Soviets were trying to
play games with their satellite.

"Negative. The light source covers infrared and all of
the visible spectrum, not, repeat not, monochromatic. We'll know more in a few
minutes, sir. So far everything is consistent with a massive ground fire."

Thirty minutes later they were sure. The KH-11
reconnaissance satellite came over the horizon close enough for all of its
eight television cameras to catalog the chaos. A side-link transmitted the
signal to a geosynchronous communications satellite, and Burnette was able to
watch it all "in real time." Live and in color. The fire had already
engulfed half of the refinery complex and more than half of the nearby
production field, with more burning crude oil spreading from the ruptured pipeline
onto the river Ob'. They were able to watch the fire spread, the flames carried
rapidly before a forty-knot surface wind. Smoke obscured much of the area on
visible light, but infrared sensors penetrated it to show many heat sources
that could only be vast pools of oil products burning intensely on the ground.
Burnette's sergeant was from east Texas, and had worked as a boy in the oil
fields. He keyed up daylight photographs of the site and compared them with the
adjacent visual display to determine what parts of the refinery had already
ignited.

"Goddamn, Colonel." The sergeant shook his head
reverently. He spoke with quiet expertise. "The refinery-well, it's gone,
sir. That fire'll spread in front of that wind, and ain't no way in hell
they'll stop it. The refinery's gone, total loss, burn maybe three, four
days-maybe a week, parts of it. And unless they find a way to stop it, looks
like the production field is going to go, too, sir. By next pass, sir, it'll
all be burnin', all those wellheads spillin' burnin' o'l . . . Lordy. I don't
even think Red Adair would want any part of this job!"

"Nothing left of the refinery? Hmph." Burnette
watched a tape rerun of the Big Bird pass. "It's their newest and biggest,
ought to put a dent in their POL production while they rebuild that from
scratch. And once they get those field fires put out, they'll have to rearrange
their gas and diesel production quite a bit. I'll say one thing for Ivan.  When he has an industrial accident, he
doesn't screw around. A major inconvenience for our Russian friends,
Sergeant."

The analysis was confirmed the next day by the CIA, and the
day after that by the British and French security services.

They were all wrong.

2 - Odd Man In

DATE-TIME 01/31-06: 15 COPY 01 of 01 SOVIET FIRE

BC-Soviet Fire, Bjt, 1809-FL-

Disastrous Fire Reported in Soviet Nizhnevartovsk Oil
Field-FL-

EDS: Moved in advance for WEDNESDAY PMs-FL-

By William Blake -FC-

AP Military/Intelligence Writer

WASHINGTON (AP)
"The most serious oil field fire since the Mexico City disaster of
1984, or even the Texas City fire of 1947," sundered the darkness in the
central region of the Soviet Union today, according to military and
intelligence sources in Washington.

The fire was detected by American "National Technical
Means," a term that generally denotes reconnaissance satellites operated
by the Central Intelligence Agency. CIA sources declined comment on the
incident.

Sources in the Pentagon confirmed this report, noting that
the energy given off by the fire was sufficient to cause a brief stir in the
North American Aerospace Defense Command, which was concerned that the fire was
a possible missile launch directed at the United States, or an attempt to blind
American Early-Warning satellites with a laser or other ground-based device.

At no time, the source pointed out, was there any thought of
increasing American alert levels, or of bringing American nuclear forces to
higher states of readiness. "It was all over in less than thirty
minutes," the source said.

No confirmation was received from the Russian news agency,
TASS, but the Soviets rarely publish reports of such incidents.

The fact that American officials referred to two epic
industrial accidents is an indication that many fatalities might result from
this major fire. Defense sources were unwilling to speculate on the possibility
of civilian casualties. The city of Nizhnevartovsk is bordered by the petroleum
complex.

The Nizhnevartovsk oil production field accounts for roughly
31.3 percent of total Soviet crude oil, according to the American Petroleum
Institute, and the adjacent, newly built Nizhnevartovsk refinery for
approximately 17.3 percent of petroleum distillate production.

"Fortunately for them," Donald Evans, a spokesman
for the Institute explained, "oil underground is pretty hard to burn, and
you can expect the fire to burn itself out in a few days." The refinery,
however, depending on how much of it was involved, could be a major expense.
"When they go, they usually go pretty big," Evans said. "But the
Russians have sufficient excess refining capacity to take up the slack,
especially with all the work they've been doing at their Moscow complex."

Evans was unable to speculate on the cause of the fire,
saying, "The climate could have something to do with it. We had a few
problems in the Alaskan fields that took some careful work to solve. Beyond
that, any refinery is a potential Disneyland for fire, and there simply is no
substitute for intelligent, careful, well-trained crews to run them."

This is the latest in a series of setbacks to the Soviet oil
industry. It was admitted only last fall at the plenum of the Communist Party
Central Committee that production goals in both the Eastern Siberian fields
"had not entirely fulfilled earlier hopes."

This seemingly mild statement is being seen in Western
circles as a stinging indictment of the policies of now-departed Petroleum
Industry minister Zatyzhin, since replaced by Mikhail Sergetov, former chief of
the Leningrad Party apparatus, regarded as a rising star in the Soviet Party. A
technocrat with a background of engineering and Party work, Sergetov's task of
reorganizing the Soviet oil industry is seen as a task that could last years.

AP-BA-01-31 0501EST-FL

**END OF STORY**

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

Mikhail Eduardovich Sergetov never had a chance to read the
wire service report. Summoned from his official dacha in the birch forests
surrounding Moscow, he'd flown at once to Nizhnevartovsk and stayed for only
ten hours before being recalled to make his report in Moscow. Three months on
the job, he thought, sitting in the empty forward cabin of the IL-86 airliner,
and this has to happen!

His two principal deputies, a pair of skilled young
engineers, had been left behind and were trying even now to make sense of the
chaos, to save what could be saved, as he reviewed his notes for the Politburo
meeting later in the day. Three hundred men were known to have died fighting
the fire, and, miraculously, fewer than two hundred citizens in the city of
Nizhnevartovsk. That was unfortunate, but not a matter of great significance
except insofar as those trained men killed would eventually have to be replaced
by other trained men drawn from the staffs of other large refineries.

The refinery was almost totally destroyed. Reconstruction
would take a minimum of two to three years, and would account for a sizable
percentage of national steel pipe production, plus all the other specialty
items unique to a facility of this type: Fifteen thousand million rubles. And
how much of the special equipment would have to be purchased from foreign
sources-how much precious hard currency and gold would be wasted?

And that was the good news.

The bad news: the fire that had engulfed the production
field had totally destroyed the welltops. Time to replace: at least thirty-six
months!

Thirty-six months, Sergetov reflected bleakly, if we can
divert the drill rigs and crews to redrill every damned well and at the same
time rebuild the EOR systems. For a minimum of eighteen months the Soviet Union
will have an enormous shortfall in oil production. Probably more like thirty
months. What will happen to our economy?

He pulled a pad of lined paper from his briefcase and began
to make some calculations. It was a three-hour flight, and Sergetov did not notice
it was over until the pilot came back to announce they had landed.

He looked with squinted eyes at the snow-covered landscape
of Vnukovo-2, the VIP-only airport outside of Moscow, and walked alone down the
boarding stairs to a waiting ZIL limousine. The car sped off at once, without
stopping at any of the security checkpoints. The shivering militia officers
snapped to attention as the ZIL passed, then returned to the business of
keeping warm in the subzero temperatures. The sun was bright, the sky clear but
for some thin, high clouds. Sergetov looked vacantly out the windows, his mind
mulling over figures he had already rechecked a half-dozen times. The Politburo
was waiting for him, his KGB driver told him.

Sergetov had been a "candidate," or nonvoting
member, of the Politburo for just six months, which meant that, along with his
eight other junior colleagues, he advised the thirteen men who alone made the
decisions that mattered in the Soviet Union. His portfolio was energy
production and distribution. He had held that post since September, and was
only beginning to establish his plan for a total reorganization of the seven
regional and all-union ministries that handled energy functions-and predictably
spent most of their time battling one another-into a full department that
reported directly to the Politburo and Party Secretariat, instead of having to
work through the Council of Ministers bureaucracy. He briefly closed his eyes
to thank God-there might be one, he reasoned-that his first recommendation,
delivered only a month earlier, had concerned security and political
reliability in many of the fields. He had specifically recommended further
Russification of the largely "foreign" workforce. For this reason, he
did not fear for his own career, which up to now had been an uninterrupted
success story. He shrugged. The task he was about to face would decide his
future in any case. And perhaps his country's.

The ZIL proceeded down Leningradskiy Prospekt, which turned
into Gor'kogo, the limousine speeding through the center lane that policemen
kept clear of traffic for the exclusive use of the vlasti. They motored past
the Intourist Hotel into Red Square, and finally approached the Kremlin gate.
Here the driver did stop for the security checks, three of them, conducted by
KGB troops and soldiers of the Taman Guards. Five minutes later the limousine
pulled to the door of the Council of Ministers building, the sole modern
structure in the fortress. The guards here knew Sergetov by sight, and saluted
crisply as they held open the door so that his exposure to the freezing
temperatures would last but a brief span of seconds.

The Politburo had been holding it's meetings in this
fourth-floor room for only a month while their usual quarters, in the old
Arsenal building were undergoing a belated renovation. The older men grumbled
at the loss of the old Czarist comforts, but Sergetov preferred the modernity.
About time, he thought, that the men of the Party surrounded themselves, with
the works of socialism instead of the moldy trappings of the Romanovs.

The room was deathly quiet as he entered. Had this been in
the Arsenal, the fifty-four year old technocrat reflected, the atmosphere would
have been altogether like a funeral-and there had been all too many of those.
Slowly, the Party was running out of the old men who had survived Stalin's
terror, and the current crop of members, all "young" men in their
fifties or early sixties, was finally being heard. The guard was being changed.
Too slowly-too damned slowly-for Sergetov and his generation of Party leaders,
despite the new General Secretary. The man was already a grandfather. It
sometimes seemed to Sergetov that by the time these old men were gone, he'd be
one himself. But looking around this room now, he felt young enough.

"Good day, Comrades," Sergetov said, handing his
coat to an aide, who withdrew at once, closing the doors behind him. The other
men moved at once to their seats. Sergetov took his, halfway down the right
side.

The Party General Secretary brought the meeting to order.
His voice was controlled and businesslike. "Comrade Sergetov, you may
begin your report. First, we wish to hear your explanation of exactly what
happened."

"Comrades, at approximately twenty-three hundred hours
yesterday, Moscow Time, three armed men entered the central control complex of
the Nizhnevartovsk oil complex and committed a highly sophisticated act of
sabotage."

"Who were they?" the Defense Minister asked
sharply.

"We only have identification for two of them. One of
the bandits was a staff electrician. The third"-Sergetov pulled the ID
card from his pocket and tossed it on the table--was Senior Engineer I.M.
Tolkaze. He evidently used his expert knowledge of the control systems to
initiate a massive fire which spread rapidly before high winds. A security team
of ten KGB border guards responded at once to the alarm. The one traitor still
unidentified killed or wounded five of these with a rifle taken from the
building guard, who was also shot. I must say, having interviewed the KGB sergeant-the
lieutenant was killed leading his men-that the border guards responded quickly
and well. They killed the traitors within minutes, but were unable to prevent
the complete destruction of the facility, both the refinery and production
fields."

"And if the guards responded so fast, how then did they
fail to prevent this act?" the Defense Minister demanded angrily, He
examined the photographic, pass with palpable hatred in his eyes "What was
this black-ass Muslim doing there in the first place?"

"Comrade, work in the Siberian fields is arduous, and
we have had serious difficulties in filling the posts we have there. My
predecessor decided to conscnpt experienced oil-field workers from the Baku
region to Siberia. This was madness. You will recall that my first recommend
last year was to change this policy."

"We have noted it, Mikhail Eduardovich," the
Chairman said. "Go on."

"The guard post records all telephone and radio
traffic. The response team was moving in under two minutes. Unfortunately, the
guard post is located adjacent to the original control building. The current
building was constructed three kilometers away when new computerized control
equipment was obtained from the West two years ago. A new guard post was also
supposed to have been built, and the proper materials were allocated for this
purpose. It would appear that these building materials were misappropriated by
the complex director and local Party secretary, for the purpose of building
dachas on the river a few kilometers away. Both of these men have been arrested
by my order, for crimes against the State," Sergetov reported
matter-of-factly. There was no reaction around the table. By unspoken
consensus, those two men were sentenced to death; the formalities would be
worked out by the proper ministries. Sergetov continued: "I have already
ordered greatly increased security at all petroleum sites. Also on my orders,
the families of the two known traitors have been arrested at their homes
outside Baku and are being rigorously interrogated by State Security, along
with all who knew and worked with them.

"Before the border guards were able to kill the
traitors, they were able to sabotage the oil-field control systems in such a
way as to create a massive conflagration. They were also able to wreck the
control equipment so that even if the guard troops had been able to get a crew
of engineers in to restore control, it is unlikely that anything would have
been saved. The KGB troops were forced to evacuate the building, which was
later consumed by the fire. There was nothing more they could have done."
Sergetov remembered the sergeant's badly burned face. the tears flowing down
over the blisters as he told his story.

"The fire brigade?" the General Secretary asked.

"More than half of them died fighting the fire,"
Sergetov replied. "Along with over a hundred citizens who joined the
battle to save the complex. Truly there is no blame to be assessed here,
Comrade. Once this bastard. Tolkaze began his devil's work, it would have been
as easy to control an earthquake. For the most part, the fire has been put out
by now, due to the fact that most of the fuels stored in the refinery were
consumed in about five hours; also because of the destruction of the wellheads
in the oil field."

"But how was this catastrophe possible?" a senior
member asked. Sergetov was surprised by the quiet mood in the room. Had they
met and discussed this affair already?

"My report of December 20 described the dangers here.
This room quite literally controlled the pumps and valves for over a hundred
square kilometers. The same is true of all of our large oil complexes. From the
nerve center, a man familiar with control procedures could manipulate the
various systems throughout the field at will, causing the entire complex quite
simply to self-destruct. Tolkaze had such skill. He was an Azerbaijani chosen
for special treatment for his intelligence and supposed loyalty, an honor
student educated at Moscow State University and a member in good standing of
the local Party. It would also seem that he was a religious fanatic capable of
astounding treachery. All the people killed in the control room were friends of
his-or so they thought. After fifteen years in the Party, a good salary, the
professional respect of his comrades, even his own automobile, his last words
were a shrill cry to Allah," Sergetov said dryly. "The reliability of
people from that region cannot be accurately predicted, Comrades."

The Defense Minister nodded again. "So, what effect
will this have on oil production?" Half the men at the table leaned
forward to hear Sergetov's answer:

"Comrades, we have lost thirty-four percent of our
total crude oil production for a period of at least one year, possibly as many
as three." Sergetov looked up from his notes to see the impassive faces
cringe as though from a slap. "It will be necessary to redrill every
production well and finally reconstruct the pipelines from the fields to the
refinery and elsewhere. The concurrent loss of the refinery is serious, but not
an immediate concern since the refinery can be rebuilt, and in any case
represents less than a seventh of our total refining capacity. The major injury
to our economy will come from the loss of our crude oil production.

"In real terms, due to the chemical makeup of the
Nizhnevartovsk oil, the net total production loss understates the actual impact
on our economy. Siberian oil is 'light, sweet' crude, which means that it
contains a disproportionately large amount of the most valuable fractions-those
which we use to make gasoline, kerosene, and diesel fuel, for example. The net
loss in these particular areas is forty-four percent of our gasoline
production, forty-eight percent of kerosene, and fifty percent of diesel. These
figures are rough calculations I made on the flight back, but they should be
accurate to within two percent. My staff will have more precise figures ready
in a day or so."

"Half?" the General Secretary asked quietly.

"Correct, Comrade," Sergetov responded.

"And how long to restore production?"

"Comrade General Secretary, if we bring in every
drilling rig and operate them around the clock, my rough estimate is that we
can begin to restore production in twelve months. Clearing the site of wreckage
will take at least three months, and another three will be needed to relocate
our equipment and commence drilling operations. Since we have exact information
for well locations and depths, the usual element of uncertainty is not part of
the equation. Within a year-that is, six months after we commence the
redrilling-we will begin to bring the production wells back on stream, and full
restoration of the wells will be achieved within two more years. While all this
is going on, we will need to replace the EOR equipment also-"

"And what might that be?" Defense asked.

"Enhanced Oil Recovery systems, Comrade Minister. Had
these been relatively new wells, pressurized from underground gas, the fires
might have lasted for weeks. As you know, Comrades, these are wells from which
a good deal of oil has already been extracted. To enhance production we have
been pumping water into the wells, which has the effect of forcing more oil
out. It may also have had the effect of damaging the oil bearing strata. This
is something our geologists are even now attempting to evaluate. As it was,
when power was lost, the force driving the oil from the ground was removed, and
the fires in the production fields rapidly began to run out of fuel. They were
for the most part dying out when my flight left for Moscow."

"So even three years from now production may not be
completely restored?" the Minister of the Interior asked.

"Correct, Comrade Minister. There is simply no
scientific basis for making an estimate of total production. The situation we
have here has never happened before, either in the West or the East. We can
drill some test wells in the next two or three months that will give us some
indications. The staff engineers I left behind are making arrangements to begin
the process as quickly as possible with equipment already at the site."

"Very well," the General Secretary nodded.
"The next question is how long the country can operate on this
basis."

Sergetov went back to his notes. "Comrades, there is no
denying that this is a disaster of unprecedented scale for our economy. The
winter has drawn down our heavy oil inventories more than usual. Certain energy
expenditures must remain relatively intact. Electrical power generation last
year, for example, accounted for thirty-eight percent of our oil products, far
more than planned, due to past disappointments in coal and gas production,
which we had expected to reduce oil demand. The coal industry will require at
least five years to restore due to failures in modernization. And gas drilling
operations are currently slowed by environmental conditions. For technical
reasons it is extremely hard to operate such equipment in extreme cold
weather-"

"So make those lazy bastards on the drilling crews work
harder!" suggested the chief of the Moscow Party.

"It is not the workers, Comrade." Sergetov sighed.
"It is the machines. Cold temperature affects metal more than men. Tools
and equipment break simply because they are brittle with cold. Weather
conditions make resupply of spare parts to the camps more difficult.
Marxism-Leninism cannot dictate the weather."

"How difficult would it be to conceal the drilling
operations?" Defense asked.

Sergetov was surprised. "Difficult? No, Comrade
Minister, impossible. How can one conceal several hundred drilling rigs, each
twenty to forty meters high? One might as easily attempt to conceal Plesetsk's
missile launch complexes." Sergetov noticed for the first time the glances
being exchanged by Defense and the General Secretary.

"Then we must reduce the consumption of oil by the
electrical industry," the General Secretary pronounced.

"Comrades, allow me to give you some rough figures on
the way in which we consume our oil products. Please understand that I am going
from memory, since the annual departmental report is in the process of
formulation at this time.

"Last year we produced 589 million tons of crude oil.
This fell short of planned production by thirty-two million tons, and the
amount actually produced was only possible due to the artificial measures that
I have already discussed. Roughly half of that production was semirefined into
mazut, or heavy fuel oil, for use in electrical power plants, factory boilers,
and the like. Most of this oil simply cannot be used otherwise, since we have only
three-excuse me, now only two-refineries with the sophisticated catalytic
cracking chambers needed to refine heavy oil into light distillate products.

"The fuels we produce serve our economy in many ways.
As we have already seen, thirty-eight percent goes for electrical and other
forms of power generation, and fortunately much of this is mazut. Of the
lighter fuels - diesel, gasoline, and kerosene- agricultural production and the
food industries, transportation of goods and commodities, public consumption
and passenger transportation, and finally military uses, these alone absorbed
more than half of last year's production. In other words, Comrades, with the
loss of the Nizhnevartovsk field the end users I just mentioned account for
more than we are able to produce, leaving nothing at all for metallurgy, heavy
machinery, chemical, and construction uses, not to mention what we customarily
export to our fraternal socialist allies in Eastern Europe and throughout the
world.

"To answer your specific question, Comrade General
Secretary, we can make perhaps a modest reduction in the use of light oils in
electrical power usage, but even now we have a serious shortfall in electric
power production, resulting in occasional brownouts and complete power outages.
Further cuts in power generation will adversely affect such crucial State
activities as factory production and rail transport. You will recall that three
years ago we experimented with altering the voltage of generated power to
conserve fuels, and this resulted in damage to electric motors throughout the
Donets industrial basin."

"What about coal and gas?"

"Comrade General Secretary, coal production is already
sixteen percent below planned output, and getting worse, which has caused
conversion of many coal-fired boilers and power plants to oil. Moreover, the
conversion of such facilities from oil back to coal is costly and time
consuming. Conversion to gas is a much more attractive and cheaper alternative
that we have been vigorously pursuing. Gas production is also under-plan, but
it is improving. We had expected to exceed planned targets later this year.
Here we must also account for the fact that much of our gas goes to Western
Europe. It is from this that we gain Western currency with which to purchase
foreign oil, and, of course, foreign grain."

The Politburo member in charge of agriculture winced at this
reference. How many men, Sergetov wondered, had been done in by their inability
to make the Soviet agricultural industry perform? Not the current General Secretary,
of course, who had somehow managed to advance despite his failures there. But
good Marxists weren't supposed to believe in miracles. His elevation to the
titular chairmanship had had its own price, one which Sergetov was only
beginning to understand.

"So, what is your solution, Mikhail Eduardovich?"
the Defense Minister inquired with unsettling solicitude.

"Comrades, we must bear this burden as best we can,
improving efficiency at every level of our economy." Sergetov didn't
bother talking about increasing imports of oil. The shortfall he had explained
would result in more than a thirtyfold increase in imports, and hard currency
reserves would scarcely allow a doubling of foreign oil purchases. "We
will need to increase production and quality control at the Barricade drilling
rig factory in Volgograd, and to purchase more drilling equipment from the West
so that we can expand exploration and exploitation of known fields. And we need
to expand our construction of nuclear reactor plants. To conserve what
production we do have, we can restrict supplies available to trucks and
personal automobiles--there is much waste in this sector, as we all know,
perhaps as much as a third of total usage. We can temporarily reduce the amount
of fuel consumed by the military, and perhaps also divert some heavy machine
production from military hardware to necessary industrial areas. We face three
very hard years-but only three," Sergetov summarized on an upbeat note.

"Comrade, your experience in foreign and defense areas
is slim, no?" the Defense Minister asked.

"I have never pretended otherwise, Comrade
Minister," Sergetov answered warily.

"Then I will tell you why this situation is
unacceptable. If we do what you suggest, the West will learn of our crisis.
Increased purchases of oil production equipment and unconcealable signs of
activity at Nizhnevartovsk will demonstrate to them all too clearly what is
happening here. That will make us vulnerable in their eyes. Such vulnerability
will be exploited. And, at the same time"-he pounded his fist on the heavy
oak table- "you propose reducing the fuel available to the forces who
defend us against the West!"

"Comrade Defense Minister, I am an engineer, not a
soldier. You asked me for a technical evaluation, and I gave it." Sergetov
kept his voice reasonable. "This situation is very serious, but it does
not, for example, affect our Strategic Rocket Forces. Cannot they alone shield
us against the Imperialists during our recovery period?" Why else had they
been built? Sergetov asked himself All that money sunk into unproductive holes.
Wasn't it enough to be able to kill the West ten times over? Why twenty times?
And now this wasn't enough?

"And it has not occurred to you that the West will not
allow us to purchase what we need?" the Party theoretician asked.

"When have the capitalists refused to sell us-"

"When have the capitalists had such a weapon to use
against us?" the General Secretary observed. "For the first time, the
West has the ability to strangle us in a single year. What if now they also
prevent our purchase of grain?"

Sergetov hadn't considered that. With yet another
disappointing grain harvest, the seventh out of the last eleven years, the
Soviet Union needed to make massive purchases of wheat. And this year America
and Canada were the only reliable sources. Bad weather in the Southern
Hemisphere had damaged Argentina's harvest, and to a lesser extent Australia's,
while the U.S. and Canada had enjoyed their customary record crops.
Negotiations were even now under way in Washington and Ottawa to secure such a
purchase, and the Americans were making no trouble at all, except that the high
value of the dollar made their grain disproportionately expensive. But that
grain would take months to ship. How easy would it be, Sergetov wondered, for
"technical difficulties" in the grain ports of New Orleans and
Baltimore to slow or even stop shipments entirely at a crucial moment?

He looked around the table. Twenty-two men, of whom only
thirteen really decided matters-and one of those was missing-were silently
contemplating the prospect of over two hundred fifty million Soviet workers and
peasants, all hungry and in the dark, at the same time that the troops of the
Red Army, the Ministry of the Interior, and the KGB found their own fuel
supplies-and because of it, their training and mobility-restricted.

The men of the Politburo were among the most powerful in the
world, far more so than any of their Western counterparts. They answered to no
one, not the Central Committee of the Communist Party, not the Supreme Soviet,
certainly not the people of their nation. These men had not walked on the
streets of Moscow for years, but been whisked by chauffeured, handmade cars to
and from their luxury apartments within Moscow, or to their ceremonial dachas
outside the city. They shopped, if at all, in guarded stores restricted to the
elite, were served by doctors in clinics established only for the elite.
Because of all this, these men regarded themselves as masters of their destiny.

It was only now beginning to strike them that like all men,
they too were subject to a fate which their immense personal power merely made
all the more intractable.

Around them was a country whose citizens were poorly fed and
poorly housed, whose only abundant commodities were the painted signs and
slogans praising Soviet Progress and Solidarity. Some of the men at this table
actually believed those slogans, Sergetov knew. Sometimes he still did, mainly
in homage to his idealistic youth. But Soviet Progress had not fed their
nation, and how long would Soviet Solidarity endure in the hearts of people
hungry, cold, in the dark? Would they be proud of the missiles in the Siberian
forests then? Of the thousands of tanks and guns produced every year? Would
they then look to the sky that held a Salyut space station and feel inspired-or
would they wonder what kind of food was being eaten by that elite? Less than a
year before, Sergetov had been a regional Party chieftain, and in Leningrad he
had been careful to listen to his own staff people's description of the jokes
and grumblings in the lines which people endured for two loaves of bread, or
toothpaste, or shoes. Detached even then from the harsher realities of life in
the Soviet Union, he had often wondered if one day the burden of the ordinary
worker would become too heavy to endure. How would he have known then? How
would he know now? Would the older men here ever know?

Narod, they called it, a masculine noun that was nonetheless
raped in every sense: the masses, the faceless collection of men and women who
toiled every day in Moscow and throughout the nation in factories and on
collective farms, their thoughts hidden behind unsmiling masks. The members of
the Politburo told themselves that these workers and peasants did not grudge
their leaders the luxuries that accompanied responsibility. After all, life in
the country had improved in measurable terms. That was the compact. But the
compact was about to be broken. What might happen then? Nicholas II had not
known. These men did.

The Defense Minister broke the silence. "We must obtain
more oil. It is as simple as that. The alternative is a crippled economy,
hungry citizens, and reduced defense capacity. The consequences of which are
not acceptable."

"We cannot purchase oil," a candidate member
pointed out.

"Then we must take it."

FORT MEADE, MARYLAND

Bob Toland frowned at his spice cake. I shouldn't be eating
dessert, the intelligence analyst reminded himself. But the National Security
Agency commissary served this only once a week, and spice cake was his
favorite, and it was only about two hundred calories. That was all. An extra
five minutes on the exercise bike when he got home.

"What did you think of that article in the paper,
Bob?" a co-worker asked.

"The oil-field thing?" Toland rechecked the man's
security badge. He wasn't cleared for satellite intelligence. "Sounds like
they had themselves quite a fire."

"You didn't see anything official on it?"

"Let's just say that the leak in the papers came from a
higher security clearance than I have."

"Top Secret-Press?" Both men laughed.

"Something like that. The story had information that I
haven't seen," Toland said, speaking the truth, mostly. The fire was out,
and people in his department had been speculating on how Ivan had put it out so
fast. "Shouldn't hurt them too bad. I mean, they don't have millions of
people taking to the road on summer vacations, do they"

"Not hardly. How's the cake?"

"Not bad." Toland smiled, already wondering if he
needed the extra time on the bike.

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

The Politburo reconvened at nine-thirty the next morning.
The sky outside the double-paned windows was gray and curtained with the heavy
snow that was beginning to fall again, adding to the half-meter already on the
ground. There would be sledding tonight on the hills of Gorkiy Park, Sergetov
thought. The snow would be cleared off the two frozen lakes for skating under
the lights to the music of Tschaikovskiy and Prokofiev. Moscovites would laugh
and drink their vodka and savor the cold, blissfully ignorant of what was about
to be said here, of the turns that all of their lives would take.

The main body of the Politburo had adjourned at four the
previous afternoon, and then the five men who made up the Defense Council had
met alone. Not even all of the full Politburo members were privy to that
decision-making body.

Overseeing them at the far end of the room was a full-length
portrait of Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov-Lenin, the revolutionary saint of Soviet
Communism, his domed forehead thrown back as though in a fresh breeze, his
piercing eyes looking off toward the glorious future which his stern face
confidently proclaimed, which the "science" of Marxism-Leninism
called an historic inevitability. A glorious future. Which future? Sergetov
asked himself. What has become of our Revolution? What has become of our Party?
Did Comrade Ilych really mean it to be like this?

Sergetov looked at the General Secretary, the
"young" man supposed by the West to be fully in charge, the man who
was even now changing things. His accession to the highest post in the Party
had been a surprise to some, Sergetov among them. The West still looked to him
as hopefully as we once had, Sergetov thought. His own arrival in Moscow had
changed that rapidly enough. Yet another broken dream. The man who had put a
happy face on years of agricultural failure now applied his superficial charm
to a larger arena. He was laboring mightily-anyone at this table would admit
that-but his task was an impossible one. To get here he had been forced to make
too many promises, too many deals with the old guard. Even the "young"
men of fifty and sixty he'd added to the Politburo had their own ties to former
regimes. Nothing had really changed.

The West never seemed to absorb the idea. Not since
Khrushchev had one man held sway. One-man rule held dangers vividly remembered
by the older generation of the Party. The younger men had heard the tales of
the great purges under Stalin often enough to take the lesson to heart, and the
Army had its own institutional memory of what Khrushchev had done to its
hierarchy. In the Politburo, as in the jungle, the only rule was survival, and
for all collective safety lay in collective rule. Because of this the men
selected for the titular post of General Secretary were not elected so much for
their personal dynamism as for their experience in the Party -an organization
that did not reward people for standing out too distinctly from the crowd. Like
Brezhnev, and Andropov, and Chemenko, the current chief of the Party lacked the
power of personality to dominate this room with his will alone. He'd had to
compromise to be in his chair, and he would have to compromise to remain there.
The real power blocs were amorphous things, relationships among men, loyalties
that changed with circumstance and knew only expediency. The real power lay
within the Party itself.

The Party ruled all, but the Party was no longer the
expression of one man. It had become a collection of interests represented here
by twelve other men. Defense had its interest, the KGB, and Heavy Industry, and
even Agriculture. Each interest held its own brand of power, and the chief of
each allied himself with others in order to secure his own place. The General
Secretary would try to change this, would gradually appoint men loyal to
himself to the posts that death made vacant. Would he then learn, as his
predecessors had, that loyalty so easily died around this table? For now, he
still carried the burden of his own compromises. With his own men not yet fully
in place, the General Secretary was only the foremost member of a group that
could unseat him as easily as it had unseated Khrushchev. What would the West
say if it learned that the "dynamic" General Secretary mainly served
as executor for the decisions of others? Even now, he did not speak first.

"Comrades," began the Defense Minister. "The
Soviet Union must have oil, at least two hundred million tons more than we can
produce. Such oil exists, only a few hundred kilometers from our border in the
Persian Gulf-more oil than we will ever need. We have the ability to take it,
of course. Inside of two weeks, we could assemble enough aircraft and airborne
troops to swoop down on those oil fields and gobble them up.

"Unfortunately, there could not fail to be a violent
Western response. Those same oil fields supply Western Europe, Japan, and to a
lesser extent, America. The NATO countries do not have the ability to defend
those fields with conventional means. The Americans have their Rapid Deployment
Force, a hollow shell of headquarters and a few light troops. Even with their
pre-positioned equipment at Diego Garcia, they could not hope to stop our
airborne and mechanized forces. Were they to try, and they would have to try,
their elite troops would be overwhelmed and exterminated in a few days-and they
would be faced with a single alternative: nuclear weapons. This is a real risk
that we cannot disregard. We know for a fact that American war plans call for
nuclear weapons in this case. Such weapons are stored in quantity at Diego
Garcia, and would almost certainly be used.

"Therefore, before we can seize the Persian Gulf, we
must first do one other thing. We must eliminate NATO as a political and
military force."

Sergetov sat upright in his leather chair. What was this,
what was he saying? He struggled to keep his face impassive as the Defense
Minister continued.

"If NATO is first removed from the board, America will
be in a most curious position. The United States will be able to meet its own
energy needs from Western Hemisphere sources, removing the need to defend the
Arab states, who are in any case not terribly popular with the American Jewish
Zionist community."

Did they really believe this, Sergetov wondered, did they
actually believe the United States would sit on its hands? What went on at the
late meeting yesterday?

At last one other person shared his concern. "So, the
only thing we have to do is conquer Western Europe, Comrade?" a candidate
member asked. "Are these not the countries against whose conventional
forces you warn us every year? Every year you tell us of the threat the massed
NATO armies present to us, and now you say casually that we must conquer them?
Excuse me, Comrade Defense Minister, but do not France and England have their
own nuclear arsenals? And why would America not fulfill. its treaty promise to
use nuclear weapons in the defense of NATO?"

Sergetov was surprised that a junior member had put the
issues so quickly on the table. He was more surprised that the Foreign Minister
answered. So, another piece of the puzzle. But what did the KGB think of this?
Why were they not represented here? The chairman was recovering from surgery,
but there should have been someone here-unless that had been taken care of last
night.

"Our objectives must be limited, and obviously so. This
presents us with several political tasks. First, we must engender a feeling of
security in America, to put them off guard until it is too late for them to
react forcefully. Second, we must attempt to unravel the NATO alliance in a
political sense." The Foreign Minister ventured a rare smile. "As you
know, the KGB has been working on such a plan for the past several years. It is
now in its final form. I will outline it for you."

He did so, and Sergetov nodded at its audacity and also with
a new understanding of the power balance in this room. So, it was the KGB. He
should have known. But would the rest of the Politburo fall in line? The
minister went on, "You see how it would work. One piece after another
would fall into place. Given these preconditions, the waters so thoroughly
muddied, and the fact that we would proclaim our unwillingness to threaten
directly the two independent NATO nuclear powers, we feel that the nuclear
risk, while real, is less than the risk that we already face in our
economy."

Sergetov leaned back in his leather chair. So, there it was:
war was less risky than a cold, hungry peace. It had been decided. Or had it?
Might some combination of other Politburo members have the power or prestige to
reverse that decision? Could he dare to speak out against this madness? Perhaps
a judicious question first.

"Do we have the ability to defeat NATO?" He was
chilled by the glib reply.

"Of course," Defense answered. "What do you
think we have an army for? We have already consulted with our senior
commanders."

And when you asked us last month for more steel for more new
tanks, Comrade Defense Minister, was your excuse that NATO was too weak?
Sergetov asked himself angrily. What machinations had taken place? Have they
even spoken with their military advisers yet, or had the Defense Minister
exploited his vaunted personal expertise? Had the General Secretary allowed
himself to be bullied by Defense? And by the Foreign Minister? Had he even
objected? Was this how the decisions were made to decide the fate of nations?
What would Vladimir Ilych have thought of this?

"Comrades, this is madness!" said Pyotr
Bromkovskiy. The oldest man there, frail and past eighty, his conversation
occasionally rambled about the idealistic times long before, when Communist
Party members really believed that they were the leading wave of history. The
Yezhovshchina purges had ended that. "Yes, we have a grave economic
danger. Yes, we have a grave danger to the security of the State-but do we
replace this with a greater danger? Consider what can happen-how long, Comrade
Defense Minister, before you can initiate your conquest of NATO?"

"I am assured that we can have our army fully ready for
combat operations in four months."

"Four months. I presume that we will have fuel four
months from now -enough fuel to begin a war!" Petya was old, but no one's
fool.

"Comrade Sergetov." The General Secretary gestured
down the table, dodging his responsibility yet again.

Which side to take? The young candidate member made a swift
decision. "Inventories of light fuels-gasoline, diesel, et cetera-are high
at the moment," Sergetov had to admit. "We always use the
cold-weather months-the time when usage of these fuels is lowest-to build up
our stocks, and added to this are our strategic defense reserves, enough for
forty-five-"

"Sixty!" insisted the Defense Minister.

"Forty-five days is a more realistic figure,
Comrade." Sergetov held his position. "My department has studied fuel
consumption by military units as part of a program to increase the strategic
fuel reserves, something neglected in past years. With savings in other
consumption and certain industrial sacrifices, we might expand this to sixty
days of war stocks, perhaps even seventy, plus giving you other stocks to
expand training exercises. The near-term economic costs would be slight, but by
midsummer this would change rapidly." Sergetov paused, greatly disturbed
at how easily he had gone along with the unspoken decision. I have sold my soul
. . . Or have I acted like a patriot? Have I become like the other men around
this ' table? Or have I merely told the truth-and what is truth? All he could
be certain of, he told himself, is that he had survived. For now. "We do
have the limited ability, as I told you yesterday, to restructure our
distillate production. In this case, my staff feels that a nine-percent
increase in the militarily important fuels can be accomplished-based on our
reduced production. I caution, however, that my staff analysts also feel that
all existing estimates of fuel usage in combat conditions are grossly
optimistic." A last, feeble attempt at protest.

"Give us the fuel, Mikhail Eduardovich," the
Defense Minister smiled coldly, "and we'll see it is properly used. My
analysts estimate that we can accomplish our goals in two weeks, perhaps
less-but I will grant you the strength of the NATO armies, and double our
estimates to thirty days. We will still have more than enough."

"And what if NATO discovers our intentions?" old
Petya demanded.

"They will not. Already we are preparing our
maskirovka, our trickery. NATO is not a strong alliance. It cannot be. The
ministers bicker over each country's defense contribution. Their peoples are
divided and soft * They cannot standardize their weapons, and because of it
their supply situation is utter chaos. And their most important, most powerful
member is separated from Europe by five thousand kilometers of ocean. The
Soviet Union is only an overnight train ride from the German border. But,
Petya, my old friend, I will answer your question. If everything fails, and our
intentions are discovered, we can always stop, say that we were running an
exercise, and return to peacetime conditions-and be no worse off than if we do
nothing at all. We need strike only if all is ready. We can always draw
back."

Everyone at the table knew that was a he, though a clever
one, because no one had the courage to denounce it as such. What army had ever
been mobilized to be called back? No one else spoke up to oppose the Defense
Minister. Bromkovskiy rambled on for a few minutes, quoting Lenin's stricture
about endangering the home of World Socialism, but even that drew no response.
The danger to the State-actually the danger to the Party and the Politburo-was
manifest. It could not become graver. The alternative was war.

Ten minutes later, the Politburo voted. Sergetov and his
eight fellow candidate members were mere spectators. The vote was eleven to two
for war. The process had begun.

DATE-TIME 02/03 17: 15 COPY 01 OF 01 OF SOVIET-REPORT

BC-Soviet Report, Bjt, 2310-FL-

TASS Confirms Oil Field Fire-FL-

EDS: Moved in advance for SATURDAY PMs-FL-

BY: Patrick Flynn-FC-

AP Moscow Correspondent

MOSCOW (AP)-It was confirmed today by TASS, the Soviet news
agency, that "a serious f ire" had taken place in the western
Siberian region of the Soviet Union.

A back-page article in Pravda, the official Communist Party
newspaper noted the fire, commenting that the "heroic fire brigade"
had saved countless lives by its skill and devotion to duty, also preventing
more serious damage to the nearby oil facilities.

The fire was reportedly begun by a "technical
malfunction" in the automatic refinery control systems and spread rapidly,
but was swiftly extinguished, "not without casualties among the brave men
detailed to attack the fire, and the courageous workmen who raced heroically to
their comrades' side."

Though somewhat at odds with Western reports, the fire in
the area did go out more quickly than had been expected. Western officials are
now speculating about a highly sophisticated firefighting system built into the
Nizhnevartovs facility that allowed the Soviets to extinguish the fire.

AB-BA-2-3 16: 01 EST-FL-

**END OF STORY**

3 - Correlation of Forces

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

"They didn't ask me," explained Chief of the
General Staff Marshal Shavyrin. "They didn't ask for my evaluation. The
political decision was already made when they called me in Thursday night. When
was the last time the Defense Minister asked me for a substantive judgmental
decision?"

"And what did you say?" asked Marshal Rozhkov,
Commander-in-Chief of Ground Forces. The initial response was a grim, ironic
smile.

"That the armed forces of the Soviet Union were able to
carry out this task, given four months of preparation."

"Four months . . ." Rozhkov stared out the window.
He turned back. "We won't be ready."

"Hostilities will commence on 15 June," Shavyrin
replied. "We must be ready, Yuri. And what choice did I have? Would you
have had me say, 'I am sorry, Comrade General Secretary, but the Soviet Army is
unable to carry out this task'? I would have been dismissed and replaced by
someone more tractable-you know who my replacement will be. Would you rather
answer to Marshal Bukharin-"

"That fool!" Rozhkov growled. It had been the
then-Lieutenant General Bukharin whose brilliant plan had led the Soviet Army
into Afghanistan. Professionally a nonentity, his political connections had not
only saved him, but continued his career to near the pinnacle of uniformed
power. A clever man, Bukharin. Never involved in the mountain campaigns
himself, he could point to his brilliant paper plan and complain that it had
been poorly executed, after he had moved on to command of the Kiev Military
District, historically the shining gate of marshal's rank.

"So, would you have him in this office, dictating your
plans to you?" Shavyrin asked. Rozhkov shook his head. The two men had
been friends and comrades since each had commanded a tank troop in the same
regiment, just in time for the final surge toward Vienna in 1945.

"How are we to go about it?" Rozhkov asked.

"Red Storm," the Marshal replied simply. Red Storm
was the plan for a mechanized attack into West Germany and the Low Countries.
Constantly updated for changes in the force structures of both sides, it called
for a two-to three-week campaign commencing after a rapid escalation of tension
between East and West. Despite this, in accordance with standard Soviet
strategic doctrine, it called for strategic surprise as a precondition for
success, and the use of conventional weapons only.

"At least they aren't talking about atomic arms."
Rozhkov grunted. Other plans with other names applied to different scenarios,
including many for the use of tactical and even strategic nuclear arms,
something no one in uniform wished to contemplate. Despite all the saber-rattling
of their political masters, these professional soldiers knew all too well that
the use of nuclear arms made only for ghastly uncertainties. "And the
maskirovka?"

"In two parts. The first is purely political, to work
against the United States. The second part, immediately before the war begins,
is from KGB. You know it, from KGB Group Nord. We reviewed it two years
ago."

Rozhkov grunted. Group Nord was an ad hoc committee of KGB
department chiefs, first assembled by then-chief of the KGB Yuri Andropov in
the mid-1970s. Its purpose was to research means of splitting the NATO
alliance, and in general to conduct political and psychological operations
aimed at undermining Western will. Its specific plan to shake the NATO military
and political structure in preparation for a shooting war was Nord's proudest
example of legerdemain. But would it work?

The two senior officers shared an ironic look. Like most
professional soldiers, they distrusted spies and all their plans.

"Four months," Rozhkov repeated. "We have
much to do. And if this KGB magic fails to work?"

"It is a good plan. It need only deceive the West for a
week, though two weeks would be better. The key, of course, is how quickly NATO
can reach full readiness. If we can delay the mobilization process seven days,
victory is assured-"

"And if not?" Rozhkov asked sharply, knowing that
even a seven-day delay was no guarantee.

"Then it is not assured, but the balance of forces is
on our side. You know that, Yuri." The option of recalling the mobilized
forces had never been discussed with the Chief of the General Staff.

"We will need to improve discipline throughout the
force first of all," CINC-Ground said. "And I need to inform our
senior commanders at once. We need to implement intense training operations.
Just how awful is this fuel problem?"

Shavyrin handed his subordinate the notes. "It could be
worse. We have enough for extended unit training. Your task is no easy one,
Yuri, but four months is a long time for this task, is it not?"

It wasn't, but there was no point in saying so. "As you
say, four months to instill fighting discipline. I will have a free hand?"

"Within limits."

"It is one thing to make a private soldier snap to the
orders of his sergeant. It might be another for officers conditioned to pushing
paper to change into combat leaders." Rozhkov skirted the issue, but his
superior received the message clearly enough.

"A free hand on both, Yuri. But act carefully, for both
our sakes."

Rozhkov nodded briefly. He knew whom he'd use to get this
done. "With the troops we led forty years ago, Andrey, we could do
this." Rozhkov sat down. "And in truth we have the same raw material
now that we had then-and better weapons. The chief unknown remains the men.
When we drove our tanks into Vienna, our men were tough, hard veterans-"

"And so were the SS bastards we crushed." Shavyrin
smiled, remembering. "Keep in mind that the same forces are at work in the
West, even more so. How well will they fight, surprised, divided? It can work.
We must make it work."

"I'm meeting with our field commanders Monday. I will
tell them myself "

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

"I hope you take good care of it," the Mayor said.

It was a moment before Commander Daniel X. McCafferty
reacted. USS Chicago had been in commission for only six weeks, her completion
delayed by a yard fire and her commissioning ceremony marred by the absence of
the Mayor of Chicago due to a strike of city workers. Just back from five tough
weeks of workups in the Atlantic, his crew was now loading provisions for their
first operational deployment. McCafferty was still entranced with his new
command, and never tired of looking at her. He'd just walked with the Mayor
along the curved upper deck, the first part of any submarine tour, even though
there was almost nothing to be seen there. "Excuse me?"

"Take good care of our ship," said the Mayor of
Chicago.

"We call them boats, sir, and we'll take good care of
her for you. Will you join us in the wardroom?"

"More ladders." The Mayor pretended to grimace,
but McCafferty knew him to be a former fire chief. Would have been useful a few
months back, the captain thought. "Where are you heading tomorrow?"

"To sea, sir." The captain started down the
ladder. The Mayor of Chicago followed him.

"I figured that." For a man in his late fifties,
he handled the steel ladder easily enough. They met again at the bottom.
"What exactly do you do in these things?"

"Sir, the Navy calls it 'Oceanographic Research.'
" McCafferty led him forward, turning for a smile with his answer to the
awkward question. Things were starting quickly for Chicago. The Navy wanted to
see just how effective her new quieting systems were. Everything looked good in
the acoustical test range off the Bahamas. Now they wanted to see how well
things worked in the Barents Sea.

The Mayor laughed at that one. "Oh, I suppose you'll be
counting the whales for Greenpeace!"

"Well, I can say that there are whales where we're
heading."

"What's with the tile on your deck? I never heard of
rubber decks on a ship."

"It's called anechoic tile, sir. The rubber absorbs
sound waves. It makes us quieter to operate, and makes it harder to detect us
on sonar if somebody pings at us. Coffee?"

"You'd think that on a day like this-"

The captain chuckled. "Me, too. But it's against
regulations."

The Mayor hoisted his cup and clicked against McCafferty's.
"Luck."

"I'll drink to that."

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

They met at the Main Officers Club of the Moscow Military
District on Ulitsa Krasnokazarmennaya, a massively impressive building dating
back to Czarist times. It was the normal time of year for senior field
commanders to confer in Moscow, and such events were always punctuated by
elaborate ceremonial dinners. Rozhkov greeted his fellow officers at the main
entrance, and when all were assembled, he led them downstairs to the ornate
steam baths. Present were all Theater commanders, each accompanied by his deputy,
his air force commander, and the fleet commanders: a small galaxy of stars,
ribbons, and braid. Ten minutes later, naked but for a pair of towels and a
handful of birch branches each, they were just another group of middle-aged
men, perhaps a bit fitter than was the average in the Soviet Union.

They all knew one another. Though many were rivals, they
were members of the same profession nevertheless, and with an intimacy
characteristic of the Russian steam baths they exchanged small talk for several
minutes. Several of them were grandfathers now, and spoke with animation about
the continuation of their lines. Regardless of personal rivalries, it was
expected that senior officers would look out for the careers of their comrades'
sons, and so information was briefly exchanged on whose son was in which
command and wanted advancement to what new posting. Finally came the
classically Russian dispute over the "strength" of the steam. Rozhkov
peremptorily settled the argument with a thin but steady stream of cold water
onto the heated bricks in the center of the room. The resulting hiss would be
sufficient to interfere with any listening devices in the room, if the foggy
air hadn't already corroded them to junk. Rozhkov had not given the first hint
of what was happening. Better, he thought, to shock them into the situation and
get candid reactions to the situation at hand.

"Comrades, I must make an announcement."

Conversation stilled, and the men looked inquiringly in his
direction.

Here we go. "Comrades, on 15 June of this year, just
four months from now, we launch an offensive against NATO."

For a moment, only the hiss of the steam could be heard,
then three men laughed, having imbibed a few stiff drinks in the sanctity of
their staff cars on the drive over from the Kremlin. Those close enough to see
CINC-Ground's face did not.

"You are serious, Comrade Marshal?" asked the
Commander-in-Chief of the Western Theater. Receiving a nod in reply, he said,
"Then perhaps you will be so kind as to explain the reason for this
action?"

"Of course. You are all aware of the Nizhnevartovsk
oil-field disaster. What you have not yet learned are its strategic and
political implications." It took six brisk minutes to outline everything
the Politburo had decided. "In just over four months from now, we shall
launch the most crucial military operation in the history of the Soviet Union:
the destruction of NATO as a political and military force. And we will
succeed."

Finished, he stared at the officer in silence. The steam was
having its desired effects on the assembly of flag officers. Its searing heat
assaulted their breathing passages, sobering those who had been drinking. And
it made them sweat. They'd be doing a lot of that in the next few months,
Rozhkov thought.

Then Pavel Alekseyev, deputy commander of the Southwestern
Theater, spoke. "I heard rumors," he said. "But that bad?"

"Yes. We have sufficient POL supplies for twelve months
of normal operations, or enough for sixty days of war operations after a brief
period of increased training activity." At the cost, he didn't say, of
crippling the national economy by mid-August.

Alekseyev leaned forward and swatted himself with his bundle
of branches. The action was strangely like a lion's swishing its tail. At
fifty, he was the second-youngest officer there, a respected intellectual
soldier and a fit, handsome man with the shoulders of a lumberjack. His
intense, dark eyes squinted down through the rising cloud of steam.

"Mid-June?"

"Yes," Rozhkov said. "We have that long to
prepare our plans and our troops." CINC-Ground looked around the room.
Already the ceiling had become partially obscured by a mist.

"I presume we are here so that we may speak frankly
among ourselves, no?"

"This is so, Pavel Leonidovich." Rozhkov replied,
not the least surprised that Alekseyev had been the first to speak. CINC-Ground
had carefully advanced the man's career over the last decade. He was the only
son of a hard-charging tank general of the Great Motherland War, one of the
many good men pensioned off during the bloodless purges under Nikita Khrushchev
in the late 1950s.

"Comrades." Alekseyev stood, climbing slowly down
the benches to the marble floor. "I accept everything Marshal Rozhkov has
told us. But-four months! Four months in which we may be detected, four months
in which we may lose all the element of surprise. Then what may happen? No, we
have a plan already for this: Zhukov-4! Instant mobilization! We can all be
back to our command posts in six hours. If we are going to conduct a surprise
attack, then let us make it one no one can detect in time-seventy-two hours
from now!"

Again the only sound in the room was that of the water
flashing to steam on the dun-colored bricks, then the room erupted with noise.
Zhukov-4 was the winter variant of a plan which hypothesized discovery of
NATO's intention to launch a surprise attack of its own on the Warsaw Pact. In
such a case, standard Soviet military doctrine was the same as anyone else's:
the best defense is a good offense-preempt the NATO armies by attacking at once
with the Category-A mechanized divisions in East Germany.

"But we are not ready!" objected CINC-West. His
was the "point" command with headquarters in Berlin, the single most
powerful military command in the world. An attack into West Germany was primarily
his responsibility.

Alekseyev held up his hands. "Neither are they. In
fact, they are less ready than we," he said reasonably. "Look,
consider our intelligence data. Fourteen percent of their officers are on
holidays. They are coming off a training cycle, true, but because of it much of
their equipment will be down for maintenance, and many of their senior officers
will be away in their respective capitals for consultations, just as we are
now. Their troops are in winter quarters, on a winter routine. This is the time
of year for maintenance and paperwork. Physical training is curtailed-who wants
to run in the snow, eh? Their men are cold, and drinking more than usual. This
is our time to act! We all know that historically the Soviet fighting man performs
at his best in winter, and NATO is at its lowest state of readiness."

"But so are we, you young fool!" CINC-Western
Theater growled back.

"We can change that in forty-eight hours,"
Alekseyev countered.

"Impossible," observed West's deputy, careful to
back up his boss.

"To reach our maximum readiness will take some
months," Alekseyev agreed. His only chance to carry his point with his
seniors was to reason with them. He knew that he was almost certainly doomed to
failure, but he had to try. "It will be difficult, if not impossible, for
us to conceal it."

"As Marshal Rozhkov told us, Pavel Leonidovich, we are
promised political and diplomatic maskirovka, " a general pointed out.

"I have no doubt that our comrades in the KGB, and our
skillful political leadership, will perform miracles." The room just might
have functioning bugs, after all. "But is it not asking too much to expect
that the Imperialists-as much as they fear and hate us, as active as their
agents and spy satellites are-will fail to note a doubling of our training
activity? We know that NATO increases its readiness when we go into major unit
training, and their preparedness will automatically be increased by their, own
spring training cycles. If we continue our training beyond the normal pattern,
they will be even more alert. Achieving full combat readiness requires that we
do too many things out of the ordinary. If nothing else, East Germany is rife
with Western spies. NATO will notice. NATO will react. They will meet us on the
border with everything in their collective arsenals.

"If, on the other hand, we attack with what we
have-now!-we have the advantage. Our men are not off skiing in the fucking
Alps! Zhukov-4 is designed to cycle from peace to war in forty-eight hours.
There is no way possible for NATO to react in so little time. They'll take
forty-eight hours to get their intelligence information organized and presented
to their ministers. By that time our shells will be falling on the Fulda Gap,
and our tanks will be advancing behind them!"

"Too many things can go wrong!" CINC-West rose so
swiftly that the towel nearly came off his waist. His left hand grabbed
downward while his right fist shook at the younger man. "What about
traffic control? What about training our men in their new battle equipment?
What about getting my Frontal Aviation pilots ready for combat operations
against the Imperialists? There-right there is an insurmountable problem! Our
pilots need at least a month of intensive training. And so do my tankers, and
so do my gunners, and so do my riflemen."

If you knew your job, they would be ready now, you
worthless, whore chasing son of a bitch! Alekseyev thought but did not dare to
say aloud. CINC-West was a man of sixty-one who liked to demonstrate his manly
prowess-boasted of it-to the detriment of his professional duties. Alekseyev
had heard that story often enough, whispered jovially in this very room. But
CINC-West was politically reliable. Such is the Soviet system, the younger
general reflected. We need fighting soldiers and what do we get with which to
defend the Rodina? Political reliability! He remembered bitterly what had
happened to his father in 1958. But Alekseyev did not allow himself to begrudge
the Party its control of the armed forces. The Party was the State, after all,
and he was a sworn servant of the State. He had learned these truisms at his
father's knee. One more card to play:

"Comrade General, you have good officers commanding
your divisions, regiments, and battalions. Trust them to know their
duties." It couldn't hurt to wave the standards of the Red Army, Alekseyev
reasoned.

Rozhkov stood, and everyone in the room strained to hear his
pronouncement. "What you say has merit, Pavel Leonidovich, but do we
gamble with the safety of the Motherland?" He shook his head, quoting doctrine
exactly, as he had been doing for too many years. "No. We rely on
surprise, yes, on the first weighted blow to blast open a path for the daring
thrust of our mechanized forces. And we will have our surprise. The Westerners
will not wish to believe what is happening, and with the Politburo soothing
them even as we prepare the first blow, we will have our strategic surprise.
The West will have perhaps three days-four at most-to know what is coming, and
even then they will not be mentally prepared for us."

The officers followed Rozhkov from the room to rinse the
sweat from their bodies with cold-water showers. Ten minutes later, refreshed
and dressed in full uniform, the officers reassembled in a second-floor banquet
room. The waiters, many of them KGB informers, noted the subdued mood and quiet
conversations that frustrated their efforts to listen in. The generals knew
that KGB's Lefortovo prison was a bare kilometer away.

"Our plans?" CINC-Southwest asked his deputy.

"How many times have we played this war game?"
Alekseyev responded. "All the maps and formulae we have examined for
years. We know the troop and tank concentrations. We know the routes, the
highways, the crossroads that we must use, and those that NATO will use. We
know our mobilization schedules, and theirs. The only thing we don't know is
whether our carefully laid plans will in fact work. We should attack at once.
Then the unknowns will work against both sides equally."

"And if our attack goes too well, and NATO relies on a
nuclear defense?" the senior officer asked. Alekseyev acknowledged the
importance and grave unpredictability of the point.

"They might do that anyway. Comrade, all of our plans
depend heavily on surprise, no? A mixture of surprise and success will force
the West to consider nuclear weapons-"

"Here you are wrong, my young friend,"
CINC-Southwest chided. "The decision to use nuclear weapons is political.
To prevent their use is also a political exercise for which time is
required."

"But if we wait over four months-how can we be assured
of strategic surprise?" Alekseyev demanded.

"Our political leadership has promised it."

"The year I entered Frunze Academy, the Party told us
the date on which we would surely have 'True Communism in our lifetime.' A
solemn promise. That date was six years ago."

"Such talk is safe with me, Pasha, I understand you.
But if you do not learn to control your tongue-"

"Forgive me, Comrade General. We must allow for the
chance that surprise will not be achieved. 'In combat, despite the most careful
preparation, risks cannot be avoided,"' Alekseyev quoted from the syllabus
of the Frunze Academy. " 'Attention must therefore be given, and the most
detailed plans prepared, for every reasonable exigency of the overall
operation. For this reason, the unsung life of a staff officer is among the
most demanding of those honored to serve the State."'

"You have the memory of a kulak, Pasha."
CINC-Southwest laughed, filling his deputy's glass with Georgian wine.
"But you are correct."

"Failure to achieve surprise means that we are forcing
a campaign of attrition on a vast scale, a high-technology version of the
'14-'18 war."

"Which we will win." CINC-Ground sat down next to
Alekseyev.

"Which we will win," Alekseyev agreed. All Soviet
generals accepted the premise that the inability to force a rapid decision
would force a bloody war of attrition that would grind each side down equally.
The Soviets had far more reserves of men and material with which to fight such
a war. And the political will to use them. "If and only if we are able to
force the pace of battle, and if our friends in the Navy can prevent the
resupply of NATO from America. NATO has war stocks of material to sustain them
for roughly five weeks. Our pretty, expensive fleet must close the
Atlantic."

"Maslov." Rozhkov beckoned to the
Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy. "We wish to hear your opinion of
the correlation of forces in the North Atlantic."

"Our mission?" Maslov asked warily.

"If we fail to achieve surprise in the West, Andrey
Petravich, it will be necessary for our beloved comrades in the Navy to isolate
Europe from America," Rozhkov pronounced. He blinked hard at the response.

"Give me a division of airborne troops, and I can
fulfill that task," Maslov responded soberly. He held a glass of mineral
water, and had been careful to avoid drink on this cold February night.
"The question is whether our strategic stance at sea should be offensive
or defensive. The NATO navies-above all the United States Navy-is a direct
threat to the Rodina. It alone has the aircraft and aircraft carriers with
which to attack the homeland, at the Kola Peninsula. In fact, we know that they
have plans to do exactly that."

"So what?" CINC-Southwest observed. "No
attack on Soviet soil is to be taken lightly, of course, but we will take
severe losses in this campaign no matter how brilliantly we fight it. What
matters is the final outcome."

"If the Americans succeed in attacking Kola, they
effectively prevent our closure of the North Atlantic. And you are wrong to
shrug off these attacks. American entry into the Barents Sea will constitute a
direct threat to our nuclear deterrent forces, and could have more dire
consequences than you imagine." Admiral Maslov leaned forward. "On
the other hand, if you persuade STAVKA to give us the resources to execute
Operation Polar Glory, we can seize the combat initiative and dictate the
nature of operations in the North Atlantic on our chosen terms. He held up a
closed fist. "By doing this we can, first"-he raised a finger-"prevent
an American navel attack against the Rodina; second"-another
finger-"use the majority of our submarine forces in the North Atlantic
basin where the trade routes are, instead of keeping them on passive defense;
and, third"-a final finger-"make maximum use of our naval aviation
assets. At one stroke this operation makes our fleet an offensive rather than a
defensive weapon."

"And to accomplish this you need only one of our Guards
Air Rifle divisions? Outline your plan for us, please, Comrade Admiral,"
Alekseyev said.

Maslov did so over a period of five minutes. He concluded,
"With luck, we will with one blow give the NATO navies more than they can
deal with, and leave us with a valuable position for postwar
exploitation."

"Better to draw their carrier forces in and destroy
them." CINC-West joined the discussion.

Maslov responded: "The Americans will have five or six
carriers available to use against us in the Atlantic. Each one carries
fifty-eight aircraft that can be used in an air superiority or nuclear strike
role, aside from those used for fleet defense. I submit, Comrade, that it is in
our interest to keep those ships as far from the Rodina as possible."

"Andrey Petravich, I am impressed," Rozhkov said
thoughtfully, noting the respect in Alekseyev's eye-, as well. Polar Glory was
both bold and simple. "I want a full briefing on this plan tomorrow
afternoon. You say that if we can allocate the resources, success in this
venture is highly probable?"

"We have worked on this plan for five years, with
particular emphasis on simplicity. If security can be maintained, only two
things need go right for success to be achieved."

Rozhkov nodded. "Then you will have my support."

4 - Maskirovka

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

The Foreign Minister entered stage left, as he always did,
and walked to the lectern with a brisk step that belied his sixty years. Before
him was a mob of reporters arrayed by the Soviet Guards into their respective
groups, the print press grasping at their pads and backed up by their
photographers, the visual media arrayed in front of their portable klieg
lights. The Foreign Minister hated the damned things, hated the people in front
of them. The Western press with its lack of manners, always prying, always
probing, always demanding answers that he need not give to his own people. How
odd, he thought, while looking up from his notes, that he often had to speak
more openly to these paid foreign spies than to members of the Party Central
Committee. Spies, exactly what they were . . .

They could be manipulated, of course, by a skilled man with
a collection of carefully prepared disinformation-which was precisely what he
was about to do. But on the whole they were a threat because they never stopped
doing what it was they did. It was something the Foreign Minister never allowed
himself to forget, and the reason he did not hold them in contempt. Dealing
with them always held potential danger. Even while being manipulated, they
could be dangerous in their quest for information. If only the rest of the
Politburo understood.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, speaking in
English. "I will be making a brief statement, and I regret that I cannot
answer any questions at this time. A full handout will be given to everyone as
you leave-that is, I think they are ready by now-" He gestured to a man at
the back of the room, who nodded emphatically. The Foreign Minister arranged
his papers one more time and began to speak with the precise diction for which
he was known.

"The President of the United States has often asked for
'deeds not words' in the quest for control of strategic arms.

"As you know, and to the disappointment of the entire
world, the ongoing arms negotiations in Vienna have made no significant
progress for over a year, with each side blaming the other for the lack of it.

"It is well known by peace-loving people the world over
that the Soviet Union has never wished for war, and that only a madman would
even consider nuclear war a viable policy option in our modern world of
overkill, fallout, and 'nuclear winter.' "

"Damn," muttered AP bureau chief Patrick Flynn.
The Soviets scarcely acknowledged "nuclear winter" and had never
mentioned the concept in so formal a setting. His antennae were already
twitching at whatever there was in the wind.

"The time has come for substantive reductions in
strategic arms. We have made numerous, serious, sincere proposals for real arms
reductions, and despite this the United States has proceeded with the
development and deployment of its destabilizing, openly offensive weapons: the
MX first-strike missile, so cynically called the 'Peacekeeper'; the advanced
Trident D-5 first-strike sea-launched ballistic missile; two separate varieties
of cruise missiles whose characteristics conspire to make arms control
verification almost totally impossible; and of course, the so-called Strategic
Defense Initiative, which will take offensive strategic weapons into space. Such
are America's deeds." He looked up from his notes and spoke with irony.
"And through it all, America's pious words demand Soviet deeds.

"Starting tomorrow, we will see once and for all if
America's words are to be believed or not. Starting tomorrow we will see how
great a difference there is between America's words about peace and Soviet
deeds for peace.

"Tomorrow, the Soviet Union will put on the table at
Vienna a proposal to reduce existing arsenals of strategic and theater nuclear
weapons by fifty percent, this reduction to be accomplished over a period of
three years from ratification of the agreement, subject to on-site verification
conducted by third-party inspection teams whose composition will be agreed upon
by all signatories.

"Please note that I say 'all signatories.' The Soviet
Union invites the United Kingdom, the French Republic, and"-he looked
up--"the People's Republic of China to join us at the negotiating
table." The explosion of flashbulbs caused him to look away for a moment.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please-" He smiled, holding
his hand up to shield his face. "These old eyes are not up to such abuse
as this, and I have not memorized my speech-unless you want me to continue in
Russian!"

There was a wave of laughter, then a sprinkling of applause
at the jibe. The old bastard was really turning on the charm, Flynn thought,
furiously taking notes. This was potential dynamite. He wondered what would
come next, and he especially wondered what the precise wording on the proposal
was. Flynn had covered arms talks before, and knew all too well that general
descriptions of proposals could grossly distort the nuts-and-bolts details of
the real issues to be negotiated. The Russians couldn't be this open-they just
couldn't be.

"To proceed." The Foreign Minister blinked his
eyes clear. "We have been accused of never making a gesture of our good
faith. The falsehood of the charge is manifest, but this evil fiction continues
in the West. No longer. No longer will anyone have cause to doubt the sincerity
of the Soviet people's quest for a just and lasting peace.

"Beginning today, as a sign of good faith which we
challenge the United States and any other interested nation to match, the
Soviet Union will remove from service an entire class of nuclear-powered missile
submarine. These submarines are known to the West as the Yankee class. We call
them something else, of course," he said with an ingenuous grin that drew
another wave of polite laughter. "Twenty of the vessels are presently in
service, each carrying twelve sea-launched ballistic missiles. All active
members of the class are assigned to the Soviet Northern Fleet based on the
Kola Peninsula. Beginning today, we will deactivate these vessels at a rate of
one per month. As you know, complete deactivation of so complex a machine as a
missile submarine requires the services of a shipyard-the missile compartment
must be physically removed from the body of the vessel-and so these vessels
cannot be fully disarmed overnight. However, to make the honesty of our intentions
undeniable, we invite the United States to do one of two things:

"First, we will permit a selected team of six American
naval officers to inspect these twenty vessels to verify that their missiles
tubes have been filled with concrete ballast pending removal of the entire
missile rooms from all of the submarines. In return for this, we would require
that a comparable inspection visit by an equal number of Soviet officers to
American yards would be allowed at a later date to be agreed on.

"Second, as an alternative should the United States be
unwilling to allow reciprocal verification of arms reductions, we will permit
another group of six officers to perform this service, these officers to be
from a country--or countries-upon which the United States and the Soviet Union
can agree within the next thirty days. A team from such neutral countries as
Sweden or India would be acceptable in principle to the Soviet Union.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come to put an end
to the arms race. I will not repeat all of the flowery rhetoric we've all heard
over the past two generations. We all know the threat that these ghastly
weapons represent to every nation. Let no one ever say again that the
government of the Soviet Union has not done its part to reduce the danger of
war. Thank you."

The room suddenly fell silent but for the sound of
motor-driven still cameras. The Western press representatives assigned to their
respective Moscow bureaus were among the best in their profession. Uniformly
bright, uniformly ambitious, uniformly cynical about what they found in Moscow
and the conditions under which they were forced to work, all were stunned to
silence.

"Goddamn," muttered Flynn after a full ten
seconds.

"One must admire your understatement, old boy,"
agreed Reuters correspondent William Calloway. "Wasn't it your Wilson who
spoke of open covenants openly arrived at?"

"Yeah, my granddad covered that peace conference.
Remember how well it worked out?" Flynn grimaced, watching the Foreign
Minister depart, smiling at the cameras. "I want to see the handout. Want
to ride back with me?"

"Yes on both."

It was a bitterly cold day in Moscow. Snow piles were heaped
at the roadsides. The sky was a frigid crystal blue. And the car's heater
didn't work. Flynn drove while his friend read aloud through the handout. The
draft treaty proposal took up nineteen annotated pages. The Reuters
correspondent was a Londoner who had begun as a police reporter, and since
covered assignments all over the world. He and Flynn had met many years before
at the famous Caravelle Hotel in Saigon, and shared drinks and typewriter
ribbons on and off for more than two decades. In the face of a Russian winter,
they remembered the oppressive heat of Saigon with something akin to nostalgia.

"It's bloody fair," Calloway said wonderingly, his
breath giving ghostly substance to his words. "They propose a builddown
with elimination of many existing weapons, allowing both sides to replace
obsolete launchers, both sides to reach a total of five thousand deliverable
warheads, that number to remain stable for five years after the three-year
reduction period. There is a separate proposal to negotiate complete removal of
'heavy' missiles, replacing them with mobile missiles, but to limit missile
flight tests to a fixed number per year-" He flipped that page and rapidly
scanned the remainder. "Nothing in the draft treaty about your Star Wars
research . . . ? Didn't he mention that in his statement? Patrick, old son,
this is, as you say, dynamite. This could as easily have been written in Washington.
It will take months to work out all the technical points, but this is a bloody
serious, and bloody generous, proposal."

"Nothing about Star Wars?" Flynn frowned briefly
as he turned right. Did that mean that the Russians had made a breakthrough of
their own? Have to query Washington about that . . . "We got us a story
here, Willie. What's your lead? How's 'Peace' grab you?" Calloway just
laughed at that.

FORT MEADE, MARYLAND

American intelligence agencies, like their counterparts
throughout the world, monitor all news wire services. Toland was examining the
AP and Reuters reports before most news bureau chiefs, and comparing them with
the version transmitted over Soviet microwave circuits for publication in the
regional editions of Pravda and Isvestia. The way items of hard news were
reported in the Soviet Union was intended to show Party members how their
leaders felt.

"We've been down this road before," his section
chief said. "The last time, things broke down on this issue of mobile
missiles. Both sides want them, but both sides are afraid of the other side
having them."

"But the tone of the report-"

"They're always euphoric about their arms-control
proposals, damn it! Hell, Bob, you know that."

"True, sir, but it's the first time that I know of that
the Russians have unilaterally removed a weapons platform from service."

"The 'Yankees' are obsolete."

"So what? They never throw anything away, obsolete or
not. They still have World War II artillery pieces sitting in warehouses in
case they need them again. This is different, and the political
ramifications-"

"We're not talking politics, we're talking nuclear
strategy," the section chief growled back.

As if there were a difference, Toland said to himself.

KIEV, THE UKRAINE

"Well, Pasha?"

"Comrade General, we truly have a man's work before
us," Alekseyev answered, standing at attention in the Kiev headquarters of
the Southwest Theater.

"Our troops need extensive unit training. Over the
weekend I read through more than eighty regimental readiness reports from our
tank and motor-rifle divisions." Alekseyev paused before going on.
Tactical training and readiness was the bane of the Soviet military. Their
troops were almost entirely conscripts, in and out in two years, half of whose
uniformed service was occupied just in acquiring basic military skills. Even
the noncoms, the backbone of every army since the Roman legions, were
conscripts selected for special training academies, then lost as soon as their
enlistment periods ended. For that reason, the Soviet military leaned heavily
on its officers, who often performed what in the West was sergeants' work. The
professional officer corps of the Soviet Army was its only permanent, only
dependable feature. In theory. "The truth of the matter is that we don't
know our readiness posture at the moment. Our colonels all use the same
language in their reports, without the slightest deviation. Everyone reports
meeting norms, with the same amount of training hours, the same amount of
political indoctrination, the same number of practice shots fired-that is, a
deviation of under three percent-and the requisite number of field exercises
run, all of course of the proper type."

"As prescribed in our training manuals," the
Colonel General noted.

"Naturally. Exactly-too damned exactly! No deviation
for adverse weather. No deviation for late fuel deliveries. No deviation for
anything at all. For example, the 703rd Motor-Rifle Regiment spent all of last
October on harvesting duty south of Kharkov-yet somehow they met their monthly
norms for unit training at the same time. Lies are bad enough, but these are
stupid lies!"

"It cannot be as bad as you fear, Pavel
Leonidovich."

"Do we dare to assume otherwise, Comrade?"

The General stared down at his desk. "No. Very well,
Pasha. You've formulated your plan. Let me hear it."

"For the moment, you will be outlining the plan for our
attack into the Muslim lands. I must get into the field to whip our field
commanders into shape. If we wish to accomplish our goals in time for the
attack west, we must make an example of the worst offenders. I have four
commanders in mind. Their conduct has been grossly and undeniably criminal.
Here are the names and charges." He handed over a single sheet of paper.

"There are two good men here, Pasha," the General
objected.

"They are guardians of the State. They enjoy positions
of the greatest trust. They have betrayed that trust by lying, and in doing so,
they have endangered the State," Alekseyev said, wondering how many men in
his country could have that said of them. He dismissed the thought. There were
problems enough right here.

"You understand the consequences of the charges you
bring?"

"Of course. The penalty for treason is death. Did I
ever falsify a readiness report? Did you?" Alekseyev looked away briefly.
"It is a hard thing, and I take no pleasure in it-but unless we snap our
units into shape, how many young boys will die for their officers' failings? We
need combat readiness more than we need four liars. If there is a gentler way
to achieve this, I don't know what that might be. An army without discipline is
a worthless mob. We have the directive from STAVKA to make examples of unruly
privates and restore the authority of our NCOs. It is fitting that if privates
must suffer for their failings, then their Colonels must suffer too. Theirs is the
greater responsibility. Theirs is the greater reward. A few examples here will
go a long way to restoring our army."

"The inspectorate?"

"The best choice," Alekseyev agreed. That way
blame would not necessarily be traced back to the senior commanders themselves.
"I can send teams from the Inspector General's service out to these
regiments day after tomorrow. Our training memoranda arrived in all divisional
and regimental headquarters this morning. The news of these four traitors will
encourage our unit commanders to implement them with vigor. Even then, it will
be two weeks before we have a clear picture of what we need to focus on, but
once we can identify the areas that need buttressing, we should have ample time
to accomplish what we need to accomplish."

"What will CINC-West be doing""

"The same, one hopes." Alekseyev shook his head.
"Has he asked for any of our units yet?"

"No, but he will. We will not be ordered to launch
offensive operations against NATO's southern flank-part of the continuing maskirovka.
You may assume that many of our Category-B units will be detailed to Germany,
possibly some of our 'A' tank forces also. However many divisions that fool
has, he'll want more."

"Just so we have enough troops to seize the oil fields
when the time comes," Pasha observed. "Which plan are we supposed to
execute?"

"The old one. We'll have to update it, of course."
The old plan predated Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, and now the Red Army
had a whole new perspective on sending mechanized forces into an area occupied
by armed Muslims.

Alekseyev's hands bunched into fists. "Marvelous. We
must formulate a plan without knowing when it will be implemented or what
forces we'll have available to execute it."

"Remember what you told me about the life of a staff officer,
Pasha?" CINC-Southwest chuckled.

The younger man nodded ruefully, hoist on his own petard.
"Indeed, Comrade General: we will do our sleeping after the war."

5 - Sailors and Spooks

THE CHESAPEAKE BAY, MARYLAND

His eyes squinted painfully at the horizon. The sun was only
half a diameter above the green-brown line of Maryland's Eastern Shore, a
reminder, if he needed one, that he'd worked late the day before, gone to bed
later still, then arisen at four-thirty so that he could get in a day's fishing.
A slowly receding sinus like headache also let him know about the six-pack of
beer he'd consumed in front of the TV.

But it was his first fishing day of the year, and the
casting rod felt good in his hand as he gave it a gentle swing toward a ripple
on the calm surface of the Chesapeake Bay. A blue or a rockfish? Whatever it
was, it didn't nibble at his Bucktail lure. But there was no hurry.

"Coffee, Bob?"

"Thanks, Pop." Robert Toland set his rod in its
holder and leaned back into the midships swivel chair of his Boston Whaler
Outrage. His father-in-law, Edward Keegan, held out the plastic cup-cap from a
large thermos jug. Bob knew the coffee would be good. Ned Keegan was a former
naval officer who appreciated a good cup, preferably flavored with brandy or
Irish whiskey-something to open the eyes and put a fire in the belly.

"Cold or not, damn if it ain't nice to get out
here." Keegan sipped at his cup, resting one foot on the bait box. It
wasn't just the fishing, both men agreed, getting out on the water was one sure
cure for civilization.

"Be nice if the rock really are coming back, too,"
Toland observed.

"What the hell-no phones."

"What about your beeper?"

"I must have left it with my other pants." Keegan
chuckled. "DIA will have to manage without me today."

"Think they can?"

"Well, the Navy did." Keegan was an academy
graduate who had put in his thirty and retired to become a double-dipper. In
uniform, he'd been an intelligence specialist, and now he had essentially the
same job, which added civil service salary to his pension.

Toland had been a lieutenant (j.g.) serving aboard a
destroyer based at Pearl Harbor when he'd first noticed Martha Keegan, a junior
at the University of Hawaii, majoring in psychology and minoring in surfing.
They'd been happily married for fifteen years now.

"So." Keegan stood and lifted his rod. "How
are things at the Fort?"

Bob Toland was a middle-level analyst at the National
Security Agency. He'd left the Navy after six years when the adventure of
uniformed service had palled, but he remained an active reservist. His work at
NSA dovetailed nicely with his naval reserve service. A communications expert
with a degree in electronics, his current job was monitoring Soviet signals
gathered by the NSA's numerous listening posts and ferret satellites. Along the
way he'd also gotten a masters in the Russian language.

"Heard something real interesting last week, but I
couldn't convince my boss it meant anything."

"Who's your section chief?"

"Captain Albert Redman, U.S. Navy." Toland watched
a bay-built fishing boat motoring a few miles away, her captain laying out his
crab pots. "He's an asshole."

Keegan laughed. "You want to be careful saying stuff
like that out loud, Bob, especially seeing how you go on active duty next week.
Bert worked with me, oh, must have been fifteen years ago. I had to slap him
down a few times. He does tend to be slightly opinionated."

"Opinionated?" Toland snorted. "That
bastard's so friggin' narrow-minded his scratch pads are only an inch wide!
First there was this new arms control thing, then I came up with something
really unusual last Wednesday and he circular-filed it. Hell, I don't know why
he even bothers looking at new data-he made his mind up five years ago."

"I don't suppose you could tell me what it was?"

"I shouldn't." Bob wavered for a moment. Hell, if
he couldn't talk with his kids' own grandfather ..."One of our ferret
birds was over a Soviet military district headquarters last week and
intercepted a microwaved telephone conversation. It was a report to Moscow about
four colonels in the Carpathian Military District who were being shot for
gundecking readiness reports. The story on their court-martial and execution
was being set up for  publication,
probably in a Red Star this week." He had entirely forgotten about the
oil-field fire.

"Oh?" Keegan's eyebrows went up. "And what
did Bert say?"

"He said, 'It's Goddamned about time they cleaned their
act up.' And that was that."

"And what do you say?"

"Pop, I'm not in Trends and Intentions-those idiot
fortune-tellers, but I know that even the Russians don't kill people for
jollies. When Ivan kills people publicly, he does it to make a point. These
were not manpower officers taking bribes to fake deferments. They weren't
popped for stealing diesel fuel or building dachas with pilfered lumber. I
checked our records, and it turned out we have files on two of them. They were
both experienced line officers, both with combat experience in Afghanistan,
both Party members in good standing. One was a graduate of Frunze Academy, and
he even had a few articles published in Military Thought, for God's sake! But
all four were court-martialed for falsifying their regimental readiness
reports-and shot three days later. That story will hit the streets in Krasnaya
Zvezda over the next few days as a two-or three-part story under 'The
Observer's' by-line-and that makes it a political exercise with a capital
P."

The Observer was the cover name for any number of
high-ranking officers who contributed to Red Star, the daily newspaper of the
Soviet armed services. Anything on the front page and under that by-line was
taken quite seriously, both in the Soviet military services and by those whose
job it was to watch them, because this by-line was used explicitly to make
policy statements approved by both the military high command and the Politburo
in Moscow.

"A multipart story?" Keegan asked.

"Yeah, that's one of the interesting things about it.
The repetition means they really want this lesson to sink in. Everything about
this is out of pattern, Pop. Something funny is happening. They do shoot
officers and EM's-but not full colonels who've written for the journal of the
general staff, and not for faking a few lines in a readiness statement."
He let out a long breath, happy to have gotten this off his chest. The workboat
was proceeding south, her wake rippling out toward them in parallel lines on
the mirrored surface. The image made Toland wish for his camera.

"Makes sense," Keegan mumbled.

"Huh?"

"What you just said. That does sound out of
pattern."

"Yep. I stayed in late last night, running down a
hunch. In the past five years, the Red Army has published the names of exactly
fourteen executed officers, none higher than a full colonel, and even then only
on manpower officer in Soviet Georgia. The guy was taking payoffs for
deferments. The others broke down into one case of spying, for us or somebody,
three derelictions of duty while under the influence of alcohol, and nine
conventional corruption cases, selling everything from gasoline to a whole
mainframe computer nalyevo, 'on the left,' the shadow market. Now all of a
sudden they waste four regimental commanders, all in the same military
district."

"You could take that to Redman," Keegan suggested.

"Waste of time."

"Those other cases-I seem to remember the three guys
who-"

"Yeah, that was part of the temperance campaign. Too
many guys turn up drunk on duty, and they pick three volunteers, pour
encourager les autres." Bob shook his head. "Jeez, Voltaire would
have loved these guys."

"You talk with people who're into civilian
intelligence?"

"No, my crowd is all military telecommunications."

"At lunch last-Monday, I think, I was talking with a
guy from Langley. Ex-Army, we go way back. Anyway, he was joking that there's a
new shortage over there."

"Another one?" Bob was amused. Shortages were
nothing new in Russia. One month toothpaste, or toilet paper, or windshield
wipers-he had heard of many such things over lunch at the NSA commissary.

"Yeah, car and truck batteries."

"Really?"

"Yeah, for the last month you can't get a battery for
your car or truck over there. A lot of cars are not moving, and batteries are
being stolen left and right, so people are disconnecting their batteries at
night and taking them home, would you believe?"

"But Togliattishtadt-" Toland said, and stopped.
He referred to the massive auto factory-city in European Russia, the
construction of which was a "Hero Project" for which thousands of
workers had been mobilized. Among the most modem auto complexes in the world,
it had been built mainly with Italian technology. "They have a hell of a
battery manufacturing facility there. Hasn't blown up, has it?"

"Working three shifts. What do you think of that?"

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

Toland examined himself in the full-sized mirror in the Norfolk
BOQ complex. He'd made the drive down the evening before. The uniform still
fit, he noted, maybe a little tight at the waist, but that was nature at work,
wasn't it? His "salad bar" of decorations was a bleak row and a half,
but he had his surface warfare officer's badge, his "water wings" he
hadn't always been a glorified radio operator. His sleeves bore the two and a
half stripes of a lieutenant commander. A final swipe of a cloth across his
shoes and he was out the door, ready on this bright Monday morning for his
annual two weeks of duty with the fleet.

Five minutes later, he was driving down Mitcher Avenue
toward headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Fleet-CINCLANTFLT -a
flat, thoroughly undistinguished building that had once been a hospital. An
habitual early riser, Toland found the Ingersoll Street parking lot half empty,
but he was still careful to take an unmarked space lest he incur the wrath of a
senior officer.

"Bob? Bob Toland!" a voice called.

"Ed Morris!"

It was now Commander Edward Morris, USN, Toland noted, and a
shiny gold star on his uniform jacket designated him as the commander of some
ship or other. Toland saluted his friend before shaking hands.

"Still playing bridge, Bob?" Toland, Morris, and
two other officers had once established the most regular bridge foursome at the
Pearl Harbor officers club.

"Some. Marty isn't much of a card player, but we got a
bunch at work that meets once a week."

"Good as we used to be?"  Morris asked as they headed off in the same direction.

"Are you kidding? You know where I work now?"

"I heard you ended up at Fort Meade after you hung it
up."

"Yeah, and there's bridge players at NSA who're wired
into the damn computers-I'm talking assassins!"

"So how's the family?"

"Just great. How's yours?"

"Growing up too damned fast-makes you feel old."

"That's the truth," Morris chuckled. He jabbed a
finger at his friend's star. "Now you can tell me about your new
kid."

"Look at my car."

Toland turned around. Morris's Ford had a personalized
license plate: FF-1094. To the uninitiated it was an ordinary license number,
but to a sailor it advertised his command: antisubmarine frigate number one
thousand ninety-four, USS PHARRIS.

"You always were nice and modest," Toland noted
with a grin. "That's all right, Ed. How long you had her?"

"Two years. She's big, she's pretty, and she's mine!
You should have stayed in, Bob. The day I took command-hell, it was like the
day Jimmy was born."

"I hear you. The difference, Ed, is that I always knew
you'd have your ship, and I always knew I wouldn't." In Toland's personnel
jacket was a letter of admonishment for grounding a destroyer while he had the
deck. It had been no more than bad luck. An ambiguity on the chart and adverse
tidal conditions had caused the error, but it didn't take much to ruin a Navy
career.

"So, doing your two weeks?"

"That's right."

"Celia is off visiting her parents, and I'm baching it.
What're you doing for dinner tonight?"

"McDonald's?" Toland laughed.

"Like hell. Danny McCafferty's in town, too. He's got
the Chicago, tied up at Pier 22. You know, if we can scare up a fourth, maybe
we can play a little bridge, just like the old days." Morris poked his
friend in the chest "I gotta head along. Meet me in the O-Club lobby at
1710, Bob.  Danny invited me over to his
boat for dinner at 1830, and we'll have an hour's worth of Attitude Adjustment
before we drive over. We'll have dinner in the wardroom and a few hours of cards,
just like old times."

"Aye, aye, Commander."

"Anyway, there I was on Will Rogers, " McCafferty
said. "Fifty days out on patrol and I got the watch, right? Sonar says
they have a goofy signal, bearing zero-five-two. We're at periscope depth, so I
put the search scope up, train it out to zero-five-two, and sure enough,
there's this Gulfstream36 sailboat, moving along at four or five knots with the
autosteering set. What the hell, it's a dull day, so I flip the scope to
hi-power, and guess what? The captain and the mate-there's one gal who'll never
drown!-are on top the deckhouse, horizontal and superimposed. The boat was
maybe a thousand yards away-just like being there. So we turn on the scope TV
camera and get the tape machine running. Had to maneuver for a better view, of
course. Lasted fifteen minutes. The crew ran the tape for the next week. Great
for morale to know just what you're fighting for." All three officers
laughed.

"Like I always told you, Bob," Morris noted.
"These sub-drivers are a nasty, sneaky bunch. Not to mention
perverts."

"So how long you had the Chicago, Danny" Toland
asked over his second cup of after-dinner coffee. The three had the submarine's
wardroom to themselves. The only officers aboard were either standing watch or
asleep.

"Three busy months, not counting yard time,"
McCafferty said, finishing off his milk. He was the first skipper for the new
attack sub, the best of all possible worlds, a captain and a
"plankowner." Toland noted that Dan had not joined him and Morris for
"attitude adjustment" at the base officers' club, during which they'd
tossed down three stiff drinks apiece. It wasn't like the McCafferty of old.
Perhaps he was unwilling to leave his sub, lest the dream of his career somehow
end while he was away from her.

"Can't you tell from the pale, pasty look common to
cave-dwellers and submariners?" Morris joked. "Not to mention the
faint glow associated with nuclear reactor types"" McCafferty
grinned, and they waited for their fourth to arrive, He was a junior engineer,
just about to come off reactor watch, Chicago's reactor wasn't operating. She
was drawing electrical power from the dock, but regulations demanded a full
reactor watch whether the teakettle was working or not.

"I tell you guys, I was a little pale four weeks
ago." McCafferty turned serious-or about as serious as he ever got,

"How so?" Bob Toland asked.

"Well, you know the kinda shit we do with these boats,
right""

"If you mean inshore intelligence gathering, Dan, you
ought to know that that electronic intelligence stuff you collect comes to my
office. Hell, I probably know the people who originate a lot of the data
requests that generate your op-orders. How's that for a revolting
thought!" Bob laughed. He fought the urge to look around too obviously.
He'd never been aboard a nuclear submarine before. It was cold-nuclear subs
have nuclear-powered air conditioning-and the air was heavy with the smell of
machine oil. Everything he could see sparkled both from being almost new, and
from the fact that McCafferty had undoubtedly made sure that his crew had
gotten things looking especially good for his friends. So, this was the
billion-dollar machine that gathered all that ELINT data. . .

"Yeah, well, we were up in the Barents Sea, you know,
northeast of the Kola Fjord, trailing a Russian sub-an Oscar-about, oh, ten
miles back of her-and all of a sudden we find ourselves in the middle of a
friggin' live-fire exercise! Missiles were flying all over the damned place.
They wasted three old hulks, and blasted hell out of a half-dozen target
barges. "

"Just the Oscar"" Morris asked.

"Turned out there was a Papa and a Mike out there, too.
That's one problem with us being so quiet in these babies. If they don't know
we're there, we can find ourselves in the middle of some really unpleasant
shit! Anyway, sonar starts screaming 'Transients! Transients!' from all the
missile tubes being flooded. No way we could be sure they weren't getting ready
to put some real torpedoes in the water, but we stuck up the ESM and picked up
their periscope radars, then I saw some of the things whipping over our heads.
Damn, guys, for about three minutes there it was just a little hairy,
y'know?" McCafferty shook his head. "Anyway, two hours after that,
all three boats crack on twenty knots and head back to the barn. Your basic
out-and-in live-fire. How's that for a lively first deployment?"

"You get the feeling that the Russians are doing
anything out of the ordinary, Dan?"' Toland asked, suddenly interested.

"You didn't hear""

"Hear what""

"They've cut back their diesel sub patrols up north,
quite a bit, too. I mean, normally they're pretty hard to hear, but mostly over
the past two months they just ain't there. I heard one, just one. Wasn't like
that the last time I was up north. There have been some satellite photos of
them, a lot of diesel boats tied up alongside for some reason or another. In
fact, their patrol activity up north is down across the board, with a lot of
maintenance activity going on. The current guess is that they're changing their
training cycle. This isn't the usual time of year for live-firing."
McCafferty laughed. "Of course, it could be that they finally got tired of
chippin' and paintin' those old 'cans, and decided to use 'em up-best thing to
do with a 'can anyway."

"Bubblehead," Morris snorted.

"Give me a reason you'd have a bunch of diesel boats
out of service all at once," Toland said. He was wishing that he'd passed
on the second and third rounds during Happy Hour. Something important was
flashing lights inside his head, and the alcohol was slowing his thinking down.

"Shit," McCafferty observed. "There isn't
any."

"So what are they doing with the diesel boats?"

"I haven't seen the satellite photos, Bob, just heard
about them. No special activity in the drydocks, though, so it can't be too
major."

The light bulb finally went off in Toland's head. "How
hard is it to change batteries in a sub?"

"It's a nasty, heavy job. I mean, you don't need
special machinery or anything. We do it with Tiger Teams, and it takes
something like three or four weeks. Ivan's subs are designed with larger
battery capacities than ours, and also for easier battery replacement-they're
supposed to go through their batteries faster than Western subs, and they
compensate for it by making replacement easier, hard-patches on the hull,
things like that. So for them it's probably an all-hands evolution. What
exactly are you getting at, Bob?"

Toland related the story about the four Soviet colonels who
had been shot, and why. "Then I bear this story about how the supply of
batteries in Russia has dried up. No batteries for cars and trucks. The car
batteries I can understand, but the trucks-hey, every truck in Russia is
government-owned. They all have mobilization uses. Same sort of batteries,
right?"

"Yeah, they all use lead-acid batteries. The factory
burn down?" Commander Morris asked. "I know Ivan likes One Big
Factory rather than a bunch of little ones."

"It's working three shifts."

McCafferty sat back, away from the table.

"So, what uses batteries?" Morris asked
rhetorically.

"Submarines," McCafferty pronounced. "Tanks,
armored vehicles, command cars, starter carts for planes, lots of stuff painted
green, y'know? Bob, what you're saying-shit, what you're saying is that all of
a sudden Ivan has decided to increase his readiness across the board. Question:
Do you know what the hell you're talking about?"

"You can bet your ass on it, Danny. The bit on the four
colonels crossed my desk, I eyeballed that report myself. It was received on
one of our ferret satellites, Ivan doesn't know how sensitive those Hitchhiker
birds are, and he still sends a lot of stuff in the clear on surface microwave
nets. We listen in to voice and telex transmissions all the time-you guys can
forget you heard that, okay?" Toland got nods from the others. "The
thing about the batteries I picked up by accident, but I confirmed it with a
guy I know in the Pentagon. Now we have your story about increased live-fire
exercises, Dan. You just filled in a blank space. Now if we can confirm that
those diesel boats really are down for battery replacement, we have the
beginnings of a picture. Just how important are new batteries for a diesel
boat?"

"Very important," the sub skipper said.
"Depends a lot on quality control and maintenance, but new ones can give
you up to double the range and power of old ones, and that's obviously an
important tactical factor."

"Jesus, you know what this sounds like? Ivan's always
ready to go to sea, and now it looks like he wants to be real ready,"
Morris observed. "But the papers all say that they're acting like
born-again angels with this arms-control stuff. Something does not compute,
gentlemen."

"I have to get this to someone in the chain of command.
I could drop this on a desk at Fort Meade and it might never get
anywhere," Toland said, remembering his section chief.

"You will," McCafferty said after a moment's
pause, "I have an appointment tomorrow morning with COMSUBLANT. I think
you're coming with me, Bob."

The last member of the foursome arrived ten minutes later.
He was disappointed with the quality of the game. He'd thought his skipper was
better than this.

Toland spent twenty minutes reviewing his data in front of
Vice Admiral Richard Pipes, Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet.
Pipes was the first black submariner to make three-star rank, a man who had
paid his dues with performance as he'd climbed up the ladder in what had
traditionally been a whites-only profession, and he had the reputation of a
tough, demanding boss. The Admiral listened without a word as he sipped coffee
from a three-starred mug. He'd been annoyed to have McCafferty's patrol report
supplanted by a speech from a reservist-but that attitude had lasted only three
minutes. Now the lines around his mouth deepened.

"Son, you violated a few security restrictions to give
me some of that."

"I know that, sir," Toland said.

"Took balls to do that, and it's nice to see in a young
officer, what with all the ones who just want to cover their ass." Pipes
rose. "I don't like what you just told me, son, not one little bit. We got
Ivan playing Santa Claus with all this diplomatic horseshit, and at the same
time he's dialing his submarine force in. Could be a coincidence. Then again,
it might not be. How about you and me go over to talk with CINCLANT and his
intelligence chief?"

Toland winced. What have I got myself into? "Sir, I'm
down here for a training rotation, not to-"

"Looks to me like you got this intelligence crap down
pretty pat, Commander. You believe what you just told me is true?"

Toland stiffened. "Yes, sir."

"Then I'm giving you a chance to prove it. You afraid
to stick your neck out-or do you just offer opinions to relatives and
friends?" the Admiral asked harshly.

Toland had heard that Pipes was a real hard-case. The
reservist rose to his feet.

"Let's do it, Admiral."

Pipes picked up his phone and dialed in a three-digit
number, his direct line to CINCLANT. "Bill? Dick. I got a boy in my office
I think you oughta talk to. Remember what we discussed last Thursday? We may
have confirmation." A brief pause. "Yeah, that's exactly what I'm
saying. . . . Aye aye, sir, on the way." Pipes set the phone down. "McCafferty,
thank you for bringing this man in with you. We'll go over your patrol report
this afternoon. Be here at 1530. Toland, you come along with me."

An hour later, Lieutenant Commander Robert M. Toland,
USNR-R, was informed that he had been placed on extended active duty by order
of the Secretary of Defense. In fact it was by order of CINCLANT, but the forms
would be correctly filled out in a week or so.

At lunch that day in "flag country" of Building
One of the complex, CINCLANT called in all his type commanders-the three-star
admirals who controlled the aircraft, surface ships, submarines, and
replenishment ships. The conversation was subdued, and ceased entirely when the
stewards came in to change the courses. They were all in their fifties,
experienced, serious men who both made and implemented policy, preparing for
something they hoped would never come. This hope continued, but by the time
each had finished his second cup of coffee, it was decided that fleet training
cycles would be increased, and a few surprise inspections would be made.
CINCLANT made an appointment with the Chief of Naval Operations for the
following morning, and his deputy intelligence chief boarded a commercial
airliner for a quick trip to Pearl Harbor, to meet with his opposite number in
the Pacific.

Toland was relieved of his post and transferred to
Intentions, part of CINCLANT's personal intelligence advisory staff.

6 - The Watchers

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

Intentions was a small second-floor office normally occupied
by four officers. Shoehorning Toland in there was difficult, mainly because all
the classified material had to be covered up while the civilian movers got the
desk in place. When they finally left, Bob found he had just about enough space
to get into and out of his swivel chair. The office door had a cipher lock with
five rocker switches concealed in a steel container. Located in the northwest
comer of CINCLANT headquarters, the office's barred windows overlooked a
highway and little else. The drab curtains were closed anyway. Inside, the
walls might have been painted beige once, but the plaster had whitened from
underneath to give the office the sort of pallor expected in a yellow-fever
ward.

The senior officer was a Marine colonel named Chuck Lowe,
who had watched the moving-in process with a silent resentment that Bob only
understood when the man got to his feet.

"I may never make it to the head now," Lowe
grumped, sticking his cast around the comer of his desk. They shook hands.

"What happened to the leg, Colonel?"

"Mountain Warfare School out in California, day after
Christmas, skiing on my own Goddamned time. The docs say you should never break
the tibia close to the bottom," Lowe explained with an ironic smile.
"And you never get used to the itching. Should have this thing off in
another three or four weeks. Then I have to get used to running again. You
know, I spent three years trying to break my ass out of intel, then I finally
get my Goddamned regiment, and this happens. Welcome aboard, Toland. Why don't
you grab us both a cup of coffee?"

There was a pot atop the farthest filing cabinet. The other
three officers, Lowe explained, were giving a briefing.

"I saw the writeup you gave CINCLANT. Interesting
stuff. What do you think Ivan's up to?"

"It looks like he's increasing readiness across the
board, Colonel-"

"In here, you can call me Chuck."

"Fine-I'm Bob."

"You do signal intelligence at NSA, right? You're one
of the satellite specialists, I heard."

Toland nodded. "Ours and theirs, mostly ours. I see
photos from time to time, but mostly I do signals work. That's how we twigged
to the report on the four colonels. There has also been a fair amount of
operational maneuvering done, more than usual for this time of year. Ivan's
been a little freer with how his tankers drive around, too, less concern about
running a battalion across a plowed field, for example."

"And you're supposed to have a look at anything that's
unusual, no matter how dumb it seems, right? That gives you a pretty wide
brief, doesn't it? We got something interesting along those lines from DIA.
Have a look at these." Lowe pulled a pair of eight-by-ten photographs from
a manila envelope and handed them to Toland. They seemed to show the same
parcel of land, but from slightly different angles and different times of year.
In the upper left comer was a pair of isbas, the crude huts of Russian peasant
life. Toland looked up.

"Collective farm?"

"Yeah. Number 1196, a little one about two hundred
klicks northwest of Moscow. Tell me what's different between the two."

Toland looked back at the photos. In one was a straight line
of fenced gardens, perhaps an acre each. In the other he could see a new fence
for four of the patches, and one patch whose fenced area had been roughly
doubled.

"A colonel-army-type-I used to work with sent me these.
Thought I'd find it amusing. I grew up on a corn farm in Iowa, you see."

"So Ivan's increasing the private patches for the
farmers to work on their own, eh?"

"Looks that way."

"Hasn't been announced, has it? I haven't read anything
about it."  Toland didn't read the
government's secret in-house publication, National Intelligence Digest, but the
NSA cafeteria gossip usually covered harmless stuff like this. Intelligence
types talked shop as much as any others.

Lowe shook his head slightly. "Nope, and that's a
little odd. It's something they should announce. The papers would call that
another sure sign of the 'liberalization trend' we've been seeing."

"Just this one farm, maybe?"

"As a matter of fact, they've seen the same thing at
five other places. But we don't generally use our reconsats for this sort of
thing. They got this on a slow news day, I suppose. The important stuff must
have been covered by clouds." Toland nodded agreement. The reconnaissance
satellites were used to evaluate Soviet grain crops, but that happened later in
the year. The Russians knew it also, since it had been in the open press for
over a decade, explaining why there was a team of agronomists in the U.S.
Department of Agriculture with Special Intelligence-Compartmented security
clearance.

"Kind of late in the season to do that, isn't it? I
mean, will it do any good to give 'em this land this time of year?"

"I got these a week ago. I think they're a little older
than that. This is about the time most of their farms start planting. It stays
cold there quite a long time, remember, but the high latitudes make up for it
with longer summer days. Assume that this is a nationwide move on their part.
Evaluate that for me, Bob." The colonel's eyes narrowed briefly.

"Smart move on their part, obviously. It could solve a
lot of their food supply problems, particularly for-truck-farm. stuff, I guess,
tomatoes, onions, that sort of thing."

"Maybe. You might also note that this sort of farming
is manpower intensive but not machinery-intensive. What about the demographic
aspect of the move?"

Toland blinked. There was a tendency in the U.S. Navy to
assume that since they made their living by charging into machine-gun fire,
Marines were dumb. "Most of the kokolzniki are relatively old folks. The
median age is in the late forties, early fifties. So most of the private plots
are managed by the older people, while the mechanized work, like driving the
combines and trucks-"

"Which pays a hell of a lot better."

"-is done by the younger workers. You're telling me
that this way they can increase some food production without the younger
men...of military service age."

"One way to look at it," Lowe said.
"Politically it's dynamite. You can't take away things people already
have. Back in the early sixties, a rumor-wasn't even true-got started to the
effect that Khrushchev was going to reduce or eliminate the private plots those
poor bastards get. There was hell to pay! I was in the language school at
Monterey then, and I remember the Russian papers that came through the language
school. They spent weeks denying the story. Those private plots are the most
productive sector of their agricultural system. Less than two percent of their
arable land, it produces about half of their fruit and potatoes, more than a
third of their eggs, vegetables, and meat. Hell, it's the only part of the
damned agricultural system that works. The bigshots over there have known for
years that by doing this they could solve their food shortage problems, and
still they haven't done it for political reasons. They couldn't run the risk of
State sponsorship for a whole new generation of kulaks. Until now. But it
appears they've done it without making a formal announcement. And it just so
happens that they're increasing their military readiness at the same time. I
never believe in coincidences, even when I'm a dumb line officer running across
a beach."

Lowe's uniform blouse hung in the comer. Toland sipped at
his coffee and surveyed its four rows of decorations. There were three repeat
pips on his Vietnam service ribbon. And a Navy Cross. Dressed in the
olive-green sweater affected by Marine officers, Lowe was not a big man, and
his Midwest accent gave evidence of a relaxed, almost bored outlook on life.
But his brown eyes said something else entirely. Colonel Lowe was thinking
along Toland's lines already, and he was not the least happy about it.

"Chuck, if they are really preparing for some
action-action on a large scale, they just can't mess with a few colonels.
Something else will start showing up. They'll have to do some work at the
bottom, too."

"Yeah, that's the next thing we have to look for. I
sent a request into DIA yesterday. From now on, when Red Star comes out, the
attach‚ in Moscow will send a photo-facsimile to us via satellite. If they
start doing that, it'll sure as hell turn up in Kraznaya Zvesda. Bob, I think
you've opened a very interesting can of worms, and you're not going to be alone
examining it."

Toland finished his coffee. The Soviets had taken an entire
class of fleet ballistic missile submarines out of service. They were
conducting arms talks in Vienna. They were buying grain from America and Canada
under surprisingly favorable terms, even allowing American hulls to handle 20
percent of the cargo. How did this jibe with the signs he had seen? Logically
it didn't, except in one specific case-and that wasn't possible. Was it?

SHPOLA, THE UKRAINE

The crashing sound of the 125mm tank gun was enough to strip
the hair off your head, Alekseyev thought, but after five hours of running this
exercise, it came through his ear protectors as a dull ringing sound. This
morning the ground had been covered with grass and dotted with new saplings,
but now it was a uniform wasteland of mud, marked only with the tread marks of
T-80 main battle tanks and BMP armored infantry fighting vehicles. Three times
the regiment had run this exercise, simulating a frontal assault of tanks and
mounted infantry against an enemy of equal strength. Ninety mobile guns had
supplied fire support, along with a battery of rocket launchers. Three times.

Alekseyev turned, removing his helmet and earmuffs to look
at the regimental commander. "A Guards regiment, eh, Comrade Colonel?
Elite soldiers of the Red Army? These tit-sucking children couldn't guard a
Turkish whorehouse, much less do anything worthwhile inside of it! And what
have you been doing for the past four years commanding this rolling circus,
Comrade Colonel? You have learned to kill your whole command three times! Your
artillery observers are not located properly. Your tanks and infantry carriers
still can't coordinate their movements, and your tank gunners can't find
targets three meters high! If that had been a NATO force holding that ridge,
you and your command would be dead!" Alekseyev examined the colonel's
face. His demeanor was changing from red-fear to white-anger. Good. "The
loss of these people is no great penalty for the State, but that is valuable
equipment, burning valuable fuel, shooting valuable ordnance, and taking up my
valuable time! Comrade Colonel, I must leave you now. First I will throw up.
Then I will fly to my command post. I will be back. When I come back, we will
run this exercise again. Your men will perform properly, Comrade Colonel, or
you will spend the rest of your miserable life counting trees!"

Alekseyev stomped off, not even acknowledging the colonel's
salute. His adjutant, a full colonel of tank troops, held open the door and got
in behind his boss.

"Shaping up rather well, eh?" Alekseyev asked.

"Not well enough, but there has been progress,"
the colonel allowed. "They have only another six weeks before they have to
start moving west."

It was the wrong thing to say. Alekseyev had spent two weeks
chivvying this division toward combat readiness, only to learn the day before
that it had been allocated to Germany instead of toward his own as-yet
incomplete plan to descend into Iraq and Iran. Already four divisions-all of
his elite Guards tank units-had been taken away, and each change in
CINC-Southwest's order of battle forced him to restructure his own plan for the
Gulf An endless circle. He was being forced to select less-ready units, forcing
Alekseyev to devote more time to unit training and less time to the plan that
had to be completed in another two weeks.

"Those men are going to have a very busy six weeks.
What about the commander?" the colonel asked.

Alekseyev shrugged. "He's been in this job too long.
Forty-five is too old for this kind of command, and he reads his fucking parade
manuals too much instead of going out in the field. But a good man. Too good to
be sent counting trees." Alekseyev chuckled heavily. It was a Russian
saying that dated back to the czars. People exiled to Siberia were said to have
nothing to do but count trees. Another of the things Lenin had changed. Now
people in the Gulag had plenty to do. "The last two times they did well
enough to succeed, I think. This regiment will be ready, along with the whole
division."

USS PHARRIS

"Bridge, sonar: we have a contact bearing
zero-nine-four!" announced a voice on the bulkhead-mounted speaker.
Commander Morris turned in his elevated swivel chair to watch his officer of
the deck respond.

The OOD trained his binoculars to the direction of the
contact. There was nothing there: "Bearing is clear."

Morris got up from his chair. "Set Condition
I-AS."

"Aye aye. Battle Stations," the OOD acknowledged
the order. The boatswain's-mate-of-the-watch walked to the announcing system,
and blew a three-note whistle on his bosun's pipe into the speaker.
"General Quarters, General Quarters, all hands man your battle stations
for anti-submarine warfare." The alarm gong came next, and a quiet
forenoon watch ended.

Morris went aft, down the ladder to the Combat Information
Center, or CIC. His executive officer would take the conn at the bridge,
allowing the captain to control the ship's weapons and sensors from her
tactical nerve center. All over the ship, men were running to stations.
Watertight doors and hatches were dropped into place and dogged down to give
the ship full watertight integrity. Damage-control parties donned emergency
equipment. It took just over four minutes. Getting better, Morris noted as the
"manned and ready" calls were relayed to him by the CIC talker. Since
leaving Norfolk four days before, PHARRIS was averaging three GQ calls per day,
as ordered by Commander, Naval Surface Forces, Atlantic. No one had confirmed
it, but Morris figured that his friend's information had kicked over an
anthill. His training routines had been doubled, and the orders for the
increase of activity were classified as high as anything he had ever seen. More
remarkably, the increased training tempos would interfere with maintenance
scheduling, something not lightly set aside.

"All stations report manned and ready!" the talker
finally announced. "Condition Zebra set throughout the ship."

"Very well," the tactical action officer
acknowledged.

"Report, mister," Morris ordered.

"Sir, the navigation and air-search radars are in
stand-by and the sonar is in passive mode," replied the TAO. "Contact
looks like a schnorkeling submarine. Came in clear all at once. We've got a
target-motion-analysis track going. His bearing is changing fore-to-aft, and
pretty fast, too. A little soon to be sure, but it's shaping up like he's on a
reciprocal heading, probably no more than ten miles out."

"Contact report off to Norfolk yet?"

"Waiting for your say-so."

"Very well. Let's see how well we can run a hold-down
exercise, mister."

Within fifteen minutes, Pharris's helicopter was dropping
sonobuoys on the submarine, and the frigate was lashing it with her powerful
active sonar. They wouldn't stop until the Soviet submarine admitted defeat by
coming back to schnorkeling depth-or until he evaded the frigate, which would
put a large black mark in Morris's copybook. The objective of this non-lethal
exercise was nasty enough: to break the submarine captain's confidence in his
vessel, his crew, and himself.

USS CHICAGO

They were a thousand miles offshore, heading northeast at
twenty-five knots. The crew was decidedly unhappy, though they'd all been
through this before. What should have been a three-week layover at Norfolk had
been cut short at eight days, a bitter pill after a long first cruise. Trips
and vacations had been interrupted, and some minor maintenance work supposed to
have been done by shoreside technicians was now being done round the clock by
her own crew. McCafferty had announced his sealed orders to the crew two hours
after diving: conduct two weeks of intensive tracking and torpedo drills, then
proceed to the Barents Sea for further intelligence gathering. It was
important, he told them. They'd heard that one before, too.

7 - Initial Observations

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

Toland hoped his uniform was properly arranged. It was 0630
on a Wednesday morning, and he'd been up since four rehearsing his presentation,
and cursing CINCLANT for an early-riser who probably wanted to get in a round
of golf that afternoon. He would spend the afternoon as he had for several
weeks, sifting through endless intel documents and copies of Soviet
publications in the Intentions cubbyhole half a building away.

The Flag Officers Briefing Room seemed a different world
from the rest of the tawdry building, but that was hardly a surprise. Admirals
liked their comforts. Bob made a quick trip to the nearby head to eliminate a distraction
caused by too much wake-up coffee. By the time he came back, the flag officers
were filing in. They exchanged greetings, but there were no jokes, none of the
banter one would expect this early in the morning. The officers selected their
leather seats by order of rank. Those few who smoked had ashtrays. Each had a
note pad. Stewards brought in several pots of coffee, cream, and sugar on
silver trays, then withdrew. The cups were already in place. Each officer
poured himself a cup as part of the morning ritual. CINCLANT nodded to Toland.

"Good morning,
gentlemen. Approximately a month ago, four colonels in the Soviet Army, all
regimental commanders in mechanized divisions, were court-martialed and
executed for falsifying data on their unit training and readiness
reports," Toland began, explaining the significance of this.

"Earlier this week Kraznaya Zvesda, 'Red Star,' the
daily newspaper of the entire Soviet military, publicized the execution of a
number of privates in the Soviet Army. All but two were in the final six months
of their enlistment period, and all were charged with disobeying the orders of
their sergeants. Why is this significant?

"The Russian Army has long been known for its tough
discipline, but as with many aspects of the Soviet Union, not everything is as
it seems. A sergeant in the Soviet Army is not a professional soldier as is the
case in most armies. He is a conscript, just like the privates, selected early
in his enlistment term for special training due to his intelligence, political
reliability, or perceived leadership ability. He is sent to a tough six-month
course to make him an instant sergeant, then returned to his operational unit.
In fact he has about as little practical experience as his subordinates, and
his superior knowledge of tactics and weapons-use is a matter of increments
rather than the more dramatic differences between sergeants and new recruits in
Western forces.

"Because of this, the real pecking order in Soviet
ground formations does not necessarily derive from rank, but from time in
service. The Soviets induct their troops twice a year, in December and June.
With the usual two-year term of service, we see that there are four 'classes'
in any formation: the lowest class is in its first six-month period and the
highest is in its fourth. The young men who have the actual status in a Soviet
rifle company are those in their final six-month term. They typically demand
and get the best-or at least the most-food, uniforms, and work details. And
they typically obviate the authority of the company NCOs. In fact, orders come
directly from the officers, not the platoon and squad sergeants, and are
usually carried out with little regard to what we consider conventional
military discipline at the subofficer level. As you can imagine, this places an
enormous strain on the junior officers, and in many ways forces the officers to
live with some things that they clearly do not and cannot like."

"You're saying that their military formations operate
under the principle of organized anarchy," observed the commander of
Strike Fleet Atlantic. "Their Navy sure as hell doesn't."

"That is true, sir. As we know, their seamen are in for
three years instead of two, and their situation, while similar, has many
differences from that of the Soviet Army. And it would seem that this situation
is ending in the Soviet Army as well, that sub-unit discipline is being quickly
and vigorously reestablished."

"Just how many privates got themselves popped?"
asked the general commanding 2nd Marine Division.

"Eleven, sir, listed by name and unit. That information
is in your handout. Most were in their 'fourth class,' meaning the last six
months of their enlistment period."

"Did the article you read make general
conclusions?" CINCLANT asked.

"No, Admiral. There is an unwritten rule in Soviet
publications, both military and civilian, that you can criticize, but not
generalize. What that means is that individual screwups can be identified and
castigated at length, but for political reasons it is unacceptable to make
general criticisms applying to a whole institution. You see, a critique that
pointed to an all-pervasive condition would ipso facto critique Soviet society
as a whole, and thereby the Communist Party, which oversees every aspect of
Soviet life. It is a thin, but to them a philosophically important,
distinction. In fact, when individual malefactors are named, the system as a
whole is being criticized, but in a politically acceptable way. This article is
a signal to every officer, NCO, and private soldier in the Soviet military: the
times, they are a changin'. The question we've been asking over in Intentions
is, Why?

"It would appear that this is not an isolated case of
changing times." Toland flipped on an overhead projector and set a view
graph in place. "Within the Soviet Navy, surface-to-surface missile
live-fires are up seventy percent from last year, not quite an all-time high,
but as you can see from this graph, pretty close to it. Submarine deployments,
mainly those for diesel subs, are down, and intelligence reports tell us that
an unusually high number of submarines are in the yards for what appears to be
routine but unscheduled maintenance. We have reason to believe that this
situation is connected with a nationwide shortage of lead-acid batteries. It
appears likely that all Soviet submarines are undergoing battery replacement,
and that regular battery production is being redirected to militarily important
segments of the Soviet economy.

"We have also noted higher levels of activity by Soviet
naval surface forces, naval aviation units and other long-range aircraft
formations, again with increased weapons exercises. Finally, there has been an
increase in the time-away-from-port days of Soviet surface combatants. Although
this number represents a small increase, operational patterns are different
from what we've become accustomed to. Instead of sailing from one point to
another and just dropping the hook, their surface combatants appear to be
running more realistic exercises. They've done this before, but never without
announcing it.

"So what we are seeing in the Soviet Navy is an
extensive stand-down accompanied by increasing tempos in the actual exercises
that are being run. Matched with what we're seeing in the Soviet Army and Air
Force, it appears that their military readiness is being increased across the
board. At the same time that they are proposing reductions in strategic nuclear
weapons, their conventional forces are rapidly improving their ability to
engage in, combat operations. We in Intentions regard this combination of
factors as potentially dangerous."

"Looks kind of hazy to me," an admiral said around
his pipe. "How are we supposed to persuade somebody that this means
anything?"

"A good question, sir. Any of these indicators taken in
isolation would appear entirely logical in and of itself. What concerns us is
why they are all happening at once. The problem of manpower utilization in the
Soviet military has been around for generations. The problem of training norms,
and integrity in their officer corps, is not exactly new either. What caught my
interest was the battery thing. We are seeing the beginnings of what could
become a major disruption within the Soviet economy. The Russians plan
everything centrally in their economy, and on a political basis as well. The
main factory that makes batteries is operating three shifts instead of the
usual two, so production is up, but supply in the civilian economy is down. In
any case, Admiral, you're correct. Individually, these things mean nothing at
all. It's only when taken in combination that we see anything to be concerned
about."

"But you're concerned," CINCLANT said.

"Yes, sir."

"Me too, son. What else are you doing about it?"

"We have an inquiry into SACEUR to notify us of
anything they think is unusual in the current activities of the Group of Soviet
Forces in Germany. The Norwegians have increased their surveillance in the
Barents Sea. We're starting to get more access to satellite photography of
ports and fleet bases. DIA has been informed of our data, and is running its
own investigation. More bits and pieces are beginning to show up."

"What about CIA?'

"DIA is handling that for us through their headquarters
at Arlington Hall."

"When do their spring maneuvers begin?" CINCLANT
asked.

"Sir, the annual Warsaw Pact spring exercise-they're
calling it Progress this year-is scheduled to begin in three weeks. There are
indications that in keeping with the spirit of d‚tente, the Soviets will invite
NATO military representatives to keep an eye on things, and Western news crews
as well-"

"I'll tell you what's scary about this,"
Commander, Naval Surface Forces, Atlantic, grunted. "All of a sudden
they've started doing what we've always asked them to do."

"Try selling that to the papers," Commander, Naval
Air Forces, Atlantic, suggested.

"Recommendations?" CINCLANT asked his operations
officer.

"We're already running a pretty active training
schedule ourselves. I don't suppose it would hurt to beef that up. Toland, you
said that what tipped you to this situation was this battery thing in the
civilian economy. Are you looking for other economic disruptions?"

"Yes, sir, we are. That's DIA's brief, and my contact
in Arlington Hall is also asking CIA to run some additional checks. If I might
amplify on this point, gentlemen, the Soviet economy is centrally managed, as I
said earlier. Those industrial plans they have are fairly rigid. They don't
deviate from them lightly, since those deviations tend to have a ripple effect
throughout the economy as a whole. 'Disruption' may be too strong a word at
present-"

"You just have a nasty suspicion," CINCLANT said.
"Fine, Toland, that's what we pay you for. Good brief."

Bob took his cue and left. The admirals stayed put to talk
things over.

It was a relief to leave. Much as he liked the attention,
being examined by senior officials like a tissue culture on a petrie dish could
make you old rather quickly. He walked through a covered walkway back to his
building, and watched the late arrivals wander about looking for parking
places. The grass was greening up. A civilian crew was mowing while another was
fertilizing. The shrubbery was already beginning to grow, and he hoped they'd
let the bushes expand a bit before they trimmed them back again. Norfolk could
be pleasant in the spring, he knew, with the fragrance of azaleas on the
salt-laden air. He wondered how pleasant it would be in summer.

"How'd it go?" Chuck asked.

Toland stripped off his jacket and allowed his knees to sag
theatrically in front of the Marine. "Pretty well. Nobody snapped my head
off."

"Didn't want to worry you before, but there's people in
there been known to do that. They say CINCLANT likes nothing better for
breakfast than fried commander garnished with diced lieutenant."

"Big surprise. He's an admiral, isn't he? I've done
briefs before, Chuck." All Marines thought all sailors were wimps, Toland
reminded himself. No sense giving Chuck more encouragement for that view.

"Any conclusions?"

"CINCLANT ops talked about increasing training
schedules. I got excused right after that."

"Good. We ought to have a packet of satellite shots
later today. There are some questions coming in from Langley and Arlington.
Nothing firm yet, but I think they might be stumbling onto some odd data. If it
turns out you're right, Bob-well, you know how it works."

"Sure. Somebody closer to D.C. will make The Discovery.
Shit, I don't care about that, Chuck, I want to be wrong! I want this whole
friggin' thing to blow over, then I can go home and play in my garden."

"Well, maybe I got some good news for you. We got our
TV tied into a new satellite receiver. I talked the communications guys into
letting us tap into Russian television to catch their evening news. We won't learn
anything hard, but it's a good way of catching moods. Just tried it out before
you got here, and found out Ivan's running a film festival for all of Sergey
Eisenstein's classics. Tonight, The Battleship Potemkin, followed by all the
others, and ending on May 30 with Alexander Nevsky.

"Oh? I have Nevsky on tape."

"Yeah, well, they took the original negatives, flew
them to EMI in London to make digitalized masters, and rerecorded the original
Prokofiev score on a Dolby format. We'll be making tapes. Your machine VHS or
Beta?"

"VHS." Toland laughed. "Maybe this job has a
few bennies after all. So, what new stuff do we have?"

Lowe handed him a six-inch file of documents. Time to get
back to work. Toland settled in his chair and began sorting through the papers.

KIEV, THE UKRAINE

"Things are looking better, Comrade," Alekseyev
reported. "Discipline in the officer corps has improved immeasurably. The
exercise with 261st Guards went very well this morning."

"And 173rd Guards?" CINC-Southwest asked.

"They too need further work, but they should be ready
in time," Alekseyev said confidently. "The officers are acting like
officers. Now we need to get the privates to act like soldiers. We'll see when
Progress begins. We must have our officers turn away from the usual set-piece
choreography and seek realistic engagement scenarios. We can use Progress to
identify leaders who cannot adapt to a real combat environment and replace them
with younger men who can." He sat down opposite his commander's desk.
Alekseyev calculated that he was exactly one month behind in his sleep.

"You look weary, Pasha," CINC-Southwest observed.

"No, Comrade General, I haven't had the time."
Alekseyev chuckled. "But if I make one more helicopter trip I think I
shall sprout wings."

"Pasha, I want you to go home and not return for
twenty-four hours."

"I---"

"If you were a horse," the General observed,
"you would have broken down by now. This is an order from your
commander-in-chief. Twenty-four hours of rest. I would prefer that you spend it
all sleeping, but that is your affair. Think, Pavel Leonidovich. Were we now
engaged in combat operations, you would be better rested-regulations require
it, a harsh lesson from our last war with the Germans. I need your talents
unhindered-and if you drive yourself too hard now, you won't be worth a damn
when I really need you! I will see you at 1600 tomorrow to go over our plan for
the Persian Gulf. You will be clear of eye and straight of back."

Alekseyev stood. His boss was a gruff old bear, so much like
his own father had been. And a soldier's soldier. "Let the record show
that I obey all orders from my commander-in-chief." Both men laughed. Both
needed it.

Alekseyev left the office and walked downstairs to his
official car. When it arrived at the apartment block a few kilometers away, the
driver had to awaken his general.

USS CHICAGO

"Close-approach procedures," McCafferty ordered.

McCafferty had been tracking a surface ship for two hours,
ever since his sonarmen had detected her at a range of forty-four miles. The
approach was being made on sonar only, and under the captain's orders, sonar
had not told the fire-control party what they were tracking. For the time
being, every surface contact was being treated as a hostile warship.

"Range three-five hundred yards," the executive
officer reported. "Bearing one-four-two, speed eighteen knots, course
two-six-one."

"Up scope!" McCafferty ordered. The attack
periscope slid up from its well on the starboard side of the pedestal. A
quartermaster's mate got behind the instrument, dropped the handles in place,
and trained it to the proper bearing. The captain sighted the crosshairs on the
target's bow.

"Bearing-mark!"

The quartermaster squeezed the button on the
"pickle," transmitting the bearing to the MK-117 fire-control
computer.

"Angle on the bow, starboard twenty."

The fire-control technician punched the data into the
computer. The microchips rapidly computed distances and angles.

"Solution set. Ready for tubes three and four!"

"Okay." McCafferty stepped back from the periscope
and looked over at the exec. "You want to see what we killed?"

"Damn!" The executive officer laughed and lowered
the periscope. "Move over, Otto Kretchmer!"

McCafferty picked up the microphone, which went to speakers
throughout the submarine. "This is the captain speaking. We just completed
the tracking exercise. For anyone who's interested, the ship we just 'killed'
is the Universe Ireland, three hundred forty thousand tons' worth of
ultra-large crude-carrier. That is all." He put the mike back in its
cradle.

"XO, critique?"

"It was too easy, skipper," the executive officer
said. "His speed and course were constant. We might have shaved four or
five minutes on the target-motion analysis right after we acquired him, but we
were looking for a zigzag instead of a constant course. For my money, it's
better to proceed like that on a slow target. I'd say we have things going
pretty well."

McCafferty nodded agreement. A high-speed target like a
destroyer might well head directly for them. The slow ones would probably be
altering course constantly under wartime conditions. "We're getting
there." The captain looked over to his fire-control party. "That was
well done. Let's keep it that way." The next time, McCafferty thought,
he'd arrange for sonar not to report a target until it got really close. Then
he'd see how fast his men could handle a snapshot engagement. Until then he
decided on a strenuous series of computer-simulated engagement drills.

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

"Those are batteries. Okay, it's confirmed." Lowe
handed over the satellite photographs. A number of trucks were visible, and
though most had their loadbeds covered by canvas, the loadbeds of three were
exposed to the high-flying satellite. What he saw were the bathtub-shapes of
oversized battery cells, and gangs of seamen manhandling them across a pier.

"How old are these shots?" Toland asked.

"Eighteen hours."

"Would have been useful this morning," the younger
man grumped. "Looks like three Tangos nested together. These are ten-ton
trucks. I count nine of them. I checked around, each individual battery cell
weighs two hundred eighteen kilograms empty-"

"Ouch. How many to fill up a sub?"

"A lot!" Toland grinned. "We don't know that,
exactly. I found four different estimates, with a thirty-percent spread. It
probably differs from ship to ship anyway. The more you build of a design, the
more you're tempted to fool around with it. That's what we do." Toland
looked up. "We need more access to these."

"Already taken care of. From here on we're on the
distribution list for all shots of naval sites. What do you think of the
activity for the surface ships?"

Toland shrugged. The photographs showed perhaps a dozen
surface combatants, ranging from cruisers to corvettes. The decks of all were
littered with cables and crates; a large number of men was visible. "You
can't tell much from this. No cranes, so nothing massive was being onloaded,
but cranes can move, too. That's the problem with ships. Everything you need to
know about is under cover. All we can tell from these photos is that they're
tied alongside. Anything else is pure supposition. Even with the subs, we're
inferring that they're loading batteries aboard."

"Come on, Bob," Lowe snorted.

"Think about it, Chuck," Toland replied.
"They know what our satellites are for, right? They know what their
orbital paths are, and they know when they will be at any given point in space.
If they really want to fake us out, how hard is it? If your mission was to fake
out satellites, and you knew when they came, you think you might play games
with the other guy's head? We depend too much on these things. They're useful
as hell, sure, but they have their limitations. It'd be nice to get some human
intelligence on this."

POLYARNYY, R.S.F.S.R.

"There's just something weird about watching a guy pour
cement into a ship," Flynn observed on the ride back to Murmansk. No one
had ever told him about ballast.

"Ah, but it can be a beautiful thing!" exclaimed
their escort, a junior captain in the Soviet Navy. "Now if only your
navies can do the same!"

The small press group that had been allowed to stand on a
pier and watch the neutralization of the first two Yankee-class fleet ballistic
missile submarines was being carefully managed, Flynn and Calloway noted. They
were being driven around in groups of two and three, each group with a naval
officer and a driver. Hardly unexpected, of course. Both men were amazed that
they were being allowed onto so sensitive a base at all.

"A pity that your president did not allow a team of
American officers to observe this," the escort went on.

"Yeah, I have to agree with you there, Captain,"
Flynn nodded. It would have made a much better story. As it was, a Swede and an
Indian officer, neither a submariner, had gotten a closer look at what the
reporters called the "cement ceremony," and reported somberly
afterward that, yes, cement had been poured into each missile launch tube on
the two submarines. Flynn had timed the length of each pour, and would do some
checking when he got back. What was the volume of a missile tube? How much
cement to fill it? How long to pour the cement? "Even so, Captain, you
must agree that the American response to your country's negotiating position
has been extremely positive."

Through all this, William Calloway kept his peace and stared
out the car's window. He'd covered the Falkland Islands War for his wire
service, and spent a lot of time with the Royal Navy, both afloat and in naval
shipyards watching preparations for sending the Queen's fleet south. They were
now passing by the piers and work areas for a number of surface warships.
Something was wrong here, but he couldn't quite pin it down. What Flynn did not
know was that his colleague often worked informally for the British Secret
Intelligence Service. Never in a sensitive capacity-the man was a
correspondent, not a spy-but like most reporters he was a shrewd, observant
man, careful to note things that editors would never allow to clutter up a
story. He didn't even know who the station chief in Moscow was, but he could
report on this to a friend in Her Majesty's embassy. The data would find its
way to the right person.

"So what does our English friend think of Soviet
shipyards?" the captain inquired with a broad smile.

"Far more modem than ours," Calloway replied.
"And I gather you don't have dockyard unions, Captain?"

The officer laughed. "We have no need for unions in the
Soviet Union. Here the workers already own everything." That was the
standard Party line, both reporters noted. Of course.

"Are you a submarine officer?" the Englishman
inquired.

"No!" the captain exclaimed. A hearty laugh.
Russians are big on laughs when they want to be, Flynn thought. "I come
from the steppes. I like blue sky and broad horizons. I have great respect for
my comrades on submarines, but I have no wish to join them."

"My feelings exactly, Captain," Calloway agreed.
"We elderly Brits like our parks and gardens. What sort of sailor are
you?"

"I have shore assignment now, but my last ship was
Leonid Brezhnev, icebreaker. We do some survey work, and also make a way for
merchant ships along the Arctic Coast to the Pacific."

"That must be a demanding job," Calloway said.
"And a dangerous one." Keep talking, old boy . . .

"It demands caution, yes, but we Russians are
accustomed to cold and ice. It is a proud task to aid the economic growth of
your country."

"I could never be a sailor," Calloway went on. He
saw a curious look in Flynn's eyes: The hell you couldn't . . . "Too much
work, even when you're in port. Like now. Are your shipyards always this
busy?"

"Ah, this is not busy," the captain said without
much thought.

The man from Reuters nodded. The ships were cluttered, but
there was not that much obvious activity. Not so many people moving about. Many
cranes were still. Trucks were parked. But the surface warships and auxiliaries
were cluttered as if . . . He checked his watch. Three-thirty in the afternoon.
The workday was hardly over. "A great day for East-West detente," he
said to cover his feelings. "A great story for Pat and me to tell our
readers."

"This is good." The captain smiled again. "It
is time we had real peace."

The correspondents were back in Moscow four hours later,
after the usual uncomfortable ride on an Aeroflot jet with its Torquemada
seats. The two reporters walked to Flynn's car-Calloway's was still hors de
combat with mechanical problems. He grumbled at having gotten a Soviet car
instead of bringing his Morris over with him. Bloody impossible to get parts.

"A good story today, Patrick?"

"You bet. But I wish we'd been able to snap a picture
or two." They were promised Sovfoto shots of the "cement ceremony."

"What did you think of the shipyard?"

"Big enough. I spent a day at Norfolk once. They all
look alike to me."

Calloway nodded thoughtfully. Shipyards do look alike, he
thought, but why did Polyarnyy seem strange? His suspicious reporter's mind? The
constant question: What is he/she/it hiding? But the Soviets had never allowed
him on a naval base, and this was his third tour in Moscow. He'd been to
Murmansk before. Once he'd spoken with the Mayor and asked how the naval
personnel affected his administration of the city. There were always uniforms
visible on the street. The Mayor had tried to evade the question, and finally
said, "There are no Navy in Murmansk." A typical Russian answer to an
awkward question-but now they'd let a dozen Western reporters into one of their
most sensitive bases. QED, they were not hiding anything. Or were they? After
he filed his story, Calloway decided, he'd have a brandy with his friend at the
embassy. Besides, there was a party celebrating something or other.

He arrived at the embassy, on Morisa Toreza Embankment
across the river from the Kremlin walls, just after nine o'clock that night. It
turned into four brandies. By the fourth, the correspondent was going over a
map of the naval base and using his trained memory to indicate just what
activity he'd seen where. An hour later, the data was encrypted and cabled to
London.

8 - Further Observations

GRASSAU, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

The TV news crew was having a great time. It had been years
since they'd been allowed to film a Soviet military unit in action, and the
entertainment value of the mistakes they saw gave plenty of spice for a piece
on the NBC Nightly News. As they watched, a tank battalion was stalled at a
crossroads on Highway 101, fifty kilometers south of Berlin. They'd taken a
wrong turn somewhere, and the battalion commander was screaming at his
subordinates. After two minutes of that, a captain stepped forward and made a
few gestures at the map. A major was banished from the scene as the younger man
apparently solved the problem. The camera followed the dejected major into a
staff car, which drove north along the main road. Five minutes later, the
battalion was mounted and rolling. The news crew took its time reloading its
equipment into their carryall, and the chief reporter took the time to walk
over to a French officer who had also observed the procedure.

The Frenchman was a member of the Joint Military Liaison
Group, a convenient leftover of the Second World War which enabled both sides
to spy on each other. A lean, poker-faced man, he wore paratrooper's wings and
smoked Gauloises. He was an intelligence officer, of course.

"What do you make of this, Major?" the NBC
reporter asked.

"They made a mistake four kilometers back. They should
have turned left, but didn't." A Gallic shrug.

"Not very impressive performance for the Russians, is
it?" The reporter laughed. The Frenchman was more thoughtful.

"Did you notice that they had a German officer with
them?"

The reporter had noticed the different uniform, but not
realized its significance. "Oh, is that what he was? Why didn't they ask
him for help?"

"Yes," the French major answered. He didn't say
that this was the fourth time he had seen a Soviet officer refrain from asking
assistance from his East German guide . . . and all in the last two days. To
have Soviet units get lost was an old story. The Russians used a different
alphabet in addition to the different language. That made it easy to make
navigational errors, and the Soviets always had DDR officers along to help them
find their way around. Until now. He flicked his cigarette onto the road.
"What else did you notice, Monsieur?"

"The colonel was pretty mad at that major. Then a
captain-I think showed him the mistake, I guess, and how to correct it."

"How long?"

"Less than five minutes after they stopped."

"Very good." The Frenchman smiled. The major was
beading back to Berlin, and that battalion had a new operations officer now.
The smile disappeared.

"Looks pretty dumb to get lost like that, doesn't
it?"

The Frenchman got back into his car to follow the Russians.
"Have you ever gotten lost in a foreign country, Monsieur?"

"Yes, who hasn't?"

"But they found their mistake quickly, no?" The
major waved to his driver to pull off. And all by themselves this time, he
thought. Interessant . . .

The TV reporter shrugged and walked back to his own vehicle.
He followed the last tank in line, annoyed that they were moving at only thirty
kilometers per hour. The tanks moved northwest at that speed until they reached
Highway 187, where miraculously they joined up with another Soviet unit and,
dropping back to their normal speed of twenty kilometers per hour, resumed
their progress west toward the exercise area.

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

It was impressive. As they watched the Moscow television
news program, a whole regiment of tanks advanced across a flat landscape. Their
objective turned to a horizontal fountain of dirt as an artillery barrage
pounded the simulated enemy positions. Fighter-bombers streaked across the sky
and helicopters performed their own death-dance. The voice-over commentary
proclaimed the readiness of the Soviet Army to meet any foreign threat. It
certainly looked that way.

The next five-minute segment concerned the Vienna arms
talks. There was the usual complaint about how the United States was fighting
over certain aspects of the clearly generous original Soviet proposal, but the
speaker went on to say that real progress was being made despite American
intransigence, and that a comprehensive agreement was possible by the end of
summer. Toland was puzzled by the nature of the Soviet description of the
negotiations. He'd never paid much attention to this sort of rhetoric before,
and found the good-guy/bad-guy descriptions curious.

"Pretty normal stuff," Lowe responded to the
question. "You'll know the deal is close to being struck when the beefs
start disappearing. Then they talk about how enlightened our President is for a
class enemy. They can get real euphoric around signing time. Really, this stuff
is pretty mild. Think about it. What sort of language do they usually use about
us?"

"The exercise look normal?"

"It's normal, all right. Ever think about how much fun
it is to face a hundred tanks? You did notice that they all carry five-inch
guns? Then think about the artillery support they get. Then think about the
aircraft. The Russians are real believers in this combined-arms stuff. When
they come at you, they come with the whole inventory. They have this set piece
stuff down cold."

"How do we counter it?"

"You take the initiative. You let the other guy get all
set to fight his battle his way, son, you might as well bag it."

"Same story at sea."

"Yeah."

KIEV, THE UKRAINE

Alekseyev atypically poured himself a cup of tea at the
comer table before approaching his commander's desk. When he walked over, his
grin was a meter wide.

"Comrade General, Progress goes well!"

"So I can see, Pavel Leonidovich."

"I would never have believed it. The improvement in our
officer corps is extraordinary. The deadwood is being disposed of, and those
men whom we've moved up to new posts are eager and capable."

"So, shooting those four colonels has worked?"
CINC-Southwest noted sardonically. He'd run the first two days of the exercise
from his command headquarters and yearned to get into the field where the real
action was. But that was not a theater commander's job. Alekseyev was his best
set of eyes for what was really happening.

"A hard choice, but a good one. The results speak for
themselves." The edge came off the younger man's enthusiasm. His
conscience still remembered that. The problem with hard decisions, he learned,
was not making them, but learning to live with the consequences, however
necessary. He set the thought aside yet again. "With two more weeks of
intensive exercises, the Red Army will be ready. We can do it. We can defeat
NATO."

"We don't have to fight NATO, Pasha."

"Then Allah help the Arabs!" Alekseyev said.

"Allah help us. West gets another of our tank
divisions." The General held up a dispatch. "The one you were with
today, in fact. I wonder how he has been doing?"

"My spies tell me, quite well."

"And you have joined the KGB, Pasha?"

"A classmate of mine is on CINC-West staff. They, too,
have adopted a policy for eliminating incompetents. I have seen the benefits. A
new man in a posting has much better incentive to do his job properly than one
for whom it has become routine."

"Except at the top, of course."

"Commander-in-Chief West is one man I never expected to
defend, but everything I've been told leads me to believe he's getting his
forces ready in the same way as we."

"Things must indeed be improved if you are this
magnanimous."

"They are, Comrade. Another tank division lost to
Germany. Well, he needs it more than we. I tell you, we will sweep the Arabs
aside like dirt on a smooth tile floor. In truth we always could. There are not
so many of them, and if these Arabs are like the Libyans I saw three years
ago-these have no mountains to hide in. This is not Afghanistan. Our mission is
to conquer, not to pacify. This we can do. I estimate two weeks. The only
problem I foresee is the destruction of the oil fields. They can use scorched
earth as a defense just as we have, and that will be difficult for us to
prevent, even with paratroops. Still and all, our objective is achievable. Our
men will be ready."

9 - A Final Look

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

"There's something to be said for instant traditions,
Chuck." This was their fourth Russian movie via satellite. Toland handed
over the bowl of popcorn. "It'll be a pity to lose you back to the
Corps."

"Bite your tongue! Sixteen-hundred hours Tuesday,
Colonel Charles DeWinter Lowe goes back into the Marine business. I'll leave
the paper shuffling to you squids."

Toland laughed. "And you won't miss the evening
movie?"

"Maybe a little." Half a mile away a satellite
receiver was tracking a Soviet communications satellite. They'd been pirating
signals off this satellite and two of her sisters for weeks now, to keep tabs
on the Soviet TV news, and also to catch the evening movie. Both men admired
the work of Sergey Eisenstein.

And Alexander Nevsky was his masterwork.

Toland popped open a can of Coke. "I wonder how Ivan
would react to a John Ford Western? Somehow I get the feeling that Comrade
Eisenstein might have been exposed to one or two."

"Yeah, the Duke would have fit in pretty good here. Or
better yet, Errol Flynn. You heading home tonight?"

"Right after the movie. God, a four-day weekend off.
Can I stand the strain?"

The titles showed a new frame, different from the one on his
personal tape of the movie back home. The original soundtrack dialogue had been
retained and cleaned up somewhat, but the music had been redone by the Moscow
State Symphony and chorus. They did true justice to Prokofiev's evocative
score.

The film began with a view of the Russian . . . steppes?
Toland wondered. Or was that supposed to be the southern part of the country?
Anyway, it showed rolling grassland littered with bones and weapons from an old
battle against the Mongols. The Yellow Peril, still a Russian bugaboo. The
Soviet Union had absorbed a lot of Mongols-but now the Chinese had nuclear
weapons and the world's largest army.

"The print is terrific," Lowe observed.

"Hell of a lot better than my tape," Toland
agreed. A pair of VHS machines was recording this, though the Navy wasn't
supplying the tapes. Each officer had bought one himself. SACLANT's Inspector
General had an evil reputation.

All this happened pretty close to the Baltic coast, Toland
reminded himself. The introduction of the main character was made through a
song as he was evidently out directing some men with a fishing net. A good
socialist introduction, the officers agreed: the hero out doing manual labor. A
brief verbal confrontation with the Mongols, then a musing about which danger
to Russian integrity was greater, the German or the Mongol.

"Jesus, you know they still think that way?"
Toland chuckled.

"The more things change . . ." Lowe popped open
his own Coke.

"I kinda wonder about this guy, though. When he went
back into the water after the net, he ran like a girl, what with his arms
flying all over."

"You should try running in knee-deep water," the
Marine growled.

And the scene shifted to the German Danger.

"A bunch of out-of-work knights, just like the
crusades. Hell, just like Indian movies from the thirties. Chopping people up,
throwing babies into the fire."

"You suppose they really did things like that?"

"Ever hear of a place called Auschwitz, Bob?" Lowe
inquired. "You know, in the civilized twentieth century?"

"Those guys didn't bring a bishop with them."

"Try reading up on the crusaders' liberation of
Jerusalem. Either they killed, or raped first and then killed, all for the
Greater Glory of God, with bishops and cardinals cheering them on. Nice bunch.
Yeah, it's probably true enough. Christ knows the Eastern Front in '41-'45 saw
a lot of it on both sides. Nasty campaign, that was. Want some more popcorn?"

Finally the people mobilized themselves, especially the
peasants:

Vstavaitye, 1yudi russkiye, na slavny boi, na smyertny boi

"Damn!" Toland sat forward. "They really
punched that song up." The soundtrack was almost perfect, even accounting
for the satellite transmission difficulties.

Arise, you Russian People, in a just battle, in a fight to
the death: arise, you people free and brave, defend our fair native land!

Toland counted more than twenty specific uses of the word
"Russia" or "Russian."

"That's odd," he observed. "They're trying to
get away from that. The Soviet Union is supposed to be all one happy family,
not the New Russian Empire."

"I guess you'd call it an historical quirk," Lowe
commented. "Stalin commissioned the film to alert his people to the Nazi
threat. Ole Joe was a Georgian, but he turned out to be one hell of a Russian
nationalist. Strange, but he was one strange dude."

The movie was clearly a production of the 1930s. The
strident characters were right out of John Ford or Raoul Walsh: a stand-alone
heroic figure in Prince Alexander Nevsky, two brave but buffoonish sidekicks,
and the de rigueur love interest. The German enemies were arrogant and for the
most part invisible behind unlikely helmets designed by Eisenstein himself. The
invading Germans had already divided up Russia amongst themselves, one knight
made "prince" of Pskov, where in a horrible example of pacification
the invaders had slaughtered men, women, and children-the children were thrown
into a bonfire-to show who was boss. The great battle scene took place on a
frozen lake.

"What kinda lunatic is going to fight on a frozen lake
when he's wearing a half ton of sheet steel?" Toland groaned. Lowe
explained that it had really happened that way, more or less.

"I'm sure they played around with it some, like They
Died With Their Boots On, " the colonel observed. "But the battle
really happened."

The battle was a truly epic scene. The German knights
attacked with casual disregard for proper tactics, and the Russian peasants,
ably led by Alexander and his two sidekicks, encircled them with a Cannae-like
envelopment maneuver. Then, of course, came single combat between Prince
Alexander and the German chieftain. There was no doubt of the outcome. Their
commander vanquished in single combat, the German ranks came apart, and when
they tried to rally on the edge of the lake, the ice gave way, drowning nearly
everyone.

"That's realistic enough," Lowe chuckled.
"Think how many armies have been swallowed up by the Russian
countryside!"

The remainder of the movie resolved the love interest (each
buffoon got himself a pretty girl), and liberated Pskov. Curiously, while the
prince hoisted a bunch of children into his saddle for the ride in, he never
showed the slightest interest in female company-and ended with a sermon,
Alexander standing alone and speaking about what happens to people who invaded
Russia.

"Trying to make Nevsky look like Stalin, eh?"

"There is some of that," Lowe agreed. "The
strong man, all alone, a fatherly benefactor-some benefactor! Anyway you cut
it, this is just about the best propaganda movie ever made. The punch line is
that when Russia and Germany signed their non-aggression pact a year later,
Eisenstein was detailed to direct a stage production of Wagner's The Valkyries.
Call it penance for offending the German sensibilities."

"Oof. You study these guys more than I do, Chuck."

Colonel Lowe pulled a cardboard box from under his desk and
began to load up his personal effects. "Yeah, well if you have to face the
possibility of fighting a man, you might as well learn all you can about
him."

"You think we will?"

Lowe frowned briefly. "I saw enough of that in Nam, but
that's what they pay us for, isn't it?"

Toland stood and stretched. He had a four-hour drive ahead
of him. "Colonel, it has been a pleasure for this squid to work with
you."

"It hasn't been half bad for this jarhead. Hey, when I
get the family set up down in Lejeune, why don't you come on down sometime?
There's some great fishing down there."

"Deal." They shook hands. "Good luck with
your regiment, Chuck."

"Good luck here, Bob."

Toland walked out to his car. He'd already packed up, and
drove quickly out Terminal Boulevard to Interstate 64. The worst part of the
drive home was the traffic to the Hampton Roads tunnel, after which things
settled down to the usual superhighway ratrace. All the way home, Toland's mind
kept going over the scenes from Eisenstein's movie. The one that kept coming
back was the most horrible of all, a German knight wearing a crusader's cross
tearing a Pskov infant from his mother's breast and throwing him-her?-into a
fire. Who could see that and not be enraged? No wonder the rabble-rousing song
"Arise, you Russian People" had been a genuinely popular favorite for
years. Some scenes cried out for bloody revenge, the theme for which was
Prokofiev's fiery call to arms. Soon he found himself humming the song. A real
intelligence officer you are . . . Toland smiled to himself, thinking just like
the people you're supposed to study...defend our fair native land...nashu
zyemlyu chestnuyu!

"Excuse me, sir?" the toll collector asked.

Toland shook his head. Had he been singing aloud? He handed
over the seventy-five cents with a sheepish grin. What would this lady think,
an American naval officer singing in Russian?

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

It was just after midnight when the truck drove north across
the Kemenny Bridge to Borovitskaya, Square and turned right, toward the
Kremlin. The driver stopped for the first group of Kremlin Guards. Their papers
were fully in order, of course, and they were waved through. The truck pulled
up to the second checkpoint by the Kremlin Palace, where their papers were also
in order. From there it was five hundred meters to the service entrance of the
Council of Ministers Building.

"What are you delivering this time of day,
Comrades?" the Red Army captain asked.

"Cleaning supplies. Come, I will show you." The
driver got out and walked slowly around the back of the truck. "Must be
nice, working here at night when things are so peaceful."

"True enough," the captain agreed. He'd go off
duty in another ninety minutes.

"Here." The driver pulled back the canvas cover.
There were twelve cans of industrial-strength solvent and a crate of hardware
parts.

"German supplies?" The captain was surprised. He'd
been on Kremlin duty for only two weeks.

"Da. The Krauts make very efficient cleaning machinery,
and the vlasti make use of it. This is carpet-cleaning fluid. This is for
lavatory walls. This one here is for windows. The crate-ah, I will open
it." The lid came off easily since the nails had already been loosened. "As
you see, Comrade Captain, parts for some of the machines." He smirked.
"Even German machines break."

"Open one of the cans," the captain ordered.

"Sure, but you won't like the smell. Which one do you
want opened?" The driver picked up a small prybar.

"That one." The captain pointed to a can of
bathroom cleaner.

The driver laughed. "The worst-smelling of all. Stand
back, Comrade, we don't want to splash this slop on your clean uniform."

The captain was new enough on the job that he scrupulously
did not step back. Good, the driver thought. He worked the prybar under the
can's lid, twisted, and popped his free hand down on the end. The lid flew off,
and the captain was splashed by some flying solvent.

"Shit!" It did smell bad.

"I warned you, Comrade Captain."

"What is this garbage?"

'It's used to clean mildew off bathroom tiles. It will come
right out of the uniform, Comrade Captain. But be sure you have it dry-cleaned
soon. An acid solution, you see, it could damage the wool."

The captain wanted to be mad, but the man had warned him,
hadn't he? Next time I'll know better, he thought. "Very well, take it
in."

"Thank you. I am sorry about the uniform. Don't forget
to have it cleaned."

The captain waved to a private and walked off. The soldier
unlocked the door. The driver and his assistant went inside to get a
two-wheeled hand truck.

"I warned him," the driver said to the private.

"You certainly did, Comrade." The soldier was
amused. He, too, was looking forward to going off duty, and it wasn't often
that you saw an officer get caught.

The driver watched his assistant load the cans onto the hand
truck, and followed him as he wheeled it into the building to the service
elevator. Then both returned for the second load.

They took the elevator to the third floor, shut the power
off, and moved their loads to a storage room directly below the large
fourth-floor conference room.

"That was good with the captain," the assistant
said. "Now let's get to work."

"Yes, Comrade Colonel," the driver answered at
once. The four cans of carpet-cleaning fluid had false tops which the
lieutenant removed and set aside. Next he took out the satchel charges. The
colonel had memorized the blueprints of the building. The wall pillars were in
the outside comers of the room. One charge went to each, fixed to the inboard
side. The empty cans were placed next to the charges, hiding them. Next the
lieutenant removed two of the false-ceiling panels, exposing the steel beams
supporting the fourth floor slab. The remaining charges were attached there,
and the ceiling panels replaced. The charges already had their detonators
attached. The colonel took the electronic triggering device out of his pocket,
he checked his watch, and waited for three minutes before pressing the button
to activate the timers. The bombs would explode in exactly eight hours.

The colonel watched the lieutenant tidy up, then wheeled the
hand truck back to the elevator. Two minutes later, they left the building. The
captain was back.

"Comrade," he said to the driver. "You
shouldn't let this old one do all the heavy work. Show some respect."

"You are kind, Comrade Captain." The colonel
smiled crookedly and pulled a half-liter bottle of vodka from his pocket.
"Drink?"

The captain's solicitous attitude ended abruptly. A worker
drinking on duty-in the Kremlin! "Move along!"

"Good day, Comrade." The driver got into the truck
and drove off. They had to pass through the same security checkpoints, but
their papers were still in order.

After leaving the Kremlin, the truck turned north on Marksa
Prospekt and followed it all the way to the KGB headquarters building at 2
Dzerzhinskiy Square.

CROFFON, MARYLAND

"Where are the kids?"

"Asleep." Martha Toland hugged her husband. She
was wearing something filmy and attractive. "I had them out swimming all
day, and they just couldn't stay awake." An impish smile. He remembered
the first such smile, on Sunset Beach, Oahu, she with a surfboard and a skimpy
swimsuit. She still loved the water. And the bikini still fit.

"Why do I sense a plan here?"

"Probably because you're a nasty, suspicious
spook." Marty walked into the kitchen and came out with a bottle of
Lancers Rosk and two chilled glasses. "Now why don't you take a nice hot
shower and unwind a bit. When you're finished, we can relax."

It sounded awfully good. What followed was even better.

10 - Remember, Remember

CROFTON, MARYLAND

Toland woke to hear his phone ringing in the dark. He was
still dopey from the drive up from Norfolk and the wine. It took a ring or two
for him to react properly. His first considered action was to check the display
on the clock-radio-2:11. Two in the fuckin' morning! he thought, sure that the
ringing was caused by a prank or a wrong number. He lifted the receiver.

"Hello," he said gruffly.

"Lieutenant Commander Toland, please."

Uh-oh. "Speaking."

"This is the CINCLANT intel watch officer," the
disembodied voice said. "You are ordered to return to your duty station at
once. Please acknowledge the order, Commander."

"Back to Norfolk right away. Understood." Wholly
on instinct, Bob rotated himself in the bed to a sitting position, his bare
feet on the floor.

"Very well, Commander." The phone clicked off.

"What is it, honey?" Marty asked.

"They need me back at Norfolk."

"When?"

"Now." That woke her up. Martha Toland bolted
upright in the bed. The covers spilled off her chest, and the moonlight through
the window gave her skin a pale, ethereal glow.

"But you just got here!"

"Don't I know it." Bob stood and walked awkwardly toward
the bathroom. He had to shower and drink some coffee if he had any hope of
reaching Norfolk alive. When he returned ten minutes later, lathering his face,
he saw that his wife had clicked on the bedroom TV to Cable Network News.

"Bob, you better listen to this."

"This is Rich Suddler coming to you live from the
Kremlin," said a reporter in a blue blazer. Behind him Toland could see
the grim stone walls of the ancient citadel fortified by Ivan the Terrible-now
being patrolled by armed soldiers in combat dress. Toland stopped what he was
doing and walked toward the TV. Something very strange was going on. A full
company of armed troops in the Kremlin could mean many things, all of them bad.
"There has been an explosion in the Council of Ministers building here in
Moscow. At approximately nine-thirty this morning, Moscow Time, while I was
taping a report not half a mile away, we were surprised to hear a sharp sound
coming from the new glass-and-steel structure, and-"

"Rich, this is Dionna McGee at the anchor desk."
The image of Suddler and the Kremlin retreated to a comer of the screen as the
director inserted the attractive black anchorperson who ran the night desk for
CNN. "I presume that you had some Soviet security personnel with you at
the time. How did they react?"

"Well, Dionna, we can show you that if you can hold a
minute for my technicians to set up that tape, I-" He pressed the earphone
tight into his ear. "Okay, coming up now, Dionna-"

The tape cut off the live picture, filling the entire
screen. It was on a pause setting, with Suddler frozen in the middle of a
gesture to something or other, probably the part of the wall where they buried
important Communists, Toland thought. The tape began to roll.

Simultaneously, Suddler flinched and spun around as a
thundering report echoed across the expanse of the square. By professional
instinct the cameraman turned at once to the source of the sound, and after a
moment's wobble, the lens settled in on a ball of dust and smoke expanding up
and away from the strangely modem building in the Kremlin's otherwise Slavic
Rococo complex. A second later the zoom lens darted in on the scene. Fully
three floors of the building had been stripped of their glass curtain wall, and
the camera followed a large conference table as it fell down off one floor slab
that seemed to be dangling from a half dozen reinforcing rods. The camera went
down to street level, where there was one obvious body, and perhaps another, along
with a collection of automobiles crushed by debris.

In seconds, the whole square was filled with running men in
uniform and the first of many official cars. A blurred figure that could only
be a man in uniform suddenly blocked the camera lens. The tape stopped at that
point, and Rich Suddler came back into the screen with a LIVE caption in the
lower left comer.

"Now, at that point the militia captain who had been
escorting us-the militia is the Soviet equivalent of, oh, like a U.S. state
police force-he made us stop taping and confiscated our tape cassette. We
weren't allowed to tape the fire trucks or the several hundred armed troops who
arrived and are now guarding the whole area. But the tape was just returned to
us and we are able to give you this live picture of the building, now that the
fires have been put out. In fairness I really can't say that I blame him-things
were pretty wild there for a few minutes."

"Were you threatened in any way, Rich? I mean, did they
act as though they thought you-"

Suddler's head shook emphatically.

"Not at all, Dionna. In fact, more than anything they
seemed concerned for our safety. In addition to the militia captain, we have a
squad of Red Army infantrymen with us now, and their officer was very careful
to say that he was here to protect us, not to threaten us. We were not allowed
to approach the site of the incident, and of course we were not allowed to
leave the area-but we wouldn't have, anyway. The tape was just returned to us a
few minutes ago, and we were informed that we'd be allowed to make this live
broadcast." The camera shifted to the building. "As you can see,
there are roughly five hundred fire, police, and military personnel still here,
sorting through the wreckage and looking for additional bodies, and just to our
right is a Soviet TV news crew, doing the same thing we are." Toland
examined the television picture closely. The one body he could see looked
awfully small. He wrote it off to distance and perspective.

"Dionna, what we seem to have here is the first major
terrorist incident in the history of the Soviet Union-"

"Since the bastards set themselves up," Toland
snorted.

"We know for certain-at least we've been told-that a
bomb was detonated in the Council of Ministers building. They're certain it was
a bomb, not some kind of accident. And we know for sure that three, possibly
more people were killed, and perhaps as many as forty or fifty wounded.

"Now the really interesting thing about this is that
the Politburo had been scheduled to hold a meeting here at about that
time."

"Holy shit!" Toland set the aerosol can on the
night table, one hand still covered in shaving cream.

"Can you tell us if any of them were among the dead or
wounded?" Dionna asked at once.

"No, Dionna. You see, we're more than a quarter of a
mile away, and the senior Kremlin officials arrive by car-when they do, that
is, they come in from the other side of the fortress, through another gate. So,
we never even knew that they were here, but the militia captain with our team
did, and he kind of blurted it out. His exact words were, 'My God, the
Politburo's in there!"'

"Rich, can you tell us what the reaction in Moscow has
been like?"

"It's still pretty hard for us to gauge, Dionna, since
we've been right here covering the story as it unfolds. The Kremlin Guards'
reaction is just what you might imagine-just like American Secret Service
people would react, I supposed mixture of horror and rage, but I want to make
it clear that that rage is not being directed against anyone, certainly not against
Americans. I told the militia officer who's been with us that I was in the U.S.
Capitol building when the Weathermen's bomb was set off, back in 1970, and he
replied rather disgustedly that Communism was indeed catching up with
capitalism, that the Soviet Union was growing a bumper crop of hooligans. It's
a measure of how seriously they're taking this that a Soviet police officer
would comment so openly on a subject that they're not all that willing to
discuss normally. So, if I had to pick one word to describe the reaction here,
that word would be 'shock.'

"So, to summarize what we know to this point, there has
been a bombing incident within the Kremlin walls, possibly an attempt to
eliminate the Soviet Politburo, though I must emphasize we are not certain of
that. We have had it confirmed by police at the scene that at least three
people are dead, with forty or so other wounded, those wounded being evacuated
to nearby hospitals. We will be reporting throughout the day as more
information becomes available. This is Rich Suddler, CNN, coming to you live
from the Kremlin." The scene shifted back to the anchor desk.

"And there you have it, another exclusive report from
Cable Network News." Dionna the anchorperson smiled, and the screen faded
again, this time to a commercial for Lite Beer from Miller. Marty stood up and
put on a robe.

"I'll get the coffee going."

"Holy shit," Toland said again. He took longer
than usual to shave, nicking himself twice as he kept looking in the mirror at
his own eyes rather than his jawline. He dressed quickly, then looked in on his
sleeping children. He decided against waking them.

Forty minutes later, he was in his car heading south, down
U.S. 301, with his windows open, allowing cool night air to wash over him, and
the car radio tuned to an all-news station. It was clear enough what was
happening in the U.S. military. A bomb had been set off-probably a bomb in the
Kremlin. Toland reminded himself that reporters hard up against deadlines, or
TV types trying to score an instant scoop, often did not have the time to check
things out. Maybe it was a gas main? Did Moscow have gas mains? If it were a
bomb, he was sure the Soviets would instinctively think that the West had
something to do with it, regardless of what that Suddler fellow thought, and go
to higher alert status. The West would automatically do the same in
anticipation of possible Soviet action. Nothing too obvious, nothing to provoke
them further, mainly an exercise conducted by intelligence and surveillance
types. The Soviets would understand that. That's how the game was played, more
from their side than from ours, Toland reflected, remembering assassination
attempts against American presidents.

What if they really do think? Toland wondered. No, he
decided, they had to know that no one was that crazy. Didn't they?

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

He drove for another three hours, wishing that he'd drunk
more coffee and less wine, and listening to his car radio to stay awake. He
arrived just after seven, the normal beginning of the day's work. He was
surprised to find Colonel Lowe at his desk.

"I don't report to Lejeune until Tuesday, so I decided
to come in and take a look at this. How was the drive?"

"I made it alive-that's about all I can say. What's
happening?"

"You'll love it." Lowe held up a telex sheet.
"We pirated this off the Reuters wire half an hour ago, and CIA
confirms-meaning they probably stole it, too-that the KGB has arrested one
Gerhardt Falken, a West German national, and accused him of setting off a bomb
in the fuckin' Kremlin!" The Marine let out a long breath. "He missed
the big shots, but now they're saying that among the victims are six Young
Octobrists -from Pskov, by God!-who were making a presentation to the
Politburo. Kids. There's going to be hell to pay."

Toland shook his head. It couldn't get much worse than that.
"And they say a German did it?"

"A West German," Lowe corrected. "NATO intel
services are already going ape trying to run him down. The official Soviet
statement gives his name and address-some suburb of Bremen-and business, a
small import-export house. Nothing else yet on that subject, but the Russian
Foreign Ministry did go on to say that they expect 'this despicable act of
international terrorism' to have no effect on the Vienna Arms Talks, that while
they do not believe at this time that Falken was acting on his own, they 'have
no wish' to believe that we had anything to do with it."

"Cute. It's going to be a shame to lose you back to
your regiment, Chuck. You have such a nice way of finding the important
quotes."

"Commander, we just might need that regiment soon. This
whole thing smells like dead fish to me. Last night: the final film in the
Eisenstein film festival, Alexander Nevsky, a new digitalized print, a new
soundtrack-and what's the message? 'Arise, ye Russian people,' the Germans are
coming! This morning, we have six dead Russian kids, from Pskovl and a German
is supposed to have planted the bomb. The only thing that doesn't fit is that
it ain't exactly subtle."

"Maybe," Toland said speculatively. He spoke like
a halfhearted devil's advocate. "You think we could sell this combination
of factors to the papers or anybody in Washington? It's too crazy, too
coincidental-what if it is subtle, but backwards subtle? Besides, the object of
the exercise wouldn't be to convince us, it would be to convince their own
citizens. You could say it works both ways. That make sense, Chuck?"

Lowe nodded. "Enough to check out. Let's do some
sniffing around. First thing, I want you to call CNN in Atlanta and find out
how long this Suddler guy's been trying to tape his story about the Kremlin.
How much lead time did he have, when was this approved, who he worked through
to get it, and if someone other than his regular press contact finally did
approve it."

"Setup." Toland said it out loud. He wondered if
they were being clever-or clinically paranoid. He knew what most people would
think.

"You can't smuggle a Penthouse into Russia without
using the diplomatic bag, and now we're supposed to believe a German smuggled a
bomb in? Then tries to blow up the Politburo?"

"Could we do it?" Toland wondered aloud.

"If CIA was crazy enough to try it? God, that's more
than just crazy." Lowe shook his head. "I don't think anybody could
do it, even the Russians themselves. It's got to be a layered defense. X-ray
machines. Sniffer dogs. A couple of hundred guards, all from three different
commands, the Army, KGB, MVD, probably their militia, too. Hell, Bob, you know
how paranoid they are against their own people. How do you suppose they feel
about Germans?"

"So they can't say he was a crazy operating on his
own."

"Which leaves . . ."

"Yeah." Toland reached for his phone to call CNN.

KIEV, THE UKRAINE

"Children!" Alekseyev barely said aloud. "For
our maskirovka the Party murders children! Our own children. What have we come
to?"

What have I come to? If I can rationalize the judicial
murder of our colonels and some privates, why shouldn't the Politburo blow up a
few children . . . ? Alekseyev told himself there was a difference.

His General was also pale as he switched off the television
set. "'Arise, ye Russian people. We must set these thoughts aside, Pasha.
It is hard, but we must. The State is not perfect, but it is the State we must
serve."

Alekseyev eyed his commander closely. The General had almost
choked on those words; he was already practicing how to use them on the crucial
few who would know of this outrage, yet had to perform their duties as though
it never existed. There will come a day of reckoning, Pasha told himself, a day
of reckoning for all the crimes committed in the name of Socialist Progress. He
wondered if he'd live to see it and decided he probably wouldn't.

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

The Revolution has come to this, he thought. Sergetov was
staring into the rubble. The sun was still high, even this late in the
afternoon. The firefighters and soldiers were almost finished sorting through
the wreckage, heaving the loose pieces into trucks a few meters from where he
stood. There was dust on his suit. I'll have to have it cleaned, he thought,
watching the seventh small body being lifted with a gentleness all too late and
obscenely out of place. One more child was still unaccounted for, and there was
still some lingering hope. A uniformed Army medic stood nearby, unwrapped
dressings in his quivering hands. To his left a major of infantry was weeping
with rage. A man with a family, no doubt.

The television cameras were there, of course. A lesson
learned from the American media, Sergetov thought, the crews poking their way
into the action to record every horrible scene for the evening news. He was
surprised to see an American crew with their Soviet counterparts. So, we have
made mass murder an international spectator sport.

Sergetov was far too angry for visible emotion. That could
have been me, he thought. I always show up early for the Thursday meetings.
Everyone knows it. The guards, the clerical staff, and certainly my Comrades on
the Politburo. So this is the penultimate segment of the maskirovka. To
motivate, to lead our people, we must do this. Was there supposed to be a
Politburo member in the rubble? he wondered. A junior member, of course.

Surely I am wrong, Sergetov told himself. One part of his
mind examined the question with chilling objectivity while another considered
his personal friendships with some of the senior Politburo members. He didn't
know what to think. An odd position for a leader of the Party.

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

"I am Gerhardt Falken," the man said. "I
entered the Soviet Union six days ago through the port of Odessa. I have been
for ten years an agent of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the intelligence apparat
of the government of West Germany. My assignment was to kill the Politburo at
its Thursday-morning session by means of a bomb placed in a storage room
directly beneath the fourth-floor conference room in which they meet."
Lowe and Toland watched their televisions in total fascination. It was perfect.
"Falken" spoke perfect Russian, with the precise syntax and diction
that schoolteachers in the Soviet Union sought to achieve. His accent was that
of Leningrad.

"I have run an import-export business in Bremen for
many years, and I have specialized in trade with the Soviet Union. I have
traveled into the Soviet Union many times, and on many of these occasions I
have used my business identity to run agents whose mission was to weaken and
spy upon the Soviet Party and military infrastructures."

The camera closed in. "Falken" was reading in a
monotone from a script, his eyes seldom rising to the cameras. Behind the
glasses on one side was a large bruise. His hands shook slightly when he
changed pages of the script.

"Looks like they beat up on him some," Lowe
observed.

"Interesting," Toland replied. "They're
letting us know that they work people over."

Lowe snorted. "A guy who blows little kids up? You can
burn the bastard at the stake, and who'll give a good Goddamn? Some serious
thought went into this, my friend."

"I wish to make it clear," Falken went on in a
firmer voice, "that I had no intention of injuring children. The Politburo
was a legitimate political target, but my country does not make war on
children."

A howl of disgust came from off-camera. As though on cue,
the camera backed away to reveal a pair of uniformed KGB officers flanking the
speaker, their faces impassive. The audience was composed of about twenty
people in civilian clothes.

"Why did you come into our country?" demanded one
of them.

"I have told you this."

"Why does your country wish to kill the leaders of our
Soviet Party?"

"I am a spy," Falken replied. "I carry out
assignments. I do not ask such questions. I follow my orders."

"How were you captured?"

"I was arrested at the Kiev Railroad Station. How I was
caught they have not told me."

"Cute," Lowe commented.

"He called himself a spy," Toland objected.
"You don't say that. You call yourself an 'officer.' An 'agent' is a
foreigner who works for you, and a 'spy' is a bad guy. They use the same terms
that we do."

The CIA/DIA report arrived on the telex printer an hour
later. Gerhardt Eugen Falken. Age forty-four. Born in Bonn. Educated in public
schools, good marks on his records-but his picture was missing from his high
school yearbook. Military service as a draftee in a transport battalion whose
records had been destroyed in a barracks fire twelve years before, honorable
discharge found in his personal effects. University degree in liberal arts,
good marks, but again no picture, and three professors who gave him B grades
can't seem to recall him. A small import-export business. Where did the money
come from to start it? Nobody could answer that one. Lived in Bremen quietly,
modestly, and alone. Friendly man, after a fashion. Always nodded to his
neighbors, but never socialized with them. A good-"very correct," his
elderly secretary said-boss to his employees. Traveled a lot. In short, many
people knew he existed, quite a few did business with his firm, but nobody
really knew a thing about him.

"I can hear the papers now: this guy has 'Agency'
written all over him." Toland tore off the printer paper and tucked it
into a folder. He had to brief CINCLANT in half an hour-and tell him what?
Toland wondered.

"Tell him the Germans are going to attack Russia. Who
knows, maybe this time they'll take Moscow," Lowe mused.

"Goddamn it, Chuck!"

"Okay, maybe just an operation to cripple the Russians
so that they can reunite Germany once and for all. That's what Ivan is saying,
Bob." Lowe looked out the window. "What we have here is a classic
intelligence op. This guy Falken is a stone spook. No way in hell we can tell
who he is, where he comes from, or, of course, who he's working for, unless
something big breaks, and I'll wager you that it doesn't. We know -we
think-that the Germans aren't this crazy, but the only evidence there is points
to them. Tell the Admiral something bad is happening."

Toland did precisely that, only to have his head nearly
taken off by a senior man who wanted and needed hard information.

KIEV, THE UKRAINE

"Comrades, we will commence offensive operations
against the NATO land forces in two weeks," Alekseyev began. He explained
the reasons for this. The assembled corps and division commanders accepted the
information impassively. "The danger to the State is as great as anything
we've had to face in over forty years. We have used the past four months to
whip our Army into shape. You and your subordinates have responded well to our
demands, and I can only say that I am proud to have served with you.

"I will leave the usual Party harangue to your group
political officers." Alekseyev ventured a single smile in his delivery.
"We are the professional officers of the Soviet Army. We know what our
task is. We know why we have it. The life of the Rodina depends on our ability
to carry out our mission. Nothing else matters," he concluded. The hell it
doesn't . . .

11 - Order of Battle

SHPOLA, THE UKRAINE

"You may proceed, Comrade Colonel," Alekseyev said
over his radio circuit. He didn't say, Make a fool of me now and you will be
counting trees! The General stood on a hill five hundred meters west of the
regimental command post. With him was his aide, and Politburo member Mikhail
Sergetov. As if I need that distraction, the General thought bleakly.

First the guns. They saw the flashes long before they heard
the rolling thunder of the reports. Fired from behind another hill three
kilometers away, the shells arced through the sky to their left, cutting
through the air with a sound like the ripping of linen. The Party man cringed
at the noise, Alekseyev noted, another soft civilian

"I never did like that sound," Sergetov said
shortly.

"Heard it before, Comrade Minister?" the General
asked solicitously.

"I served my four years in a motor-rifle
regiment," he replied. "And I never learned to trust my comrades at
the artillery plotting tables. Foolish, I know. Excuse me, General."

Next came the tank guns. They watched through binoculars as
the big main battle tanks emerged from the woods like something from a
nightmare, their long cannon belching flame as they glided across the rolling
ground of the exercise area. Interspersed with the tanks were the infantry
fighting vehicles. Then came the armed helicopters, swooping at the objective
from left and right, firing their guided missiles at the mockups of bunkers and
armored vehicles.

By this time the hilltop objective was nearly hidden by
explosions and flying dirt as the artillery fire marched back and forth across
it. Alekseyev's trained eye evaluated the exercise closely. Anyone on that
hilltop would be having a very hard time. Even in a small, deep, protective
hole, even in a defiladed tank, that artillery fire would be terrifying, enough
to distract the guided-weapons crews, enough to rattle communications men,
perhaps enough to impede the officers there. Perhaps. But what of return fire from
enemy artillery? What of antitank helicopters and aircraft that could sweep
over the advancing tank battalions? So many unknowns in battle. So many
imponderables. So many reasons to gamble, and so many reasons not to. What if
there were Germans on that hill? Did the Germans get rattled-even in 1945 at
the gates of Berlin, had Germans ever been rattled?

It took twelve minutes before the tanks and infantry
carriers were atop the hill. The exercise was over.

"Nicely done, Comrade General." Sergetov removed
his ear protectors. It was good, to be away from Moscow, he thought, even for a
few hours. Why, he wondered, did he feel more at home here than in his chosen
place? Was it this man? "As I recall, the standard for this particular
drill is fourteen minutes. The tanks and infantry vehicles cooperated well.
I've never seen the use of armed helicopters, but that too was
impressive."

"The greatest improvement was the coordination of
artillery fire and infantry in the final assault phase. Before, they failed miserably.
This time it was done properly-a tricky procedure."

"Well I know it." Sergetov laughed. "My
company never took casualties from this, but two of my friends did, fortunately
none of them fatal."

"Excuse my saying so, Comrade Minister, but it is good to
see that our Politburo members have also served the State in a uniformed
capacity. It makes communication easier for us poor soldiers." Alekseyev
knew that it never hurt to have a friend at court, and Sergetov seemed a decent
chap.

"My older son just left military service last year. My
younger son will also serve the Red Army when he leaves the university."

It was not often that the General was so surprised.
Alekseyev lowered his binoculars to stare briefly at the Party man.

"You need not say it, Comrade General." Sergetov
smiled. "I know that too few children of high Party officials do this. I
have spoken against it. Those who would rule must first serve. So I have some
questions for you."

"Follow me, Comrade Minister, we shall speak sitting
down." The two men walked back to Alekseyev's armored command vehicle. The
General's aide dismissed the vehicle's crew and himself, leaving the two senior
men alone inside the converted infantry carrier. The General pulled a thermos
of hot tea from a compartment and poured two metal cups of the steaming liquid.

"Your health, Comrade Minister."

"And yours, Comrade General." Sergetov sipped
briefly, then set the cup down on the map table. "How ready are we for Red
Storm?"

"The improvement since January is remarkable. Our men
are fit. They have been drilling in their tasks continuously. I would honestly
prefer another two months, but, yes, I think we are ready."

"Well said, Pavel Leonidovich. Now shall we speak the
truth?"

The Politburo member said this with a smile, but Alekseyev
was instantly on guard. "I am not a fool, Comrade Minister. Lying to you
would be madness."

"In our country, truth is often greater madness. Let us
speak frankly. I am a candidate member of the Politburo. I have power, yes, but
you and I both know what the limits of that power are. Only candidate members
are out with our forces now, and we are tasked with reporting back to the full
members. You might also draw some meaning from the fact that I am here with
you, not in Germany."

That was not entirely true, Alekseyev noted. This unit would
entrain for Germany in three days, and that was why the Party man was here.

"Are we truly ready, Comrade General? Will we
win?"

"If we have strategic surprise, and if the maskirovka
succeeds, yes, I believe we should win," Alekseyev said cautiously.

"Not 'we will surely win'?"

"You have served in uniform, Comrade Minister. On the
field of battle there are no certainties. The measure of an army is not known
until it has been blooded. Ours has not. We have done everything we know how to
do to make our Army ready-"

"You said you wished for two more months,"
Sergetov noted.

"A task like this is never truly finished. There are
always improvements that need to be made. Only a month ago we initiated a
program of replacing some senior officers at battalion and regimental level
with younger, more vigorous subordinates. It is working very well indeed, but a
number of these young captains now in majors' jobs could do with some further
seasoning."

"So, you still have doubts?"

"There are always doubts, Comrade Minister. Fighting a
war is not an exercise in mathematics. We deal with people, not numbers.
Numbers have their own special kind of perfection. People remain people no
matter what we try to do with them."

"That is good, Pavel Leonidovich. That is very good. I
have found an honest man." Sergetov toasted the General with his tea.
"I asked to come here. A comrade on the Politburo, Pyotr Bromkovskiy, told
me of your father."

"Uncle Petya?" Alekseyev nodded. "He was
commissar with my father's division on the drive to Vienna. He often visited
our home when I was young. He is well?"

"No, he is old and sick. He says that the attack on the
West is madness. The ramblings of an old man, perhaps, but his war record is distinguished,
and because of that I want your evaluation of our chances. I will not inform on
you, General. Too many people are fearful of telling us-we of the Politburo-the
truth. But this is a time for that truth. I need your professional opinion. If
I can trust you to give it to me, you can trust me not to harm you for
it." The entreaty ended as a harsh command.

Alekseyev looked his guest hard in the eyes. The charm was
gone now. The blue was the color of ice. There was danger here, danger even for
a general officer, but what the man had said was true.

"Comrade, we plan on a rapid campaign. The projections
are that we can reach the Rhein in two weeks. Those are actually more
conservative than our plans of only five years ago. NATO has improved its
readiness, particularly its antitank capabilities. I would say three weeks is
more realistic, depending on the degree of tactical surprise and the many
imponderables present in war."

"So the key is surprise?"

"The key is always surprise," Alekseyev answered
at once. He quoted Soviet doctrine exactly. "Surprise is the greatest
factor in war. There are two kinds, tactical and strategic. Tactical surprise
is an operational art. A killed unit commander can generally achieve it.
Strategic surprise is attained on the political level. That is your mission,
not mine, and it is far more important than anything we in the Army can do.
With true strategic surprise, if our maskirovka works, yes, we will almost
certainly win on the battlefield."

"And if not?"

Then we have murdered eight children for nothing, Alekseyev
thought. And what part did this charming fellow have in that? "Then we
might fail. Can you answer me a question? Can we split NATO politically?"

Sergetov shrugged, annoyed at being caught in one of his own
traps. "As you said, Pavel Leonidovich, there are many imponderables. If
it fails, then what?"

"Then the war will become a test of will and a test of
reserves. We should win. It is far easier for us to reinforce our troops. We
have more trained troops, more tanks, more aircraft close to the zone of action
than do the NATO powers."

"And America?"

"America is on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean. We
have a plan for closing the Atlantic. They can fly troops to Europe-but only
troops, not their weapons, not their fuel. Those require ships, and ships are
easier to sink than it is to destroy a fighting division. If full surprise is
not achieved, that operational area will become quite important."

"And what of NATO surprises?"

The General leaned back. "By definition you cannot
predict surprises, Comrade. That is why we have the intelligence organs, to
reduce or even eliminate them. That is why our plans allow for a number of
contingencies. For example, what if surprise is totally lost and NATO attacks
first?" He shrugged. "They would not go far, but they would upset
things. What still concerns me are nuclear responses. Again, more of a
political question."

"Yes." Sergetov's worry was for his elder son.
When the reserves were mobilized, Ivan would climb back into his tank, and he
didn't need to be a Politburo member to know where that tank would be sent.
Alekseyev had only daughters. Lucky man, Sergetov thought. "So, this unit
goes to Germany?"

"The end of the week."

"And you?"

"During the initial phase we are tasked to be the
strategic reserve for CINC-West's operations, plus to defend the Motherland
against possible incursions from the southern flank. That does not concern us
greatly. To threaten us, Greece and Turkey must cooperate. They will not,
unless our intelligence information is completely false. My commander and I
will later execute Phase 2 of the plan, and seize the Persian Gulf Again, this
will not be a problem. The Arabs are armed to the teeth, but there are not so
many of them. What is your son doing now?"

"The elder? He's ending his first year of graduate
school in languages. Top of his class-Middle Eastern languages." Sergetov
was surprised at himself for not thinking of this.

"I could use a few more of those. Most of our Arabic
language people are Muslims themselves, and for this task I would prefer people
more reliable."

"And you do not trust the followers of Allah?"

"In war I trust no one. If your son is good at these
languages, I will find a use for him, be sure of that." The formal
agreement was made with nods, and each wondered if the other had planned it
that way.

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

"Progress hasn't ended as scheduled," Toland said.
"Satellite and other reconnaissance shows that the Soviet forces in
Germany and western Poland are still together in operational formations living
in the field. There are indications that rail transport is being marshaled at
various points in the Soviet Union-that is, at points consistent with plans to
move large numbers of troops west.

"Soviet Northern Fleet this morning sortied six
submarines. The move is ostensibly a scheduled rotation to replace their
operational squadron in the Med, so for the next two weeks they'll have more
subs in the North Atlantic than is normally the case."

"Tell me about the group rotating out of the Med,"
CINCLANT ordered.

"A Victor, an Echo, three Foxtrots, and a Juliet. They
all spent the last week tied alongside their tender at Tripoli-the tender
stayed put, in Libyan territorial waters. They will clear the Straits of
Gibraltar about 1300 Zulu tomorrow."

"They're not waiting for the new group to relieve them
on station first?"

"No, Admiral. Usually they do wait for the replacement
group to enter the Med, but about a third of the time they do it this way. That
gives us twelve Soviet subs in transit north and south, plus a November and
three more Foxtrots that have been exercising with the Cuban Navy. At the
moment they are all tied alongside also-we checked up on them this morning,
that data is two hours old."

"Okay, what about Europe?"

"No further information on Mr. Falken. The NATO
intelligence services have run up against a blank wall, and there's been
nothing new from Moscow, not even a date for the public trial. The Germans say
that they have no knowledge whatever of the guy. It's just as though he
appeared fully grown at age thirty-one when he started his business. His apartment
was taken apart one stick at a time. No incriminating evidence was found-"

"Okay, Commander, give us your professional gut
feeling."

"Admiral, Falken is a Soviet sleeper agent who was
inserted into the Federal Republic thirteen years ago and used for very few
missions, or more probably none at all, until this."

"So you think this whole thing's a Soviet intelligence
operation. No big surprise there. What's its objective?" CINCLANT asked
sharply.

"Sir, at the very least they are trying to put enormous
political pressure on West Germany, perhaps to force them out of NATO. At
worst-"

"I think we already figured the worst-case scenario
out. Nice job, Toland. And I owe you an apology for yesterday. Not your fault
that you didn't have all the information I wanted." Toland blinked. It was
not often that a four-star admiral apologized to a reserve lieutenant-commander
in front of other flag officers. "What's their fleet doing?"

"Admiral, we have no satellite photos of the Murmansk
area. Too much cloud cover, but we expect clear weather tomorrow afternoon. The
Norwegians are running increased air patrols in the Barents Sea, and they say
that, aside from submarines, the Russians have relatively few ships at sea at
the moment. Of course, they've had relatively few ships at sea for a
month."

"And that can change in three hours," an admiral
noted. "Your evaluation of their fleet readiness?"

"The best it's been since I've been studying
them," Toland replied. "As close to a hundred percent as I've ever
seen it. As you just said, sir, they can put to sea at any time with almost
their whole inventory."

"If they sortie, we'll know it quick. I have three subs
up there keeping an eye on things," Admiral Pipes said.

"I talked with the Secretary of Defense right before I
came here. He's going to meet with the President today and request a DEFCON-3
alert, global. The Germans are requesting that we keep Spiral Green in
operation until the Russians show signs of easing things off. What do you think
the Russians will do, Commander?" CINCLANT asked.

"Sir, we'll know more later today. The Soviet Party
Secretary will be speaking at an emergency meeting of the Supreme Soviet, maybe
also at the funeral tomorrow."

"Sentimental bastard," Pipes growled.

In front of the office television an hour later, Toland
missed having Chuck Lowe around to back up his translation. The Chairman had an
annoying tendency to speak rapidly, and Toland's Russian was barely up to it.
The speech took forty minutes, three-quarters of which was standard political
phraseology. At the end, however, the Chairman announced mobilization of
Category-B reserve units to meet the potential German threat.

12 - Funeral Arrangements

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

The House of Unions was unusually crowded, Toland saw.
Ordinarily they only buried one hero at a time with such ceremony. Once there
had been three dead cosmonauts, but now there were eleven heroes. Eight Young
Octobrists from Pskov, three boys and five girls ranging in age from eight to
ten, and three clerical employees, all men who worked directly for the
Politburo, were laid out in polished birchwood coffins, surrounded by a sea of
flowers. Toland examined the screen closely. The caskets were elevated so that
the victims were visible, but two of the faces were covered with black silk, a
framed photograph atop the coffins to show what the children had looked like in
life. It was a piteous, horrible touch for the television cameras to linger on.

The Hall of Columns was draped in red and black, with even
the ornate chandeliers masked for this solemn occasion. The families of the
victims stood in an even line. Parents without their children, wives and
children without fathers. They were dressed in the baggy, ill-cut clothes so
characteristic of the Soviet Union. Their faces showed no emotion but shock, as
if they were still trying to come to terms with the damage done to their lives,
still hoping that they'd awake from this ghastly nightmare to find their loved
ones safe in their own beds. And knowing that this would not be.

The Chairman of the Party came somberly down the line,
embracing each of the bereaved, a black mourning band on his sleeve to contrast
with the gaudy Order of Lenin emblem on his lapel. Toland looked closely at his
face. There was real emotion there. One could almost imagine that he was
burying members of his own family.

One of the mothers accepted the embrace, then the kiss, and
nearly collapsed, falling to her knees and burying her face in her hands. The
Chairman dropped down to her side even before her husband did, and pulled her
head into his shoulder. A moment later he helped her back to her feet, moving
her gently toward the protective arm of her husband, a captain in the Soviet
Army whose face was a stone mask of rage.

God almighty, Toland thought. They couldn't have staged that
any better with Eisenstein himself directing.

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

You cold-hearted bastard, Sergetov said to himself. He and
the rest of the Politburo stood in another line to the left of the caskets. He
kept his face pointed forward, toward the line of coffins, but he averted his
eyes, only to see four television cameras recording the ceremony. The whole
world was watching them, the TV people had assured them. So exquisitely
organized it was. Here was the penultimate act of the maskirovka The honor
guard of Red Army soldiers mixed with boys and girls of the Moscow Young
Pioneers to watch over the murdered children. The lilting violins. Such a
masquerade! Sergetov told himself. See how kind we are to the families of those
we have murdered! He had seen many lies in his thirty-five years in the Party.
He had told enough of them himself but never anything that came close to this.
Just as well, he thought, that I've had nothing to eat today.

His eyes came back reluctantly to the waxen face of a child.
He remembered the sleeping faces of his own children, now grown. So often after
arriving home late from Party work, he had stolen a look into their bedroom at
night to see their peaceful faces, always lingering to be sure that they were
breathing normally, listening for the sniffles of a cold or the murmurs of a
dream. How often had he told himself that he and the Party worked for their
future? No more colds, little one, he said with his eyes to the nearest child.
No more dreams. See what the Party has done for your future. His own eyes
filled with tears-and he hated himself for it. His Comrades would think it part
of the performance. He wanted to look around, to see what his Comrades of the
Politburo thought of their handiwork. He wondered what the KGB team that had
done the deed thought of their mission now. If they were still alive, he
reflected. So easy to put them on an airplane and crash it into the ground so
that not even executioners would know of them. All records of the bomb plot
were already destroyed, he was sure, and of the thirty men who knew of it, more
than half were right there, standing in line with him. Sergetov almost wished
he had entered the building five minutes sooner. Better to be dead than to be a
beneficiary of such infamy-but he knew better. In that case he would have
played an even larger role in this brutal farce.

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

"Comrades. We see before us the innocent children of
our nation," the Chairman began, speaking with slow, quiet diction that
made Toland's translation job easier. CINCLANT's intelligence chief was at his
side. "Killed by the infernal engine of State terrorism. Killed by a
nation that has twice defiled our Motherland with unholy dreams of conquest and
murder. We see before us the dedicated, humble servants of our Party who asked
nothing more than to serve the State. We see martyrs to the security of the
Soviet Union. We see martyrs to the aggression of fascists.

"Comrades, to the families of these innocent children,
and to the families of these three fine men, I say that a reckoning will come.
I say that their deaths will not be forgotten. I say that there will be justice
for this vicious crime . . ."

"Jesus." Toland stopped translating and looked
over at his senior.

"Yeah. There's going to be a war. We have a linguistic
team across the street doing a full translation, Bob. Let's go see the
boss."

"You're sure?" CINCLANT asked.

"It's possible they will settle for something less,
sir," Toland replied. "But I don't think so. Everything about this
exercise has been run in such a way as to inflame the Russian population to a
degree I've never seen before."

"Let's put this all the way on the table. You're saying
that they deliberately murdered these people to foment a crisis." CINCLANT
looked down at his desk. "It's hard to believe, even for them."

"Admiral, either we believe that or we believe that the
West German government has decided to precipitate a war against the Soviet
Union on their own hook. In the second case the Germans would have to be
totally out of their fucking minds, sir," Toland blurted, forgetting that
only admirals swear in front of admirals.

"But why?"

We don't know the why. That's a problem with intelligence,
sir. It's a lot easier to tell the what than the why."

CINCLANT stood and walked to the comer of his office. There
was going to be a war, and he didn't know why. He wanted the why. The why might
be important.

"We're starting to call up reserves. Toland, you have
done one hell of a good job over the past two months. I'm going to request that
you get bumped up a grade to full commander. You're outside the normal zone,
but I think I just might be able to handle it. There's an open intel billet
with Com Second Fleet staff. He's put in a request for you if things go sour,
and it looks like they are. You would be number three on his threat team, and
you'd be out on a carrier. I want you out there."

"It sure would be nice to have a day or two with the
family, sir."

The Admiral nodded. "We owe you that much. NIMITZ is in
transit anyway. You can meet her off the Spanish coast. Report back here
Wednesday morning with your bags packed." CINCLANT came over to shake his
hand. "Well done, Commander."

Two miles away, PHARRIS was tied alongside her tender. As Ed
Morris watched from the bridge, ASROC rocket-boosted torpedoes were being
lowered onto his bow by crane, then fed into the magazine. Another crane was
lowering supplies onto the helicopter hangar aft, and a third of his crew was
hard at work moving them into proper storage spaces throughout the ship. He'd
had the PHARRIS for nearly two years now, and this was the first time they'd
had a full weapons loadout. The eight-cell "pepperbox" ASROC launcher
was being serviced by shoreside technicians to correct a minor mechanical
glitch. Another team from the tender was going over a radar problem with his
own crew. This was the end of his own checklist of problems to be fixed. The
ship's engineering plant was functioning perfectly, better than he would have
expected for a ship nearly twenty years old. In another few hours, USS PHARRIS
would be completely ready . . . for what?

"Still no sailing orders, skipper?' his executive
officer asked.

"Nope. I imagine everybody's wondering what we'll be
doing, but for my money even the flags"-Morris always referred to admirals
as flags-"don't know yet. There's a meeting of COs tomorrow morning at
CINCLANTFLT. S'pose I'll find out something then. Maybe," he said
dubiously.

"What do you think of this German stuff?"

"The Krauts I've worked with at sea have been all
right. Trying to blast the whole Russian command structure-nobody's that
crazy." Morris shrugged, a frown spreading across his dark face. "XO,
there ain't no rule that says the world has to make sense."

"Damn if that ain't the truth. I think those ASROCs are
going to be needed, skipper."

"I'm afraid you're right."

CROFTON, MARYLAND

"To sea?" Martha Toland asked.

"That's where they want me, and it's where I belong,
like it or not." Bob had trouble meeting his wife's eyes. Listening to the
brittle edge on her voice at the moment was bad enough. It wasn't his job to
bring fear into her life, but that was precisely what he'd just done.

"Bob, is it as bad as I think?"

"There's no telling, babe. It might be, but there's no
telling. Look, Marty, you remember Ed Morris and Dan McCafferty, right? They
both have their own commands now, and they have to go. Am I supposed to stay in
a nice safe place on the beach?"

His wife's reply was devastating.

"They're professionals, you're not," she said
coldly. "You play weekend warrior and serve your two weeks a year just to
pretend that you're still in the Navy, Bob. You're a civilian spook, you don't
belong out there. You can't even swim!'' Marty Toland could give lessons to sea
lions.

"The hell I can't!" Toland protested, knowing that
it was an absurd thing to argue about.

"Right! I haven't seen you in a pool in five years. Oh,
dammit, Bob, what if something happens to you? You go out there to play your
damned games and leave me behind with the kids. What do I tell them?"

"You tell them I didn't run away, I didn't hide,
I-" Toland looked away. He hadn't expected this. Marty came from a Navy
family. She was supposed to understand. But there were tears on her cheeks now,
and her mouth was quivering. He took a step forward to wrap his arms around
her. "Look, I'm going to be on a carrier, okay? The biggest ship we have,
the safest, best-protected ship we have, with a dozen other ships surrounding
her to keep the bad guys away, and a hundred airplanes. They need me to help
figure out what the bad guys are up to so they can keep them as far away as
possible. Marty, what I'm doing is necessary. They need me. The Admiral asked
for me by name. I'm important-at least somebody thinks so." He smiled
gently to hide his lie. A carrier was the best-protected ship in the fleet
because she had to be: the carrier was also the number-one target for the
Russians.

"I'm sorry." She broke out of his grasp and walked
to the window. "How are Danny and Ed?"

"A lot busier than I am. Danny's sub is somewhere
up-well, right now he's a lot closer to the Soviets than I'll ever be. Ed's
getting ready to sail. He's got a 1052-an escort ship-and he'll probably be out
protecting convoys or something from submarines. They both have their own
families. At least you get a chance to see me before I go."

Marty turned and smiled for the first time since he had
unexpectedly walked through the door. "You will be careful."

"I'll be damned careful, babe." But would it
matter?

13. - The Strangers Arrive and Depart

AACHEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

It was the traffic that did it. The envelope came as
promised to the proper post office box, and the key worked as he'd been told to
expect. Minimum personnel involvement. The major grumbled at having to expose
himself in the open this way, but it wasn't the first time he'd had to work
with the KGB, and he needed this up-to-date information if his mission were to
have any chance of success. Besides, he smiled briefly, the Germans are so
proud of their postal service . . .

The major folded the oversized envelope and tucked it into
his jacket pocket before leaving the building. His clothing was entirely German
in origin, as were the sunglasses which he donned on opening the door. He
scanned the sidewalk in both directions, looking for anyone who might be
trailing him. Nothing. The KGB officer had promised him that the safe house was
totally secure, that no one had the least suspicion that they were here.
Perhaps. The taxi was waiting for him across the street. He was in a hurry. The
cars were stopped on the street, and he decided to go straight across instead
of walking to the comer. The major was from Russia and not accustomed to the
unruly European traffic where the pedestrians are expected to follow the rules
too. He was a hundred meters from the nearest traffic cop, and the nearby
German drivers could sense that the cop's back was turned. It should have been
as much a surprise to the major as to American tourists that, when driving, the
orderly Germans were anything but. He stepped off the curb without looking,
just as the traffic started moving.

He never even saw the accelerating Peugeot. It was not
moving fast, only twenty-five kilometers per hour. Fast enough. The right
fender caught him on the hip, spun him around, and catapulted the major into a
lamppost. He was knocked unconscious before he knew what had happened, which
was just as well, since his legs remained in the street and the Peugeot's rear
wheel crushed both ankles. The damage to his head was spectacular. A major
artery was cut open, and blood fountained onto the sidewalk as he lay
motionless on his face. The car stopped at once, its driver leaping out to see
what she had done. There was a scream from a child who had never seen so much
blood, and a postman raced to the comer to summon the police officer standing
in the traffic circle, while another man went into a store to call an
ambulance.

The stopped traffic allowed the taxi driver to leave his
vehicle and come over. He tried to get close, but already a half dozen men were
bending over the body.

"Er ist tot," one observed, and the body was pale
enough to make one think so. The major was already in shock. So was the
Peugeot's driver, whose eyes were already dripping tears as her breaths came in
irregular sobs. She was trying to tell everyone that the man had stepped right
in front of her car, that she hadn't had a chance to stop. She spoke in French,
which only made things more difficult.

Pushing through the spectators, the taxi driver was almost
close enough to touch the body by now. He had to get that envelope . . . but
then the policeman arrived.

"Alles zurfick!" the cop ordered, remembering his
training: first, get things under control. His training also enabled him to
resist the instinct to move the body. This was a head injury, perhaps a neck
injury also, and those were not to be moved except by Experten. A bystander
called out that he had summoned an ambulance. The policeman nodded curtly and
hoped it would arrive soon. Making traffic accident reports was far more
routine than watching an unconscious--or dead?-man bleed untidily on the
sidewalk. He looked up gratefully a moment later to see a lieutenant -a senior
watch supervisor-pushing his way in.

"Ambulance?"

"On the way, Herr Leutnant. I am Dieter,
Gunther-traffic detail. My post is down the street."

"Who was driving the car here?" the lieutenant
asked.

The driver stood as erect as she could and started gasping
out her story in French. A passerby who had seen the whole thing cut her off.

"This one just stepped off the curb without looking.
The lady had no chance to stop. I am a banker, and I came out of the post
office right behind this one. He tried to cross at the wrong place and stepped
into the street without looking at the traffic. My card." The banker
handed the lieutenant his business card.

"Thank you, Dr. Muller. You have no objection to making
a statement?"

"Of course. I can come directly to your station if you
wish."

"Good." The lieutenant rarely had one this
clean-cut.

The taxi driver just stood at the edge of the crowd. An
experienced KGB case officer, he'd seen operations go bad before, but this was
. . . absurd. There was always something new that could ruin an operation, so
often the most simple, most foolish thing. This proud Spetznaz commando, cut
down by a middle-aged Frenchwoman driving a sedan! Why hadn't he looked at the
damned traffic? I should have gotten someone else to fetch the envelope, and
screw the damned orders. Security, he swore behind an impassive face. Orders
from Moscow Center: minimum personnel involvement. He walked back across the
street to his cab, wondering how he'd explain this to his control. Mistakes
were never the Center's fault.

The ambulance arrived next. The sergeant removed the
victim's wallet from his pants. The victim was one Siegfried Baum-wonderful,
the lieutenant thought, a Jew-from the Altona district of Hamburg. The driver
of the car was French. He decided he had to ride in to the hospital with the
victim. An "international" accident: there'd be extra paperwork on
this. The lieutenant wished he'd stayed in the Gasthaus across the street and
finished his after lunch pilsener. So much for devotion to duty. Then there was
his possible mobilization to worry about . . .

The ambulance crew worked quickly. A cervical collar was
fitted around the victim's neck, and a backboard brought in before they rolled
him over onto the stretcher. The broken lower legs were immobilized with
cardboard splints. The paramedic clucked over them. Both ankles looked to be
badly crushed. The whole procedure took six minutes by the lieutenant's watch,
and he boarded the ambulance, leaving three police officers to manage the rest
of the incident and clear the accident scene.

"How bad is he?"

"Probably fractured his skull. He has lost a lot of
blood. What happened?"

"Walked out into traffic without watching."

"Idiot," the paramedic commented. "As if we
don't have work enough."

"Will he live?"

"Depends on the head injury." The ambulanceman
shrugged. "The surgeons will be working on him within the hour. You know
his name? I have a form to fill out."

"Baum, Siegfried. Kaiserstrasse 17, Altona District,
Hamburg."

"Well, he'll be in the hospital in four minutes."
The paramedic took his pulse and made a notation. "Doesn't look
Jewish."

"Be careful saying things like that," the
lieutenant cautioned.

"My wife is Jewish. His blood pressure is dropping
rapidly." The ambulanceman debated starting an IV, but decided against it.
Better to let the surgeons make that decision.

"Hans, have you radioed in?"

"Ja, they know what to expect," the driver
replied. "Isn't Ziegler on duty today?"

"I hope so."

The driver horsed the ambulance into a hard left turn, and
all the while the two-tone siren cleared traffic ahead of them. One minute later
he halted the Mercedes and backed it into the emergency receiving area. A
doctor and two orderlies were already waiting.

German hospitals are nothing if not efficient. Within ten
minutes the victim, now a patient, had been intubated to protect his airway,
punctured for a unit of O-positive blood and a bottle of IV fluids, and wheeled
up to neurosurgery for immediate surgery at the hands of Professor Anton
Ziegler. The lieutenant had to stay in the emergency room with the registrar.

"So who was he?" the young doctor asked. The
policeman gave the information over.

"A German?"

"Does that seem strange?" the lieutenant asked.

"Well, when the radio call came in, and said you were
coming also, I assumed that this was, well, sensitive, as though a foreigner
were injured."

"The auto was driven by a Frenchwoman."

"Ach, that explains it. I thought he was the
foreigner."

"Why so?"

"His dental work. I noticed when I intubated him. He
has a number of cavities, and they've been repaired with stainless steel-sloppy
work."

"Perhaps he originally comes from the East Zone,"
the lieutenant observed. The registrar snorted.

No German ever did that work! A carpenter could do
better." The doctor filled out the admission form rapidly.

"What are you telling me?"

"He has poor dental work. Strange. He is very fit.
Dressed well. Jewish. But he has miserable dental work." The doctor sat
down. "We see many strange things, of course."

"Where are his personal effects?" The lieutenant
was a naturally curious type, one reason he'd become a policeman after his
service in the Bundeswehr. The doctor walked the officer to a room where the
personal effects were inventoried for secure storage by a hospital employee.

They found the clothing neatly arranged, with the jacket and
shirt separate so that their bloodstains would not damage anything else. Pocket
change, a set of keys, and a large envelope were set aside for cataloging. The
orderly was filling out a form, looking up to list exactly what had come in
with the patient.

The policeman lifted the manila envelope. It had been mailed
from Stuttgart yesterday evening. A ten-mark stamp. On an impulse he pulled out
a pocketknife and slit the top of the envelope open. Neither the doctor nor the
orderly objected. This was a police officer, after all.

A large and two smaller envelopes were inside. He opened the
large one first and extracted the contents. First he saw a diagram. It looked
ordinary enough until he saw that it was a photocopy of a German Army document
stamped Geheim. Secret. Then the name: Lammersdorf. He was holding a map of a
NATO communications headquarters not thirty kilometers from where he stood. The
police lieutenant was a captain in the German Army Reserves, and held an
intelligence billet. Who was Siegfried Baum? He opened the other envelopes.
Next he went to a phone.

ROTA, SPAIN

The transport jet arrived right on time. A fair breeze
greeted them from the sea as Toland emerged from the cargo door. A pair of
sailors was there to direct the arrivals. Toland was pointed to a helicopter a
hundred yards away, its rotor already turning. He walked quickly toward it,
along with four other men. Five minutes later he was airborne, his first visit
to Spain having lasted exactly eleven minutes. No one attempted conversation.
Toland looked out one of the small windows available. They were over a patch of
blue water, evidently flying southwest. They were aboard a Sea King
antisubmarine helicopter. The crew chief was also a sonar operator, and he was
fiddling with his gear, evidently running some sort of test. The interior walls
of the aircraft were bare. Aft was the sonobuoy storage, and the dipping sonar
transducer was caged in its compartment in the floor. For all that, the
aircraft was crowded, most of its space occupied by weapon and sensor
instrumentation. They'd been in the air for half an hour when the helo started
circling. Two minutes later, they landed on USS NIMITZ.

The flight deck was hot, noisy, and stank of jet fuel. A
deck crewman motioned them toward a ladder which led down to the catwalk
surrounding the deck, and into a passageway beneath it. Here they encountered
air conditioning and relative quiet, sheltered from the flight operations going
on overhead.

"Lieutenant Commander Toland?" a yeoman called
out.

"Here."

"Please come with me, sir."

Toland followed the sailor through the rabbit warren of
compartments below the flight deck, and was finally pointed to an open door.

"You must be Toland," observed a somewhat frazzled
officer.

"Must be-unless the time zone changes did
something."

"You want the good news or the bad news?"

"Bad."

"Okay, you'll have to hot-bunk. Not enough berths for
all of us intel types. Shouldn't matter much, though. I haven't slept for three
days-one of the reasons you're here. The good news is that you just got another
half a stripe. Welcome aboard, Commander. I'm Chip Bennett." The officer
handed Toland a telex sheet. "Looks as though CINCLANT likes you. Nice to
have friends in high places."

The message announced tersely that Lieutenant Commander Robert
A. Toland, III, USNR, had been "frocked" as a commander, USNR, which
gave him the right to wear the three gold stripes of a commander, but not to
collect a commander's pay just yet. It was like a kiss from one's sister. Well,
he reflected, maybe a cousin.

"I guess it's a step in the right direction. What am I
going to be doing here?"

"Theoretically you're supposed to assist me, but we're
so friggin' overwhelmed with information at the moment that we're divvying the
territory up some. I'm going to let you handle the morning and evening briefs
to the battle group commander. We do that at 0700 and 2000. Rear Admiral Samuel
B. Baker, Jr. Son of a B. He's an ex-nuc. Likes it quick and clean, with
footnotes and sources on the writeup to read afterwards. He almost never
sleeps. Your battle station will be in the CIC with the group tactical warfare
officer." Walker rubbed his eyes. "So what the hell is happening in
this crazy world?"

"What's it look like?" Toland answered.

"Yeah. Something new just came in. The space shuttle
Atlantis was pulled off the pad at Kennedy today, supposedly for a computer
glitch, right? Three newspapers just broke a story that she was taken down for
payload replacement. They were supposed to loft three or four commercial
communications birds. Instead, the payload is reconnaissance satellites."

"I guess people are starting to take this
seriously."

AACHEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

"Siegfried Baum" awoke six hours later to see
three men wearing surgical garb. The effect of the anesthesia still heavy on
him, his eyes could not focus properly.

"How are you feeling?" one asked. In Russian.

"What happened to me?" The major answered in
Russian.

Ach so. "You were struck by a car and you are now in a
military hospital," the man lied. They were still in Aachen, near the
German-Belgian frontier.

"What . . . I was just coming out to-" The major's
voice was that of a drunken man, but it stopped abruptly. His eyes tried to
focus properly.

"It is all finished for you, my friend." Now the
speaker switched to German. "We know you are a Soviet officer, and you
were found in possession of classified government documents. Tell me, what is
your interest in Lammersdorf?"

"I have nothing to say," replied "Baum"
in German.

"A little late for that," the interrogator chided,
switching back to Russian. "But we'll make it easy for you. The surgeon
tells us that it is now safe to try a new, ah, medication for you, and you will
tell us everything you know. Be serious. No one can resist this form of
questioning. You might also wish to consider your position," the man said
more harshly. "You are an officer in the army of a foreign government,
here in the Federal Republic illegally, traveling with false papers, and in
possession of secret documents. At the least, we can imprison you for life.
But, given what your government is doing at the moment, we are not concerned
with 'least' measures. If you cooperate you will live, and probably be
exchanged back to the Soviet Union at a later date for a German agent. We will
even say that we got all our information due to the use of drugs; no harm could
possibly come to you from this. If you do not cooperate, you will die of
injuries received in a motor accident."

"I have a family," Major Andre Chernyavin said
quietly, trying to remember his duty. The combination of fear and drug-induced
haze made a hash of his emotions. He couldn't tell there was a vial of sodium
pentothol dripping into his IV line, and already impairing his higher brain
functions. Soon he would be unable to consider the long-term consequences of
his action. Only the here and now would matter.

"They will come to no harm," Colonel Weber
promised. An Army officer assigned to the Bundesnachrichtendienst, he had
interrogated many Soviet agents. "Do you think they punish the family of
every spy we catch? Soon no one would ever come here to spy on us at all."
Weber allowed his voice to soften. The drugs were beginning to take effect, and
as the stranger's mind became hazy he would be gentle, cajoling the information
from him. The funny part, he mused, was that he'd been instructed on how to do
this by a psychiatrist. Despite the many movies about brutal German
interrogators, he hadn't had the least training in a forceful extraction of
information. Too bad, he thought. If there was ever a time I need it, it is
now. Most of the colonel's family lived outside Kulmbach, only a few kilometers
from the border.

KIEV, THE UKRAINE

"Captain Ivan Mikhailovich Sergetov reporting as
ordered, Comrade General."

"Be seated, Comrade Captain." The resemblance to
his father was remarkable, Alekseyev thought. Short and stocky. The same proud
eyes, the same intelligence. Another young man on his way up. "Your father
tells me that you are an honor student in Middle East languages."

"This is correct, Comrade General."

"Have you also studied the people who speak them?"

"That is an integral part of the curriculum,
Comrade." The younger Sergetov smiled. "We've even had to read
through the Koran. It is the only book most of them have ever read, and
therefore an important factor in understanding the savages."

"You do not like the Arabs, then?"

"Not particularly. But out country must do business
with them. I get along with them well enough. My class will occasionally meet
with diplomats from politically acceptable countries to practice our language
skills. Mainly Libya, and occasionally people from Yemen and Syria."

"You have three years in tanks. Can we defeat the Arabs
in battle?"

"The Israelis have done so with ease, and they don't
have a fraction of our resources. The Arab soldier is an illiterate peasant,
poorly trained and led by incompetent officers."

A young man with all the answers. And perhaps you will
explain Afghanistan to me? Alekseyev thought. "Comrade Captain, you will
be attached to my personal staff for the forthcoming operation against the
Persian Gulf states. I will lean on you for linguistic work, and to support our
intelligence estimates. I understand that you are training to be a diplomat.
That is useful to me. I always like to have a second opinion of the
intelligence data that KGB and GRU send us. Not that I distrust our comrades in
the intelligence arms, you understand. I simply like to have someone who thinks
'Army' to review the data. The fact that you've served in tanks is doubly
valuable to me. One more question. How are the reservists reacting to the
mobilization?"

"With enthusiasm, of course," the captain replied.

"Ivan Mikhailovich, I presume your father told you
about me. I listen attentively to the words of our Party, but soldiers
preparing for battle need to know the unvarnished truth so that we can bring
about the Party's wishes."

Captain Sergetov noted how carefully that had been phrased.
"Our people are angry, Comrade General. They are enraged over the incident
in the Kremlin, the murder of the children. I think 'enthusiasm' is not a great
exaggeration."

"And you, Ivan Mikhailovich?"

"Comrade General, my father told me that you would ask
this question. He told me to assure you that he had no prior knowledge of it,
and that the important thing is to safeguard our country so that similar
tragedies will never again be necessary."

Alekseyev did not reply at once. He was chilled by the
knowledge that Sergetov had read his mind three days before, and dumbfounded
that he had confided so enormous a secret to his son. But it was good to know
that he had not misread the Politburo man. He was a man to be trusted. Perhaps
his son also? Mikhail Eduardovich evidently thought so.

"Comrade Captain, these are things to be forgotten. We
have enough to occupy us already. You will work down the hall in room
twenty-two. There is work waiting for you. Dismissed."

BONN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

"It's all a sham," Weber reported to the
Chancellor four hours later. The helicopter he'd flown to Bonn hadn't even left
the ground yet. "The whole bomb-plot business is all a cruel and
deliberate sham."

"We know that, Colonel," the Chancellor replied
testily. He'd been awake for two days straight now, trying to come to grips
with the sudden German-Russian crisis.

"Herr Kanzler, the man we now have in the hospital is
Major Andre Ilych Chernyavin. He entered the country over the Czech border two
weeks ago with a separate set of false papers. He is an officer in the Soviet
Spetznaz forces, their elite Sturmtruppen. He was badly injured in an auto
accident-the fool stepped right in front of an automobile without looking-and
was carrying a complete diagram for the NATO communications base at
Lammersdorf. The station's security posts were just relocated a month ago. This
document is only two weeks old. He also has the watch schedule and a roster of
watch officers-and that is only three days old! He and a team of ten men came
over the Czech border, and only just got their operational orders. His current
orders are to attack the base exactly at midnight, the day after receipt of his
alert signal. There is also a cancellation signal should plans change. We have
them both."

"He came into Germany long before-" The Chancellor
was surprised in spite of himself. The entire affair was so unreal.

"Exactly. It all fits, Herr Kanzler. For whatever
reason, Ivan is coming to attack Germany. Everything to this point was a sham,
all designed to put us to sleep. Here is a full transcript of our interview
with Chernyavin. He has knowledge of four other Spetznaz operations, all of
them consistent with a full-scale assault across our borders. He is now at our
military hospital in Koblenz under heavy guard. We also have a videotape of his
admission."

"What of the chance that this is all some sort of
Russian provocation? Why weren't these documents brought over when they crossed
the border?"

"The reconstruction of the Lammersdorf installation
meant that they needed correct information. As you know, we've been upgrading
the security measures at our NATO communications stations since last summer,
and our Russian friends must have been updating their assault plans as well.
The fact that they have these documents at all-just days old, some of them-is
most frightening. As for how we happened to get hold of this man-" Weber
explained the circumstances of the accident. "We have every reason to believe
that it was a genuine accident, not a provocation. The driver, a Madame
Anne-Marie LeCourte, is a fashion agent -she sells dresses for some Paris
designer or other; not a likely cover for a Soviet spy. And why do such a
thing? Do they expect us to launch an attack into the DDR based on this? First
they accuse us of bombing the Kremlin, then try to provoke us? It's not
logical. What we have here is a man whose mission is to prepare the way for a
Soviet invasion of Germany by paralyzing NATO communication links immediately
before hostilities commence."

"But to do such a thing-even if such an attack is
planned.

"The Soviets are intoxicated with 'special operations'
groups, a lesson from Afghanistan. These men are highly trained, very
dangerous. And it's a cunning plan. The Jewish identification, for example. The
bastards play on our sensitivity with the Jews, no? If he is stopped by a
police officer, he can make a casual remark about how Germans treat Jews, and
what would a young policeman do, eh? Probably apologize and send him on his
way." Weber smiled grimly. That had been a carefully thought-out touch. He
had to admire it. "What they could not allow for was the unexpected. We've
been lucky. We should now make use of this luck. Herr Kanzler, this data must
go to NATO high command immediately. For the moment we have their safe house
under observation. We may wish to assault it. GSG-9 is ready for the mission,
but perhaps it should be a NATO operation."

"I must meet with my cabinet first. Then I will speak with
the President of the United States on the telephone and the other NATO chiefs
of government."

"Forgive me, Chancellor, but there is no time for that.
With your permission, within the hour I will give a copy of the videotape to
the CIA liaison officer, and also to the British and French. The Russians are
going to attack us. Better to alert the intelligence services first, which will
lay the groundwork for your talk with the President and others. We must move at
once, Herr Kanzler. This is a life-and-death situation."

The Chancellor stared down at his desk. "Agreed,
Colonel. What do you propose to do with this Chernyavin?"

Weber had already moved on that score. "He died of
injuries sustained in the auto accident. It will appear on the television news
this evening, and in the newspapers. Of course he will be made available to our
allies for further interrogation. I am certain the CIA and others will wish to
see him before midnight."

The Chancellor of the German Federal Republic stared out the
windows of his Bonn office. He remembered his armed service forty years before:
a frightened teenager with a helmet that nearly covered his eyes. "It's
happening again." How many will die this time?

"Ja." Dear God, what will it be like?

LENINGRAD, R.S.F.S.R.

The captain looked out over the port side of his ship from
the bridge wing. Tugs pushed the last barge onto the aft elevator, then backed
away. The elevator rose a few meters, and the barge settled into place on the
trolleys already set on the fore-and-aft tracks. JULIUS FUCIK's first officer
supervised the loading process from the winch-control station aft,
communicating by portable radio to other men scattered about the afterpart of
the ship. The elevator matched levels with that of the third cargo deck, and
the access door opened to expose the vast cargo deck. Crewmen strung cables
onto the trolleys and bolted them rapidly into place.

Winches pulled the barge forward into the third, lowermost,
cargo deck of the Seabee-for Seagoing Barge Carner-ship. As soon as the trolleys
were over their painted marks, the watertight door closed and lights came on to
allow the crew to secure the barge firmly in place. Neatly done, the first
officer thought. The whole loading process had been completed in only eleven
hours, almost a record. He supervised the process of securing the after-portion
of the ship for sea.

"The last barge will be fully secured in thirty
minutes," the bosun reported to the first officer, who forwarded the
information to the bridge.

Captain Kherov switched buttons on his phone to talk to the
engineering spaces. "You will be ready to answer bells in thirty
minutes."

"Very well. Thirty minutes." The engineer hung up.

On the bridge, the captain turned to his most senior
passenger, a general of paratroops wearing the blue jacket of a ship's officer.
"How are your men?"

"Some are seasick already." General Andreyev
laughed. They had been brought aboard inside the sealed barges-except for the
General, of course-along with tons of military cargo. "Thank you for
allowing my men to walk around the lower decks."

"I run a ship, not a prison. Just so they don't tamper
with anything."

"They've been told," Andreyev assured him.

"Good. We will have plenty of work for them to do in a
few days."

"You know, this is my first trip aboard ship."

"Really? Fear not, Comrade General. It is much safer,
and much more comfortable, than flying in an aircraft-and then jumping out of
it!" The captain laughed. "He is a big ship and he rides very well
even with so light a load."

"Light load?" the General asked. "This is
more than half of my division's equipment you have aboard."

"We can carry well over thirty-five thousand metric
tons of cargo. Your equipment is bulky, but not that heavy." This was a
new thought for the General, who usually had to calculate in terms of moving
equipment by air.

Below, over a thousand men of the 234th Guards Air Assault
Regiment were milling about under the control of their officers and NCOs.
Except for brief periods at night, they'd be stuck down there until the Fucik
cleared the English Channel. They tolerated it surprisingly well. Even when
crammed with barges and equipment, the cavernous cargo spaces were far larger
than the military transport aircraft they were accustomed to. The ship's crew
was rigging planks from one barge top to another so that there would be more
room for them to use for sleeping, and to get the soldiers off the oily
workspaces that the crew needed to patrol. Soon, the regimental officers were
to be briefed on shipboard systems, with special attention to the firefighting
systems. A strict no-smoking rule was being enforced, but the professional
seamen took no chances. The crewmen were surprised at the humble demeanor of
the swaggering paratroopers. Even elite troops, they learned, could be cowed by
exposure to a new environment. It was a pleasant observation for the merchant seamen.

Three tugs pulled on lines hanging from the ship's side,
drawing her slowly away from her dock. Two others joined as soon as she was
clear, pushing the bow around to face out to sea from the Leningrad terminal.
The General watched the ship's captain control the procedure, as he raced from
one bridge wing to another with a junior officer in tow, often giving rudder
orders as he passed. Captain Kherov was nearly sixty, and more than two-thirds
of his life had been spent at sea.

"Rudder amidships!" he called. "Ahead
slow."

The helmsman accomplished both commands in under a second,
the General saw. Not bad, he thought, remembering the surly comments he'd heard
from time to time about merchant seamen. The captain rejoined him.

"Ah, that's the hardest part behind us."

"But you had help for that," the General observed.

"Some help! Damned tugboats are run by drunks. They
damage ships all the time here." The captain walked over to the chart.
Good: a deep straight channel all the way to the Baltic. He could relax a bit.
The captain walked over to his bridge chair and settled in. "Tea!"

A steward appeared at once with a tray of cups.

"There is no liquor aboard?" Andreyev was
surprised.

"Not unless your men brought it, Comrade General. I do
not tolerate alcohol on my ship."

"That is true enough." The first officer joined
them. "All secure aft. The special sea detail is set. Lookouts posted. The
deck inspection is under way."

"Deck inspection?"

"We normally check at the turn of every watch for open
hatches, Comrade General," the first officer explained. "With your
men aboard, we will check every hour."

"You do not trust my men?" The General was mildly
offended.

"Would you trust one of us aboard one of your
airplanes?" the captain replied.

"You are right, of course. Please excuse me."
Andreyev knew a professional when he saw one. "Can you spare a few men to
teach my junior officers and sergeants what they need to know?"

The first officer pulled a set of papers from his pocket.
"The classes begin in three hours. In two weeks, your men will be proper
seamen."

"We are particularly worried about damage
control," the captain said.

"That concerns you?"

"Of course. We stand into danger, Comrade General. I
would also like to see what your men can do for ship defense."

The General hadn't thought of that. The operation had been
thrown together too quickly for his liking, without the chance to train his men
in their shipboard duties. Security considerations. Well, no operation was ever
fully planned, was it? "I'll have my antiair commander meet with you as
soon as you are ready." He paused. "What sort of damage can this ship
absorb and still survive?"

"He is not a warship, Comrade General." Kherov
smiled cryptically. "However, you will note that nearly all of our cargo
is on steel barges. Those barges have double steel walls, with a meter of space
between them, which may even be better than the compartmentalization on a
warship. With luck, we will not have to learn. Fire is what concerns me most.
The majority of ships lost in battle die from fire. If we can set up an
effective firefighting drill, we may well be able to survive at least one,
perhaps as many as three missile hits."

The General nodded thoughtfully. "My men will be
available to you whenever you wish."

"As soon as we clear the Channel." The captain got
up and checked the chart again. "Sorry that we cannot offer you a pleasure
cruise. Perhaps the return trip."

The General lifted his tea. "I will toast that,
Comrades. My men are at your disposal until the time comes. Success!"

"Yes. Success!" Captain Kherov lifted his cup
also, almost wishing for a glass of vodka to toast their enterprise properly.
He was ready. Not since his youth in Navy minesweepers had he had the chance to
serve the State directly, and he was determined to see this mission through.

KOBLENZ, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

"Good evening, Major." In a guarded wing of the
military hospital, the chief of CIA's Bonn Station sat down with his British
and French counterparts and a pair of translators. "Shall we talk about
Lammersdorf?" Unbeknownst to the Germans, the British had a file on Major
Chernyavin's activities in Afghanistan, including a poor but recognizable
photograph of the man remembered by the Mudjahaddin as the Devil of the
Kandahar. General Jean-Pierre de Ville of the French DGSE handled the
questioning, since he spoke the best Russian. By this time Chernyavin was a
broken man. His only attempt at resistance was killed by listening to a tape of
his drug-induced confession. A dead man to his own countrymen, the major
repeated what these men already knew but had to hear for themselves. Three
hours later, Flash-priority dispatches went to three Western capitals, and
representatives of the three security services prepared briefing papers for
their counterparts in the other NATO countries.

14 - Gas

WANDLITZ, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

SCENARIO 6

Spring-summer weather patterns (moderate humidity and
temperatures; rain probability 35% per day); westerly and southwesterly winds
of 10 to 30 km/hr at ground level, indexed for altitude; use of highly
persistent agents against communications nexi, POMCUS sites, airfields, supply,
and nuclear weapon storage facilities (normal computed delivery error rate, see
Appendix F of Annex 1). The chief of the Communist Party of the German
Democratic Republic read on to the bottom of the abstract, despite the acid
churning in his stomach:

As with Scenarios 1, 3, 4, and 5, any warning of over 15
minutes will ensure virtually complete MOPP-4 protection of alerted combat and
support personnel. The problem of civilian casualties remains, since over a
hundred targets of the categories cited above are near major population
centers. Biodegradation of persistent agents such as GD (the expected Soviet
agent of choice; for an analysis of Soviet literature on this topic, see
Appendix C of Annex 2) will be slowed by generally mild temperatures and
weather-reduced sunlight photochemical action. This will allow the agents in
aerosol form to drift on wind currents. Given minimum source concentrations of
2 milligrams per cubic meter, predicted vertical temperature gradients, and
cloud-width inputs, we see that the downwind toxic vapor hazard to large areas
of the FRG and DDR will be approximately 0.3 (plus or minus 50% in our
calculations, allowing for expected impurities and chemical breakdown in the
chemical munitions) as great as that at the targets themselves.

Since open Soviet literature calls for source (that is,
target) concentrations well beyond median lethal dose (LCT-50), we see that the
entire German civilian population is at the gravest risk Expected allied
retaliation to such chemical strikes would be largely psychological in
nature-the use of Soviet munitions alone will effectively contaminate most of
Greater Germany; it is expected that no part of Germany east of the Rhein can
be considered safe to unprotected personnel, beginning 12 hours after the first
munitions are expended. Similar effects may be expected in parts of
Czechoslovakia, and even western Poland, depending on wind direction and speed.
Such contamination must be expected, moreover, to continue at least 1.5 times
the mean persistence level of the agents used.

This is the last (and statistically most likely) of the
scenarios outlined by the contract specifications.

SECTION VIII: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

As the reader will appreciate, although given tactical
warning of only a few minutes, alerted military formations can confidently be
expected to sufferfew casualties (albeit with 30-50% degradation of combat
effectiveness;this degradation likely, however, to equate to both sides),
expected casualties  es civilians will
actually be greater than those anticipated from a Level-2 exchange of tactical
nuclear weapons (200 warheads @ { 100kt yield, seeAppendix A of Annex 1) at a
mix of military and civilian/industrial targets. Thus, despite the fact that
chemical munitions are not of themselves directly damaging to fixed industrial
assets, serious near- and long-term economic effects must be expected. Even the
use of nonpersistentagents at the FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battle Area) cannot
but have major impact on the civilian population due to the heavily urbanized
character of the German countryside and the patent inability of any government
to provide adequate protection for its civilian population.

In terms of immediate effects, the 10,000,000+ civilian
fatality floor figure in Scenario 2 represents a public health problem worse by
an order of magnitude than that following the Bangladesh Cyclone disaster of
1970, and is likely to include synergistic effects well beyond the scope of
this study. (Contract specifications specifically excluded investigation into
bidecological effects from a major chemical exchange. While the difficulty
associated with an in-depth examination of this subject is impossible at this
writing to estimate, the reader is cautioned that such far-reaching effects are
less easily dealt with than studied. It might be necessary, for example, to
import tons of insect larvae before the simplest food crops can again flourish
in Western Europe.) For the moment the ability even of organized armies to
dispose of millions of civilian bodies in advanced stages of decomposition is
not something to be taken for granted. And the civilians needed for the
reestablishment of industrial production (under what are almost certainly
optimistic estimates) will have been at the least decimated in the literal,
classical sense.

An Analysis of the Effects of Chemical

Warfare in the European Theater Utilizing

Atmospheric Release Advisory Capability (ARAC) Prediction

Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratories

LLNL 88-2504 * CR 8305/89/178

SIGMA 2

Specified External Distribution Only

}}SECRET{{

Johannes Bitner did not throw the report into his trash
basket-he felt like washing his hands. Yet another similarity between East and
West, he thought coldly. Their government reports are written by computers to
be read by calculators. Just like ours. Just like ours.

"Herr Generaloberst." The Chief of the Communist
Party of the DDR looked up at his Commander-in-Chief. He and another officer
had come early in the morning-and in civilian clothes-to visit him at his plush
private residence in Wandlitz, the enclave of the Party elite outside Berlin.
They had delivered the document obtained only two days earlier through a highly
placed DDR agent in West Germany's Ministry of Defense. "Just how accurate
is this document?"

"Comrade Secretary, we cannot check their computer
models, of course, but their formulae, their estimates for the persistence of
Soviet chemical weapons, their predicted weather patterns-that is, all of the
data which supposedly underlies this study-has been examined by members of my
intelligence staff and rechecked by some chosen faculty members at the
University of Leipzig. There is no reason to believe that it is anything but
genuine."

"In fact," said Colonel Mellethin, director of
Foreign Operations Analysis-he was a spare, austere man with eyes that clearly
had not known sleep for some days-"the Americans understate the total
quantities of munitions employed, because they consistently overstate the
accuracy of Russian delivery systems." The other two men in the room noted
at once that Russian had been substituted for Soviet.

"There is something else you wish to say,
Mellethin?" Bitner asked sharply.

"Comrade Secretary, from the Russian point of view,
what is the objective of this war?"

"The neutralization of NATO, and access to greater
economic assets. Say what you have to say, Comrade Colonel," Bitner
ordered.

"Comrade, success for the Warsaw Pact would leave a
united Germany. I point out that a united Germany, even a united socialist
Germany, would be viewed as a strategic threat by the Soviet Union-after all,
we are better socialists than they, nicht wahr?" Mellethin took a deep
breath before going on. Was he risking his life? Did it matter? The family name
had once been von Mellethin, and unwavering loyalty to the State was not
something that Communism had taught his line of professional soldiers.
"Comrade Party Secretary, Soviet success in this operation will leave
Germany, socialist and capitalist, as barren as the surface of the moon, a
minimum of ten to thirty percent of our people dead, our land poisoned, even
without Western chemical retaliation. Comrade, we learned today that the
Americans have begun airlifting 'Bigeye' chemical aircraft bombs into their
base at Ramstein. If our 'allies' use their chemical weapons, and then NATO
retaliates in kind, it is entirely possible that our country-that German culture
itself-will completely cease to exist. Such an objective is not militarily
defensible, but I suggest, Comrade, that this could be an additional, political
objective of the Russian plan."

Bitner's expression didn't change a whit, and his visitors
couldn't see the chill that was enveloping their national leader. The meeting
he'd had the previous week in Warsaw had been unsettling enough, but now the
reason behind the greasy reassurances offered him by the Soviet leadership
seemed all too clear.

"There is no way to protect our civilian
population?" Bitner asked.

"Comrade." The General sighed. "These
persistent agents need not be breathed. They also work through the skin. If one
touches a contaminated surface, one is poisoned. Even if we order our people to
remain in their homes with windows and door closed, houses and apartment blocks
are not airtight. And people still must eat. Factory workers in certain
essential industries still must work. Medical personnel, police, and internal
security personnel-some of our most valuable citizens will be the most gravely
exposed. These aerosols will travel invisibly across our country, virtually
undetectable. They will leave a toxic film on lawns, trees, fences, walls,
trucks-nearly everything. The rain will wash much off, but tests made years ago
show that some of these poisons-those on the undersides of fences, for
example-will persist for weeks, even months. We would need thousands of
decontamination teams even to begin the task of making our country safe enough
for our citizens to walk to their markets. Colonel Mellethin is correct: if the
Russians use their gas weapons, and then the Americans reply in kind, we would
be fortunate if half our citizens were alive six months from today. It is
actually easier to protect our citizens from nuclear weapons than against
gasses, and nuclear effects are shorter-lived."

"Du lieber Gott. "

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

"They said what?" The Defense Minister almost
screamed.

"Our fraternal socialist comrades of the German
Democratic Republic have informed us that they can only view the use of
chemical munitions inside their territory as a matter of the gravest national
concern." The Foreign Minister spoke dryly. "Moreover, they have
forwarded to us intelligence reports which show clearly that the use of such
weapons would only serve to harden NATO resolve-and possibly open the door to
other weapons of mass destruction."

"But they are part of the plan!" Defense objected.

"Comrades," Sergetov observed. "We all know
that the use of chemical munitions will have calamitous effects on
civilians-wouldn't this compromise our political maskirovka? Aren't we saying
that our quarrel is with the West German government? How might it look then if
on the first day of the war we coldly exterminate many thousands of
civilians?" How many more innocents shall we slaughter? he thought.

"And there is another question," said Bromkovskiy.
Old and frail though he was, he was still an experienced man from the last war
against the Germans, and his views on defense affairs still commanded respect.
"If we use these weapons against all the NATO armies-and how can we
restrict them to German formations?-America and France have made it clear that
they consider gas as a weapon of mass destruction, to which they would respond
in kind."

"The American chemical arsenal is a joke," replied
Defense.

"I have seen studies from your ministry that suggest
otherwise," Bromkovskiy shot back. "And perhaps you will laugh at
their nuclear weapons! If we kill many thousands of German civilians, their
government will demand the use of atomic weapons against targets in our
territory. If our gas weapons kill some thousands of American soldiers, do you
think the American President will refrain from using his own weapons of mass
destruction? Comrades, we have discussed this before. This war against NATO is
a political operation, no? Do we cast away our political camouflage by using a
weapon like this? We have the assurance now that at least one NATO country will
not join in a Russian-German war. This is a great victory for our political
policy. The use of chemical weapons will cast away that advantage and open
political dangers from more than one direction.

"I feel that we should retain control of these weapons
in the Politburo. Comrade Defense Minister, are you telling us that we can win
only if weapons of mass destruction are used?" The old man leaned forward
and spoke with harsh determination. "Has the situation changed? You will
remember telling us that if strategic surprise were lost, our armies could be
recalled. Has surprise been lost?"

The Defense Minister's face went rigid for a moment.
"The Soviet Army is ready and able to carry out its mission. It is now too
late to retreat. This is also a political question, Petya."

"NATO is mobilizing," Sergetov said.

"Too late, and too halfheartedly," replied the
Director of the KGB. "We have split one country from the NATO alliance. We
are working on others, and are hard at work throughout Europe and America
spreading disinformation about the bomb attack. The will of the people in the
NATO countries is low. They will not want to fight a war for German murderers,
and their political leaders will find a way to disassociate themselves from the
conflict."

"But not if we slaughter civilians with gas." The
Foreign Minister nodded. "Petya and young Sergetov are correct: the
political cost of these weapons is simply too high."

WASHINGTON, D.C.

"But why? Why are they doing this?" the President
demanded.

"We simply do not know, sir." The Director of
Central Intelligence was clearly uncomfortable with the question. "We know
that this Kremlin Bomb Plot was a complete fabrication-"

"Did you see what the Post said this morning? The press
says that this guy Falken has 'agency' or its German equivalent written all
over him."

"Mr. President, the truth of the matter is that Herr
Falken was almost certainly a Soviet sleeper agent under KGB control. The
Germans have been unable to uncover very much about him. It's as though he just
sprang into being thirteen years ago, and he's been quietly running his
import-export business for the last twelve years. Sir, every indication we have
is that the Soviets are prepared for an attack against NATO. There is no
indication, for example, that they are demobilizing their conscripts who are at
the end of their enlistment periods, nor any evidence of preparations for the
new 'class' of conscripts that should have begun to arrive several days ago.
Finally, there's the case of this Spetznaz major the Germans picked up. He was
infiltrated into the Federal Republic before the bomb plot, with orders to
attack a NATO communications base. As to why-Mr. President, we simply do not
know. We can describe what the Russians are doing but not the reason for
it."

"I told the country last night that we would be able to
control this situation through diplomatic means . . ."

"We still might. We need to communicate directly with
the Soviets," the President's national security adviser said. "Until
they respond positively, however, we have to show that we mean business, too.
Mr. President, a further call-up of reservists is necessary."

NORTH ATLANTIC

The JULIUS FUCIK was rolling ten degrees with a beam sea. It
made life hard on the soldiers, Captain Kherov noted, but they were doing well
for landsmen. His own crewmen were dangling over the sides with sprayguns,
painting over the ship's Interlighter markings, preparatory to replacing them
with the Lykes Lines emblem. The soldiers were cutting away parts of the
superstructure to conform with the silhouette of the Doctor Lykes, a U.S.-flag
Seabee carrier remarkably similar to the Fucik. The Soviet ship had been built
years before in Finland's Valmet yard from plans purchased in America. Already
the elevator winch area aft had been painted completely black to match the
American line's house colors, and a black diamond had been painted on both
sides of the superstructure. Gangs of men were changing the shape and colors of
the two funnels with prefabricated parts. The hardest job remaining was the
paintwork on the hull. The Interlighter markings were made of twentyfoot
letters. Replacing them called for the use of canvas templates, and the
lettering had to be neat and exact. Worst of all, there was no way to check the
workmanship short of launching a ship's boat, something he had neither the time
nor the inclination to do.

"How long, Comrade Captain?"

"Four hours at least. The work goes well." Kherov
couldn't hide his concern. Here they were, mid-Atlantic, far from the usual sea
lanes, but there was no telling-

"And if we are spotted by an American aircraft or
ship?" General Andreyev asked.

"Then we will find out how effective our damage-control
drills have been-and our mission will be a failure." Kherov ran his hand
along the polished teak rail. He'd commanded this ship for six years, taken her
into nearly every port on the North and South Atlantic. "We'll get some
way on. The ship will ride more easily on a bow sea."

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

"When are you planning to leave?" Flynn asked
Calloway.

"Soon, Patrick. I hope you'll be coming with me?"
The unmarried children of both men were in college, and both had sent their
wives west the day before.

"I don't know. I've never run away before." Flynn
scowled at the empty stage at the end of the room. He had the scars to prove
it. "They pay me to report the news."

"You'll be reporting no bloody news from inside
Lefortovo Prison, my friend," Calloway observed. "Isn't one Pulitzer
Prize enough?"

Flynn laughed. "I thought nobody but me remembered.
What do you know that I don't, Willie?"

"I know I wouldn't be leaving without a damned good
reason. And if it's good enough for me to leave, Patrick, it's bloody good
enough for you." He'd been told only the night before that a peaceful
resolution of this crisis was now less than a 50-percent probability. For the
hundredth time, the Reuters correspondent blessed his decision to cooperate
with the SIS.

"Here we go." Flynn took out his notepad.

The Foreign Minister entered from the usual door and moved
to the lectern. He looked uncharacteristically frazzled, his suit rumpled, his
shirt collar dingy, as though he'd been up all the previous night laboring to
resolve the German crisis through diplomatic means. When he looked up, his eyes
squinted through his reading glasses.

"Ladies and gentlemen, a year that has gone so well for
East-West relations has turned to ashes in the mouths of us all. The United
States, the Soviet Union, and the other nations that accepted our invitation to
Vienna are within weeks of a comprehensive agreement on the control of
strategic nuclear arms. America and the Soviet Union have agreed upon and
implemented a grain sales agreement with unprecedented speed and cooperation,
and even as we speak, deliveries are being made in Odessa on the Black Sea.
Western tourism within the Soviet Union is at an alltime high, and this is
perhaps the truest reflection of the spirit of detente -now our peoples are
finally beginning to trust one another. All this effort, the efforts of East
and West to bring about a just and lasting peace, have been brought to ruin by
a handful of revanchist men who have not taken the lessons of the Second World
War to heart.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Soviet Union has received
irrefutable evidence that the government of the Federal Republic of Germany
exploded its bomb in the Kremlin as part of a plot to bring about the
reunification of Germany by force. We have in our possession classified German
documents which prove that the West German government planned to bring down the
Soviet government and use the resulting period of internal confusion to achieve
their aim of remaking Germany into the principal continental power in Europe
yet again. All Europeans know what that would mean to world peace.

"In this century, Germany has invaded my country twice.
Over forty million Soviet citizens died repelling those two invasions, and we
do not forget the deaths of so many millions of our fellow Europeans who were
also the victims of German nationalism-Polish, Belgian, Dutch, French, English,
and American men and women labored as our allies to safeguard the peace of
Europe. After the Second World War, we all thought that this problem was
completely at an end. Such was the reasoning behind the treaties which divided
Germany and Europe into spheres of influence-remember that these spheres were
ratified further by the Helsinki Accords in 1975-whose balance would serve to make
a European war impossible.

"We know that the rearming of Germany by the West,
supposedly a defensive measure against the imagined threat from the
East-despite the fact that the Warsaw Pact was not even formed until well after
the NATO alliance was formed-was the first step in the West's own plan to unify
Germany as a pawn to counterbalance the Soviet Union. That this was a foolish
and unnecessary policy is now manifestly clear. I ask you if there is anyone in
Europe who truly wants a unified Germany. The NATO countries themselves stopped
agitating for this years ago. Except, of course, for some Germans who remember
the days of German power in rather a different light from those of us who were
its victims.

"The Federal Republic of Germany has evidently turned
the tables on her Western allies, and plans to use the NATO alliance as a
shield behind which to launch her own offensive operations, the objective of
which can only upset the power balance that has safeguarded the peace in Europe
for two generations. Although we can fault the West for creating this
situation, the government of the Soviet Union does not-I repeat, does not-hold
America or her NATO allies responsible for this. My country, too, has learned
the bitter lesson that allies can turn on their supposed friends, much as a dog
can turn on his master.

"The Soviet Union has no wish to cast away the dramatic
progress made this year in foreign relations with the West." The Foreign
Minister paused before going on. "But the Soviet Union cannot ignore, cannot
set aside the fact, that a deliberate act of aggression has been made against
the Soviet Union, on Soviet soil.

"The government of the Soviet Union will today deliver
a note to the Bonn government. As a price of our forbearance, as a price of
keeping the peace, we demand that the Bonn government immediately demobilize
its army to a level consistent with maintenance of the civil peace. We further
call upon the Bonn government to admit its aggressive action, to dissolve and
call for new elections, so that the German people themselves may judge how well
they have been served. Finally, we demand and expect that full reparations be
paid to the government of the Soviet Union, and to the families of those so
callously murdered by the revanchist German nationalists who hide in their city
on the west bank of the Rhein. Failure to meet with these demands will have the
gravest possible consequences.

"As I have already said, we have no reason whatever to
believe that any other Western nation had the slightest complicity in this act
of international terrorism. This crisis is, therefore, a matter between the
government of the Soviet Union and the government in Bonn. It is our hope that
this crisis can be resolved through diplomatic means.. We call on the Bonn
government to consider the consequences of its actions with the greatest care
and to act to preserve the peace.

"That is all I have to say." The Foreign Minister
gathered his papers and left. The gathered reporters did not even attempt to
shout questions at the receding form.

Flynn tucked his notepad back into his pocket, and screwed
his pen closed. The AP correspondent had stayed behind at Phnom Penh to see the
arrival of the Khmer Rouge, almost at the cost of his life. He'd covered wars,
revolutions, riots, and been wounded twice as a result of his devotion to his
business. But covering wars was a young man's game.

"When are you planning to leave?"

"Wednesday at the latest. I already have two tickets
reserved, SAS to Stockholm," Calloway answered.

"I'm going to cable New York to shut down the Moscow
office tomorrow. I'll stick around until you leave, but, Willie, it's time to
go. If I cover any more of this story, it'll be from a safer place."

"How many wars have you covered, Patrick?"

"Korea was my first. Haven't missed many since then.
Damned near bled to death at a place called Con Thien. Caught two mortar
fragments in the Sinai in '73."

USS PHARRIS

DEFCON-2. RULES OF ENGAGEMENT OPTION BRAVO NOW IN EFFECT.
THIS MESSAGE IS TO BE UNDERSTOOD AS A WAR-WARNING, Morris read in the privacy
of his stateroom. HOSTILITIES BETWEEN NATO AND THE WARSAW PACT ARE NOW TO BE
CONSIDERED AS LIKELY BUT NOT CERTAIN. TAKE ALL MEASURES CONSISTENT WITH THE
SAFETY OF YOUR COMMAND. HOSTILITIES COULD INITIATE WITHOUT RPT WITHOUT WARNING.

Ed Morris lifted his phone. "Call the XO to my
stateroom."

He was there in under a minute.

"I hear you got a hot message, skipper."

"DEFCON-2, ROE Option Bravo." He handed over the
terse message form. "We start maintaining round-the-clock Condition-Three
steaming at once. The ASROC and torpedo tube directors are to be manned at all
times."

"What do we tell the men?"

"I want to go over this with the wardroom first. Then
I'll speak to the crew. We haven't got specific operations orders yet. I figure
we head either to Norfolk or New York for convoy duty."

USS NIMITZ

"Okay, Toland, let's hear it." Baker sat back in
his chair.

"Admiral, NATO has increased its alert level. The
President has authorized DEFCON-2. The Naval Defense Reserve Fleet is being
mobilized. Reforger will begin at 0100 Zulu. The commercial jets are already
being taken into military service. The Brits have enacted Queen's Order Two. A
lot of airports in Germany are going to be busy as hell."

"How long to complete Reforger?"

"Eight to twelve days, sir."

"We may not have that long."

"Yes, sir."

"Tell me about their satellite reconnaissance,"
Baker ordered.

"Admiral, they currently have one radar ocean
reconnaissance satellite up-Kosmos 1801. It's paired with Kosmos 1813, an
electronic intelligence bird. 1801 is the nuclear-powered radar bird, and we
think it may have a photographic capability to back up the radar system."

"I never heard that before."

"NSA detected indications of a video signal several
months ago, but that information was never released to the Navy because it was
unconfirmed." Toland didn't say that it had been decided at the time the
Navy didn't need-to-know this. They needed to know now, Toland judged. I'm here
now. "I'd expect that Ivan has another of his radar satellites ready for
immediate launch, probably a few more in the barn. They've been launching an
unusual number of their low-altitude communications birds, plus a lot of
electronic intelligence satellites-ordinarily they have six or seven of them
up, but now the total is ten. That gives them awfully good ELINT coverage. If
we make electronic noise, they'll hear it."

"And not a Goddamned thing we can do about them."

"Not for a while, sir," Toland agreed. "The
Air Force has its antisatellite missiles, six or seven as I recall, but they've
only been tested once against a real satellite, and there's been a moratorium
on the ASAT tests since last year. The Air Force can probably dust them off and
try to reactivate the program, but that'll take a few weeks. Their first
priority is the radar satellites," Toland concluded hopefully.

"Okay, our orders are to rendezvous with Saratoga at
the Azores and escort our Marine Amphibious Unit to Iceland. I suppose the
Russians will watch us all the way up! Hopefully by the time we get there, the
Icelandic government will allow us to land them. I just learned that their
government can't decide if this crisis is real or not. God, I wonder if NATO
will hold together?"

"Supposedly we have proof that it's all a put-up job,
but we don't need to know what that evidence is. The problem is that a lot of
countries are buying this charade, at least publicly."

"Yeah, I love that. I want you to refine your estimate
of the threat from Soviet subs and aircraft on a continuous basis. I want
information about the smallest change in what they have at sea the moment you
get it."

15 - The Bastion Gambit

USS CHICAGO

"What's the sounding?" McCafferty asked quietly.

"Fifty feet under the keel," the navigator
answered at once. "We're still well outside Russian territorial waters,
but we start approaching real shoals in twenty miles, skipper." It was the
eighth time in half an hour that he had commented on what lay ahead.

McCafferty nodded, not wanting to speak, not wanting to make
any unnecessary sound at all. The tension hung in the attack center of the
Chicago like the cigarette smoke that the ventilators would not entirely
remove. Looking around, he caught his crewmen furtively disclosing their states
of mind with a raised eyebrow or a slightly shaken head.

The navigator was the most nervous of all. There were all
sorts of good reasons not to be here. Chicago might or might not have been in
Soviet territorial water, itself a legal question of no small complexity. To
the northeast was Cape Kanin; to the northwest, Cape Svyatoy. The Soviets
claimed the entire region as an "historic bay," while the United
States chose to recognize the international twenty-four-mile closure rule.
Everyone aboard knew that the Russians were more likely to shoot today than
request a decision under the International Law of the Sea Convention. Would the
Russians find them?

They were in a bare thirty fathoms of water-and, like the
great pelagic sharks, nuclear attack submarines are creatures of the deep, not
the shallows. The tactical plot showed bearings to three Soviet patrol craft,
two Grisha-class frigates and a Poti-class corvette, all specialized
antisubmarine ships. All were miles away, but they were still a very real
threat.

The only good news was a storm overhead. The twenty-knot
surface wind and sheets of falling rain made noise that interfered with sonar
performance-but that included their own sonar, and sonar was their only safe
means for getting information.

Then there were the imponderables. What sensing devices did
the Soviets have in these waters? Might the water be clear enough that a
circling helicopter or ASW aircraft could see them? Might there be a
Tango-class diesel boat out there, moving slowly on her quiet, battery-powered
electric motors? The only way they'd learn the answer to any of those questions
was the metallic whine of a torpedo's high-speed propellers or the simple
explosion of a falling depth-bomb. McCafferty considered all these things, and
weighed the dangers against the priority of his Flash directive from
COMSUBLANT:

Determine at once the operating areas of REDFLT SSBNs.

That sort of language gave him little leeway.

"How tight is the inertial fix?" McCafferty asked
as casually as he could.

"Plus or minus two hundred yards." The navigator
didn't even look up.

The captain grunted, knowing what the navigator was
thinking. They should have gotten a NAVSTAR satellite fix a few hours ago, but
the risk of detection was too high in an area crawling with Soviet surface
craft. Two hundred yards, plus or minus, was fine accuracy by any rational
standard-but not while submerged in shallow water off a hostile coast. How
accurate were his charts? Were there unmarked wrecks out there? Even if his
navigational data were completely accurate, quarters would be so tight in
another few miles that a goof of two hundred yards could ground them, damaging
the submarine . . . and making noise. The captain shrugged to himself. The
Chicago was the best platform in the world for this mission. He'd done this
sort of thing before, and he couldn't worry about everything at the same time.
McCafferty took a few steps forward and leaned into the sonar compartment.

"How's our friend doing?"

"Continuing as before, skipper. No changes at all in
the target's radiated noise level. Just toolin' right along at fifteen knots,
dead ahead, no more than two thousand yards off. Pleasure cruise, like,"
the sonar chief concluded with no small irony.

Pleasure cruise. The Soviets were sortieing their ballistic
missile submarines at intervals of one sub every four hours. Already a majority
of them were at sea. They had never done that before. And all seemed to be
heading east-not north and northeast as they usually did to cruise in the
Barents or Kara seas, or most recently under the arctic ice cap itself. SACLANT
had learned that piece of information from Norwegian P-3 aircraft patrolling
Checkpoint Charlie, the spot fifty miles offshore where Soviet submarines always
submerged. Chicago, the nearest sub to the area, had been sent to investigate.

They'd soon detected and gotten into trail position behind a
Delta-III, a modem Soviet "boomer," as missile subs were known.
Trailing her, they'd stayed within the hundred-fathom curve the whole way . . .
until the target had turned southeast into shallow water toward Mys Svyatoy
Nos, which led to the entrance to the White Sea-all of which was Soviet
territorial water.

How far did they dare follow? And what was going on?
McCafferty returned to control and went to the periscope pedestal.

"Look around," he said. "Up scope." A
petty officer turned the hydraulic ring control and the portside search
periscope slid upward from its well. "Hold!" McCafferty stooped at
the conning station, catching the instrument as the quartermaster stopped it
below the surface. From a position that was murderously uncomfortable, the
skipper duck-walked the scope in a full circle. On the forward bulkhead was a
television monitor which worked off a camera built into the scope. It was
watched by the executive officer and a senior petty officer.

"No shadows," McCafferty said. Nothing to make him
suspect that something was there.

"Concur, skipper," the XO agreed.

"Check with sonar."

Forward, the sonar watch listened carefully. Circling
aircraft made noise, and there was about an even chance that they'd heard it.
But now they heard nothing-which didn't mean that nothing was there, like maybe
a high-flying chopper or another Grisha laying to, her diesels shut down as she
drifted, listening for someone like Chicago.

"Sonar says they don't have anything, skipper,"
the XO reported.

"Two more feet," McCafferty ordered.

The quartermaster worked the lever again, bringing the
periscope up by twenty-three inches, just barely out of the water in the
troughs of the waves.

"Skipper!" It was the senior ESM technician. The
highest item on Chicago's periscope was a miniature antenna array which fed
signals to a broadband receiver. The instant it projected above the surface,
three lights flickered on the ESM tactical warning board. "I read
three-five, maybe six India-band search radars. Signature characteristics say
ship and land-based search radars, sir, not, repeat not, aircraft sets. Nothing
in the Juliet-band." The technician started reading off the bearings.

McCafferty allowed himself to relax. There was no way a
radar could detect so small a target as his periscope in these waves. He turned
the periscope in a complete circle. "I see no surface ships. No aircraft.
Seas about five feet. Estimate the surface wind from the northwest at, oh,
about twenty, twenty-five knots." He snapped up the handles and stepped
back. "Down scope." The oiled steel tube was heading down before he'd
spoken the second word. The captain nodded approval at his quartermaster, who
held out a stopwatch. The scope had been up above the surface for a total of
5.9 seconds. After fifteen years in submarines, it still amazed him how so many
people could do so much in six seconds. When he'd gone through submarine school,
the criterion had been a seven-second exposure.

The navigator examined his chart quickly, a quartermaster
assisting him to plot the bearings to the signal sources.

"Captain." The navigator looked up. "Bearings
are consistent with two known shore radar transmitters, and three Don-2 sets
match the bearings of Sierra-2, -3, and -4." He referred to the plotted
positions of the three Soviet surface ships. "We got one unknown, bearing
zero-fourseven. What's that one look like, Harkins?"

"A land-based India-band surface search, one of those
new 'Shore Cans,"' the technician responded, reading off frequency and
pulse-width numbers. "Weak signal and kinda fuzzy, sir. Lots of activity,
though, and all the transmitters are dialed into different frequencies."
The technician meant that the radar searches were well coordinated, so that the
radar transmitters would not interfere with one another.

An electrician rewound the videotape, allowing McCafferty to
reexamine what he'd seen through the periscope. The only difference was that
the periscope TV camera was black and white. The tape had to be run at slow
speed to avoid blurring, so rapidly had the captain made his visual search.

"Amazing how good nothing can look, eh, Joe?" he
asked his executive officer. The cloud ceiling was well below a thousand feet,
and the wave action had rapidly coated the periscope lens with water droplets.
No one had ever invented an efficient gadget for keeping that lens clear,
McCafferty reflected, you'd think that after eighty-some years . . .

"Water looks a little murky, too," Joe answered
hopefully. A visual sighting by antisubmarine warfare aircraft is one of the
nightmares all submariners share.

"Doesn't look like a nice day to fly, does it? I don't
think we have to worry about somebody getting an eyeball sight on us." The
captain spoke loudly enough for the control room crew to hear.

"The water deepens out some for the next two
miles," the navigator reported.

"How much?"

"Five fathoms, skipper.

McCafferty looked over at the XO, who was conning the boat
at the moment. "Use it." On the other hand, some helicopter jockey
might get lucky . . .

"Aye. Diving officer, take her down another twenty
feet. Gently."

"Aye." The chief gave the necessary orders to the
planesmen and you could feel the sighs through the attack center.

McCafferty shook his head. When was the last time you saw
your men look relieved over a twenty-foot change in depth? he asked himself. He
went forward to sonar. He did not remember being there only four minutes
earlier.

"How are our friends doing, chief?"

"The patrol boats are still faint, sir. They seem to be
circling-the bearings are changing back and forth like they been doin'. The
boomer's blade count is also constant, sir, he's just toolin' right along at
fifteen knots. Not especially quiet, either. I mean, we still got plenty of
mechanical transients, y'know? There's maintenance work-lot of it-going on in
there, by the sound he's making. Want to listen in, skipper?" The chief
held up a pair of earphones. Most sonar scanning was done visually-the on-board
computers converted acoustical signals into a display on TV type tubes that
looked most of all like some sort of arcade game. But there was still no real
substitute for listening in. McCafferty took the phones.

First he heard the Delta's whirring reactor pumps. They were
running at medium speed, driving water out of the reactor vessel into the steam
generator. Next he concentrated on the screw sounds. The Russian boomer had a
pair of five-bladed screws, and he tried to make his own count of the
chuga-chuga noise made as each blade made its circuit. No good, he'd have to
take the chief's word, as he usually did. . . klang!

"What was that?"

The chief turned to another senior operator. "Hatch
slammin'?''

The first-class sonarman shook his head judiciously.
"More like somebody dropped a wrench. Close, though, pretty close."

The captain had to smile. Everybody aboard was trying to
affect a casual manner that had to be outrageously faked. Certainly everyone
was as tense as he was, and McCafferty wanted nothing more than to get the hell
out of this miserable lake. Of course he couldn't act in such a way as to allow
his crew to become overly concerned; the captain must be in total control at
all times-what fucking games we play! he told himself. What are we doing here?
What is going on in this crazy world? I don't want to fight a fucking war!

He leaned against the doorframe, just forward of the control
room, only a few feet from his own stateroom, wanting to go in, just to lie
down for a minute or two, to take a few deep breaths, maybe go to his sink and
splash a little cold water . . . but then he might accidentally look in the
mirror. None of that, he knew. Command of a submarine was one of the last truly
godlike jobs left in the world, and at times it required a truly godlike
demeanor. Like now. Play the game, Danny, he told himself. The captain withdrew
a handkerchief from his back pocket and rubbed his nose with it, his face
locked into a neutral, almost bored expression as his eyes traced over the
sonar displays. The cool captain . . .

McCafferty returned to the attack center a moment later,
telling himself that he'd spent just enough time to inspire his sonar crewmen
without pressuring them with too much attention from the CO. A fine balance. He
looked around casually. The room was as crowded as an Irish bar on St.
Patrick's Day. His men's outwardly cool faces were sweating, despite the
nuclear-powered air conditioning. The planesmen especially were concentrating
on their instruments, guiding the submarine down an electronically defined
display, with the diving officer-Chicago's most senior chief-right behind them.

In the center of the control room, the two side-by-side
attack periscopes were fully retracted, with a quartermaster's mate poised to
raise them. The XO paced as much as he could, looking at the chart every twenty
seconds or so as he turned at the rear of the compartment. Not much here to
complain about. Everybody was tense, but all the work was getting done.

"All things considered," McCafferty said for all
to hear, "things are going pretty good. Surface conditions are working
against them detecting us."

"Conn, sonar."

"Conn, aye." The captain took the phone.

"Hull-popping noises. He seems blowing tanks,
skipper."

"Understood. Keep us posted, chief " McCafferty
put the phone back. He took three steps back to the chart table. "Why
surface now?"

The navigator stole a cigarette from an enlisted man and lit
it. McCafferty knew he didn't smoke. The lieutenant nearly gagged on it,
drawing a brief smirk from a second-class quartermaster the navigator. He
looked over at the captain.

"Sir, something is wrong about this," the
lieutenant said quietly.

"Just one thing," the captain asked. "Why did
he surface here?"

"Conn, sonar." McCafferty went forward and took
the phone again. "Skipper, the boomer's doing a long blow, really blowing
his tanks out like, sir."

"Anything else unusual?"

"No, sir, but he must've just used a lot of his reserve
air, sir."

"Okay, chief, thank you." McCafferty hung up and
wondered if that meant anything.

"Sir, you ever done this before?" the navigator
asked.

"I've trailed a lot of Russian boats, but no, never in
here."

'The target has to surface eventually, only sixty feet of
water down here along Terskiy Bereg." The navigator traced his finger
along the chart.

"And we have to break off the trail," McCafferty
agreed. "But that's another forty miles."

"Yeah." The navigator nodded agreement. "But
starting five miles back, this gulf starts to narrow down like a funnel, and
for a submerged sub, it eventually closes down to two, then only one safe
passage. Jeez, I don't know." McCafferty came aft again to examine the
chart.

"He was content to run fifteen knots at periscope depth
all this way down from Kola. The usable depth has been about the same for the
past five hours-just bottomed out some-and figures to be the same for another
hour or two . . . but he surfaces anyway. So," McCafferty said, "the
only change in environmental conditions is the width of the channel, and that's
still over twenty miles . - ." The captain mulled this over, staring down
at the chart. The sonar room called yet again.

"Conn, aye. What is it, chief?"

"New contact, sir, bearing one-nine-two. Designate
target Sierra-5. Twin-screw surface ship, diesel engines. They just came on all
at once, sir. Sounds like a Natya-class. Bearing changing right to left slowly,
seems to be converging with the boomer. Blade count puts her speed at about
twelve knots."

"What's the boomer doing?"

"Speed and bearing are unchanged, skipper. The blow has
ended. She's on the surface, sir, we're starting to get pounding and some
racing on her screws-wait a minute . . . an active sonar just started up, we're
getting reverbs, bearing seems to be about one-nine-zero, probably from the
Natya. It's a very high frequency sonar, above aural range it
twenty-two-thousand hertz."

An icy ball suddenly materialized in McCafferty's stomach.

"XO, I'm taking the conn."

"Aye, Captain, you have the conn."

"Diving officer: get her up to sixty feet, high as you
can without broaching her. Observation! Up scope!" The search scope came
up and McCafferty met it as he had before and quickly checked the surface of
the sea for shadows. "Three more feet. Okay, still nothing. What's the ESM
reading?"

"Now seven active radar sources, skipper. Plot out
about the same as before, plus the new one at one-nine-one, another India-band,
looks like another Don-2."

McCafferty turned the periscope handle to twelve-power, its
highest setting. The Soviet missile submarine was sitting extremely high in the
water.

"Joe, tell me what you see." McCafferty asked,
wanting a quick second opinion.

"That's a Delta-III, all right. Looks like she's blown
dry, Cap'n, they come out pretty far, and that looks like about three or four
feet higher than they usually do. He just used up a lot of his air . . . That
might be the Natya's mast ahead of her, hard to be sure."

McCafferty could feel that his own Chicago was rolling. His
hands tingled with the transmitted wave-slaps against the periscope. The seas
were crashing against the Delta, too, and he could see water splashing in and
out of the limber holes that lined the boomer's flanks.

"ESM board says that signal strengths are approaching
detection values," the technician warned.

"His periscopes are both up," McCafferty said,
knowing that his scope had already been up too long. He squeezed the trigger to
double the magnification. It cost optical detail, but the picture zoomed in on
the Delta's conning tower. "The control station atop his sail is fully
manned. Everyone has glasses . . . not looking aft, though. Down scope. Diving
officer, take her down ten feet. Nice work, planesmen. Let's see that tape,
Joe." The picture returned to the TV monitor in a few seconds.

They were two thousand yards behind the Delta. Beyond her by
about half a mile was a spherical radar dome, probably the Natya, rolling
noticeably with the beam seas. To house her sixteen SS-18 missiles, the Russian
sub had a sloped turtleneck, and from directly aft it looked like a highway
ramp. An ungainly design, the Delta, but she had to survive only long enough to
launch her missiles, and the Americans had no doubt that her missiles worked
just fine.

"Look at that, they blew her so high half her screws
are clear," the XO pointed.

"Navigator, how far to shallow water?"

"Along this channel, a minimum of twenty-four fathoms
for ten miles."

Why did the Delta surface this far out?

McCafferty lifted the phone. "Sonar, tell me about the
Natya."

"Skipper, he's pinging away like mad. Not toward us,
but we're getting lots of reflections and reverberations off the bottom."

The Natya was a specialized mine-hunter . . . also used, to
be sure, as an escort for submarines in and out of safe areas. But her
minehunting VHF sonar was operating . . . dear God!

"Left full rudder!" McCafferty shouted.

"Left full rudder, aye!" The helmsman would have
hit the overhead but for the seatbelt. He instantly snapped his wheel to port.
"Sir, my rudder is left full!"

"Minefield," the navigator breathed. Heads all
over the room turned around.

"That's a good bet." McCafferty nodded grimly.
"How far are we from the point where the boomer rendezvoused with the
Natya?"

The navigator examined the plot closely. "Stopped about
four hundred yards short of it, sir."

"All stop."

"All stop, aye." The helmsman dialed the
annunciator handle. "Engine room answers all stop, sir. Passing left
through one-eight-zero, sir."

"Very well. We ought to be safe enough here. You have
to figure the Delta'd rendezvous with the sweeper a few miles clear of the
field, right? Anybody here think Ivan would gamble with a boomer?" It was
a rhetorical question. Nobody ever gambled with boomers.

Everyone in the control room took a deep breath at the same
moment. The Chicago slowed rapidly, her turn taking her broadside to her
previous course.

"Rudder amidships." McCafferty ordered one-third
speed and lifted the phone for sonar. "The boomer doing anything
different?"

"No, sir. Bearing is still constant at one-nine-zero.
Speed still fifteen knots. We can still hear the Natya pinging, nearing
one-eight-six, and her blade count is now about fifteen knots, too."

"Navigator, start figuring a way for us to get out of
here. We want to keep well clear of all those patrol boats and report this news
in as quick as we can."

"Aye. Three-five-eight looks pretty good for the
moment, sir." The navigator had been updating that course continuously for
two hours.

"Sir, if Ivan really has laid out a minefield, part of
it's in international waters," the exec noted. "Cute."

"Yeah. Of course, to them it's territorial waters, so
anybody bumps into a mine, it's just too damned bad-"

"And maybe an international incident?" Joe
observed.

"But why did they ping at all?", the
communications officer asked. "If they got a clear channel they can
navigate visually."

"What if there's no channel at all?" the exec
answered. "What if they set ground mines, and moored mines strung, say, at
a uniform depth of fifty feet. You have to figure they'd be a little nervous
that a mine or two might have too long a mooring cable. So they're playing it
safe, just like we'd do. What's all that tell you?"

"Nobody can trail their boomers without surfacing         the lieutenant understood.

"And we sure as hell aren't going to do that. Nobody
ever said that Ivan was dumb. They got a perfect system here. They're putting
all their missile boats where we can't get at them," McCafferty went on.
"Even SUBROC can't make it from where we are into the White Sea. Final
point, if they have to scatter the boats, they don't have to screw around in a
single channel, they can all surface, spread out, and run for daylight.

"What this means, gentlemen, is that instead of
detailing an attack boat to guard every boomer against somebody like us, they
can put all the missile boats into one nice, safe basket and release their
attack boats to other missions. Let's get the hell out of here."

NORTH ATLANTIC

"Ship in view, this is U.S. Navy aircraft on your port
beam. Please identify, over." Captain Kherov handed the bridge-to-bridge
phone to a Red Army major.

"Navy, this is the Doctor Lykes. How are y'all?"
Kherov spoke halting English. The major's Mississippi accent might as well have
been Kurdish for all he understood of it. They could barely make out the
haze-gray patrol aircraft that was now circling their ship-circling, they
noted, at a five-mile distance and certainly inspecting them through
binoculars.

"Amplify, Doctor Lykes, " the voice ordered
tersely.

"We're out of New Orleans, bound for Oslo with general
cargo, Navy. What's the big deal?"

"You're well north of a course to Norway. Please
explain, over."

"Y'all read the damned papers, Navy? It's liable to get
dangerous out here, and this big ole ship costs money. We got orders from the
home office to keep close to some friendly folks. Hell, we're glad to see ya',
boy. Y'all want to escort us a ways?"

"Roger, copy. Doctor Lykes, be advised no submarines
known to be in this area."

"Y'all guarantee that?"

This drew a laugh. "Not hardly, Doc."

"That's about what I thought, Navy. Well, if it's all
right with you, we'll keep heading north a ways and try to stay under your air
cover, over."

"We can't detail an aircraft to escort you."

"Understood, but you will come if we call
you-right?"

"That's a roger," agreed Penguin 8.

"Okay, we'll continue north, then turn east for the
Faroes. Will you warn us if any bad guys show up, over."

"If we find any, Doc, the idea is we'll try an' sink
'em first," the pilot exaggerated.

"Fair enough. Good huntin', boy. Out."

PENGUIN 8

"God, do people really talk like that?" the pilot
of the Orion wondered aloud.

"Never heard about Lykes Lines?" his copilot
chuckled. "They used to say they wouldn't hire a guy 'less he had a
Southern accent. I never believed it until now. Nothing like tradition. He is
kinda off the beaten track, though."

"Yeah, but until the convoys form up, hell, I'd try to
bounce from one protected area to another. Anyway, let's finish the
visual." The pilot increased power and headed in closer while his copilot
lifted the recognition book.

"Okay, we have an all-black hull with 'Lykes Lines' on
the side, midships. White superstructure with black diamond, a block L inside
the diamond." He lifted his binoculars. "Lookout mast forward of the
superstructure. Check. Superstructure is nicely raked. Electronics mast is not.
Proper ensign and house flag. Black funnels. Winches aft by the barge elevator-doesn't
say how many winches. Damn, she's carrying a full load of barges, isn't she?
Paintwork looks a little shabby. Anyway, it all checks with the book; that's a
friendly."

"Okay, let's give her a wave." The pilot turned
the yoke to the left, taking the Orion directly over the barge-carrier. He
waggled his wings slightly as he passed overhead, and two men on the bridge
waved back at them. The flyers couldn't pick out the two men tracking them with
handheld SAMs. "Good luck, fella. You might need it."

MV JULIUS FUCIK

"The new paint scheme will make visual spotting
difficult, Comrade General," the air-defense officer said quietly. "I
saw no air-to-surface missiles attached."

"That will change quickly enough. As soon as our fleet
puts to sea, they will load them. Besides, if they identify us as enemy, how
far can we run while they call up other aircraft, or simply fly to their base
to rearm?" The General watched the aircraft depart. His heart had been in
his throat for the whole episode, but now he could walk out to where Kherov
stood on the open bridge wing. Only the ship's officers had been issued
American-style khaki uniforms.

"My compliments to your language officer. I presume he
was speaking English?"

Andreyev laughed jovially, now that the danger was past.
"So I am told. The Navy requested a man with his particular skills. He's
an intelligence officer, served in America."

"In any case, he succeeded. Now we may approach our
objective safely," Kherov said, using the last word relatively.

"It will be good to be on land again, Comrade
Captain." The General didn't like being on such a large, unprotected
target and would not feel safe until he had solid ground under his feet. At
least as an infantryman you had a rifle with which to defend yourself, usually
a hole to hide in, and always two legs to run away. Not so on a ship, he had
learned. A ship was one large target, and this one was virtually unprotected.
Amazing, he thought, that anything would feel worse than being on a transport
aircraft. But here he had a parachute. He had no illusions about his ability to
swim to land.

SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA

"There goes another one," the chief master
sergeant said.

It was almost boring now. Never in the colonel's memory had
the Soviets had more than six photographic reconnaissance satellites in orbit.
There were now ten, plus ten electronic-intelligence gatherers, some launched
from the Baikonor Cosmodrome outside Leninsk in the Kazakh S.S.R., the other
half from Plesetsk in northern Russia.

"That's an F-type booster, Colonel. Burn time is wrong
for the A-type," the sergeant said, looking up from his watch.

This Russian booster was a derivation of the old SS-9 ICBM,
and it had only two functions-to launch radar ocean reconnaissance satellites,
called RORSATS, that monitored ships at sea and to loft the Soviet
antisatellite system. The Americans were watching the launch from a newly
launched KH-11 reconnaissance satellite of their own, sweeping over the central
region of the USSR. The colonel lifted the phone to Cheyenne Mountain.

USS PHARRIS

I should be sleeping, Morris told himself. I should
stockpile sleep, bank it away against the time when I can't have any. But he
was too keyed up to sleep.

USS PHARRIS was steaming figure eights off the mouth of the
Delaware River. Thirty miles north, at the piers of Philadelphia, Chester, and
Camden, ships of the National Reserve Defense Fleet that had been held in
readiness for years were getting ready to sail. Cargo holds were loading with
tanks, guns, and crates of explosive ordnance. His air-search radar showed the
tracks of numerous troop transports lifting out of Dover Air Force Base. The
Military Airlift Command's huge aircraft could ferry the troops across to
Germany where they would be mated with their prepositioned equipment, but when
their unit loads of munitions ran out, the resupply would have to be ferried
across the way it had always been, in ugly, fat, slow merchant ships-targets.
Maybe the merchies weren't so slow anymore, and were larger than before, but
there were fewer of them. During his naval career, the American merchant fleet
had fallen sharply, even supplemented by these federally funded vessels. Now a
submarine could sink one ship and get the benefit it would have achieved in
World War Il by sinking four or five.

The merchant crews were another problem. Traditionally held
in contempt by Navy sailors-a truism in the U.S. Navy was to steer well clear
of any merchantman, lest he decide to liven up his day by ramming you -the
average age of the crews running the ships was about fifty, more than double
that in any American naval vessel. How would those grandfathers take the stress
of combat operations? Morris wondered. They were quite well paid-some of the
senior seamen made as much as he did-but would their comfortable,
union-negotiated salaries devalue in the face of missiles and torpedoes? He had
to erase the thought from his mind. These old men with kids in high school and
college were his flock. He was the shepherd, and there were wolves hiding under
the gray surface of the Atlantic.

Not a large flock. He had seen the figures only a year ago:
the total number of privately owned cargo ships in operation under the American
flag was 170 and averaged about eighteen thousand tons apiece. Of those, a mere
103 were routinely engaged in overseas trade. The supplemental National Defense
Reserve Fleet consisted of only 172 cargo ships. To call the situation a
disgrace was to describe gang rape as a mild social deviation.

They couldn't allow even one to be lost.

Morris wandered over to the bridge radarscope and looked
down into the rubber eyeshield to watch the aircraft lifting out of Dover. Each
blip contained three to five hundred men. What would happen when they ran out
of shells?

"Another merchie, skipper." The officer of the
dock pointed to a dot on the horizon. "She's a Dutch container boat. I
expect she's inbound for military cargo."

Morris grunted. "We need all the help we can get."

SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA

"It's definite, sir," the colonel said.
"That's a Soviet ASAT-bird, seventy-three nautical miles behind one of
ours."

The colonel had ordered his satellite to turn in space and
point its cameras at its new companion. The light wasn't all that good, but the
shape of the Soviet killer satellite was unmistakable: a cylinder nearly a
hundred feet long, with a rocket motor at one end and a radar seeker antenna at
the other.

"What's your recommendation, Colonel?"

"Sir, I am requesting unlimited authority to maneuver
my birds at will. As soon as anything with a red star on it gets within fifty
miles, I'm going to do a series of delta-V maneuvers to screw up their
intercept solution."

"That will cost you a lot of fuel, son,"
CINC-NORAD warned.

"What we have here, General, is a binary solution
set." The colonel responded like a true mathematician. "Choice one,
we maneuver the birds and risk the fuel loss. Choice two, we don't maneuver the
birds and risk having them taken out. Once they close to fifty miles, they can
achieve intercept and negate our bird in as little as five minutes. Maybe
faster. Five minutes is only the best we've observed them to do. Sir, you have
my recommendation." The colonel had a Ph.D. in mathematics from the
University of Illinois, but that was not where he'd learned to back generals
into corners.

"Okay. This one goes to Washington, but I'll forward
your recommendation with my endorsement."

USS NIMITZ

"Admiral, we've just had a disturbing report from the
Barents Sea." Toland read the dispatch from CINCLANTFLT.

"How many more subs can they throw at us now?"

"Perhaps as many as thirty additional boats,
Admiral."

"Thirty?" Baker hadn't liked anything he'd been
told for a week now. He especially didn't like this.

The NIMITZ battle group, in company with Sarotoga and the
French carrier Foch, was escorting a marine amphibious unit, called a MAU, to
reinforce the ground defenses on Iceland. A three-day run. If the war started
soon after they made their delivery, their next mission would be to support the
GIUK barrier defense plan, the critically important link that covered the ocean
between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom. Carrier Task Force 21 was a
powerful force. But would it be powerful enough? Doctrine required a
four-carrier group to fight and survive up here, but the fleet had not yet been
fully assembled. Toland was getting reports on frantic diplomatic activity
aimed at averting the war that appeared about to start, much as everyone hoped
it wouldn't. How would the Soviets react to four or more carriers in the
Norwegian Sea? It seemed that no one in Washington wanted to find out, but
Toland was wondering if it would matter at all. As it was, Iceland had approved
the reinforcements they were escorting only twelve hours before, and this NATO
outpost needed immediate reinforcement.

USS CHICAGO

McCafferty was thirty miles north of the entrance to the
Kola Fjord. The crew was relatively happy to be here after a tense sixteen-hour
run from Cape Svyatoy. Though the Barents Sea was alive with antisubmarine ships,
immediately after making their report they had been withdrawn from the entrance
to the White Sea for fear of fomenting a major incident. Here there was a
hundred thirty fathoms of water and room to maneuver, and they were confident
in their ability to keep out of trouble. There was supposed to be a pair of
American subs within fifty miles of Chicago, plus a Brit and two Norwegian
diesel boats. His sonarmen couldn't hear any of them, though they could hear a
quartet of Grisha-class frigates pinging away at something to the southeast.
The allied submarines here were assigned to watch and listen. It was a nearly
ideal mission for them, since they only had to creep along, avoiding contact
with surface ships, which they could detect from a good, long distance.

There was no hiding it now. McCafferty didn't even consider
not telling his men the significance of what they had learned about the Russian
boomers. Submarines have no long-lived secrets. It looked like they were about
to fight a war. The politicians in Washington and the strategists in Norfolk
and elsewhere might still have their doubts, but there, at the sharp end of the
lance, the officers and men aboard Chicago discussed the way the Soviets were
using their ships and came up with a single answer. The submarine's torpedo
tubes were loaded with MK-48 torpedoes and Harpoon missiles. Her vertical
missile tubes forward of the pressure hull held twelve Tomahawks, three
nuclear-tipped land-attack missiles, and nine conventional antiship models.
When a shipboard machine showed the first suggestion of a fault, a technician
immediately tore it down to fix it. McCafferty was pleased and not a little
surprised by his crew. So young they were-the average age on his submarine was
twenty-one-to have to adapt to this.

He stood in the sonar room, forward and to starboard of the
attack center. A few feet from him, a massive computer system sifted through an
avalanche of waterborne sound, analyzing individual frequency bands known from
experience to mark the acoustical signature of a Soviet vessel. The signals
were displayed on a visual screen called a waterfall display, a monocolor
curtain of yellow whose brighter lines indicated the bearing to a sound that
might be a source of interest. Four lines indicated the Grishas, and offset
dots marked the pings from their active sonars. McCafferty wondered what they
were after. His interest was mainly academic. They weren't pinging his ship,
but there was always something to learn from how the enemy did his job. A team
of officers in the attack center was plotting the movement of the Soviet patrol
ships, carefully noting their information patterns and hunting technique for
later comparison with intelligence estimates.

A new series of dots appeared at the bottom of the screen. A
sonarman punched a button for a more selective frequency setting, altering the
display slightly, then plugged in a pair of microphones. The display was on
fast-speed image generation, and McCafferty saw the dots grow to lines around
bearing one-nine-eight, the direction to the Kola channel.

"Lots of confused noise, skipper," the sonarman
reported. "I read Alfas and Charlies coming out, with other stuff behind
them. Blade count on one Alfa is something like thirty knots. Lots of noise
behind them, sir."

The visual display confirmed it a minute later. The
frequency- or tonelines were in the areas known to depict specific classes of
submarines, all moving at high speed to clear the harbor. The
bearing-to-contact lines spread apart as the boats fanned out. The boats had
already dived, he noted. Usually Soviet submarines didn't dive until they were
well offshore.

"Ship count is over twenty, sir," the chief
sonarman said quietly. "We have a major sortie here."

"Sure looks like it." McCafferty moved back to the
attack center. His men were already entering the contact positions into the
fire-control computer, and sketching paper tracks on the chart table. The war
hadn't started yet, and though it appeared it could come at any time,
McCafferty's orders were to keep clear of any Soviet formation until the Word
came. He didn't like it-better to get his blows in quick-but Washington had
made it clear they wanted no one to cause an incident that might prevent some
kind of diplomatic settlement. That made sense, the captain admitted to
himself. Maybe the lace-panty folks could still get things under control. A
faint hope, but a real one. Real enough to overcome his tactical desire to hold
an attack position.

He ordered his submarine moved farther offshore. In half an
hour, things were clearer still, and the captain had a SLOT-buoy launched. The
buoy was programmed to allow Chicago thirty minutes to clear the area, then it
started sending a series of burst transmissions on a UHF satellite band. From
ten miles away, he listened to Soviet ships going beserk around the radio buoy,
doubtlessly thinking it was the location of the submarine. The game was
becoming all too real.

The buoy operated for over an hour, continuously sending its
data to a NATO communications satellite. By nightfall the data was being
broadcast to all NATO units at sea. The Russians are coming.

16 - Last Moves/First Moves

USS NIMITZ

The speaker had announced sunset two hours before, but Bob
had to finish his work. Sunsets at sea far away from the polluted city air,
with a sharp horizon for the sun to slide under, were always something he
enjoyed watching. What he saw now was almost as good. He stood with his hands
on the rail, first looking down at the foam alongside the carrier's sleek huff,
then after a brief moment of preparation, up. Born and raised in Boston, Toland
hadn't known what the Milky Way was until joining the Navy, and the discovery
of the wide, bright belt of stars overhead was always a source of wonder to
him. There were the stars he'd learned to navigate by, with sextant and
trigonometric tables-largely replaced now by electronic aids like Omega and
Loran-but they were still beautiful to behold. Arcturus, and Vega, and Altair,
all blinking at him with their own colors, their own unique characteristics
that made them benchmarks in the night sky.

A door opened, and a sailor dressed in what looked like a
purple planeflueler's shirt joined him on the flight deck catwalk.

"Darkened ship, sailor. I'd dump that cigarette,"
Toland said sharply, more annoyed to have his precious solitude destroyed.

"Sorry, sir." The butt sailed over the side. The
man was silent for a few minutes, then looked at Toland. "You know about
the stars, sir?"

"What do you mean?"

"This is my first cruise, sir, an' I grew up in New
York. Never saw the stars like this, but I don't even know what they are-the
names, I mean. You officers know all that stuff, right?"

Toland laughed quietly. "I know what you mean. Same
with my first time out. Pretty, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir. What's that one?" The boy's voice
sounded tired. Small wonder, Toland thought, with all the flight operations
they've been through today. The youngster pointed to the brightest dot in the
eastern sky, and Bob had to think for a few seconds.

"That's Jupiter. A planet, not a star. With the
quartermaster's spyglass, you can pick out her moons-some of them anyway."
He went on to point out some of the stars used for navigation.

"How do you use 'em, sir?" the sailor asked.

"You take a sextant and plot their height above the
horizon-sounds harder than it is, just takes some practice-and you check that
against a book of star positions."

"Who does that, sir?"

"The book? Standard stuff. I imagine the book we use
comes from the Naval Observatory in D.C., but people have been measuring the
tracks of the stars and planets for three or four thousand years, long before
telescopes were invented. Anyway, if you know the exact time, and you know
where a particular star is, you can plot out where you are on the globe pretty
accurately, within a few hundred yards if you really know your stuff. Same
thing with the sun and the moon. That knowledge has been around for hundreds of
years. The tricky part was inventing a clock that kept good time. That happened
about two hundred and some years ago."

"I thought they used satellites and stuff like
that."

"We do now, but the stars are just as pretty."

"Yeah." The sailor sat down, his head leaning way
back to watch the curtain of white points. Beneath them the ship's hull churned
the water to foam with the whispering sound of a continuously breaking wave.
Somehow the sound and the sky matched each other perfectly. "Well, at
least I learned something about the stars. When's it gonna start, sir?"

Toland looked up at the constellation of Sagittarius. The
center of the galaxy was behind it. Some astrophysicists said there was a black
hole in there. The most destructive force known to physics, it made the forces
under man's control appear puny by comparison. But men were a lot easier to
destroy.

"Soon."

USS CHICAGO

The submarine was far offshore now, west of the surging
Soviet submarine and surface forces. They'd heard no explosions yet, but it
couldn't be far off. The nearest Soviet ship was about thirty miles off to the
east, and a dozen more were plotted. All were blasting the sea with their
active sonars.

McCafferty was surprised by his Flash operational order.
Chicago was being pulled out of the Barents Sea and shifted to a patrol area in
the Norwegian Sea. Mission: to interdict Soviet submarines expected to head
south toward the North Atlantic. A political decision had been made: It must
not appear that NATO was forcing the Soviets into a war. In a stroke, the
pre-war strategy of engaging the Soviet Fleet in its own backyard had been
tossed away. Like every pre-war battle plan in this century, the sub skipper
reflected, this one too was being torn up because the enemy wasn't going to
cooperate and do what we thought he'd do. Of course. He was putting many more
submarines in the Atlantic than had been expected-even worse, we were making it
easier for him! McCafferty wondered what other surprises were in store. The
submarine's torpedoes and missiles were now fully armed, her fire-control
systems continuously manned, her crew standing Condition-3 wartime watch
routine. But their orders at present were to run away. The captain swore to
himself, angry with whoever had made this decision, yet still hoping in a quiet
comer of his mind that somehow the war could be stopped.

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

"It's gotta happen soon," COMAIRCENT observed.
"Shit, they got their troops as ready as I've ever seen. They can't wait
until all our Reforger units are fully in place. They have to hit us
soon."

"I know what you're saying, Charlie, but we can't move
first."

"Any word on our visitors?" The Air Force general
referred to Major Chemyavin's team of Spetznaz commandos.

"Still sitting tight." A unit of the elite GSG-9
German border guards had the safe house under continuous surveillance, with a
second English ambush team between them and their supposed target in
Lammersdorf Intelligence officers from most of the NATO countries were part of
the surveillance team, each with a direct line to his government. "What if
they're bait, trying to get us to strike first?"

"I know we can't do that, General. What I want is a
green light to initiate Dreamland when we know it's all for-real. We have to
get our licks in fast, boss."

SACEUR leaned back. Trapped by his duties in his underground
command post, he hadn't been to his official residence in ten days. He wondered
if any general officer in the whole world had gotten any sleep in the past two
weeks.

"If you put the orders up, how fast can you
react?"

"I have all the birds loaded and ready now. My crews
are briefed. If I order them to stand to, I can have Dreamland running thirty
minutes from your signal."

"Okay, Charlie. The President has given me authority to
react to any attack. Tell your people to stand to."

"Right."

SACEUR's phone rang. He lifted it, listened briefly, and looked
up. "Our visitors are moving," he told COMAIRCENT. To his operations
officer, "The code word is Firelight." NATO forces would now go to
maximum alert.

AACHEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

The Spetznaz team left the safe house in two small vans and
drove south on the road to Lammersdorf. With their leader killed in a traffic
accident, the second in command, a captain, had been delivered copies of the
papers his boss had died to get, and fully briefed his men. They were quiet and
tense. The officer had taken pains to explain to his men that their escape had
been carefully planned, that once clear of the target they'd get to another
safe house and wait for their Red Army comrades to arrive in five days. They
were the cream of the Red Army, he'd told them, thoroughly trained to carry out
dangerous missions behind enemy lines, hence valuable to the State. Every man
had combat experience fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan, he reminded
them. They were trained. They were ready.

The men accepted this speech as elite troopers usually did,
in total silence. Chosen most of all for their intelligence, each of them knew
that the speech was merely that. The mission depended largely on luck, and
their luck had already gone bad. Every one of them wished that Major Chernyavin
were there, and wondered if somehow the mission might have been blown. One by
one, they set these thoughts aside. Soon every man was reviewing his part in
the mission to destroy Lammersdorf.

The drivers were KGB agents well experienced at working in
foreign lands, and wondering exactly the same thing. Both vehicles stayed
together, driving conservatively, wary of vehicles that followed them. Each had
a scanner radio tuned to the local police frequencies, and another for
communicating with each other. The KGB officers had discussed the mission an
hour before. Moscow Center had told them that NATO was not yet fully alerted.
The lead driver, whose regular cover job was driving a taxi, wondered if a
"full" NATO alert meant a parade through Red Square.

"Turning right now. Car three, close in. Car one, turn
left at the next intersection and get ahead of them." Colonel Weber spoke
over a tactical radio of the sort used by FIST-fire-support team-units. The
ambush had been ready for several days now, and as soon as their targets had
emerged from their safe house, the word had been flashed all over the Federal
Republic. NATO establishments already on alert were brought to full
battle-readiness. This could only be the opening move in a shooting war . . .
unless, Weber admitted to himself, they were simply moving from one secure
place to wait further in another one. He didn't know which way things would
turn, though surely it had to begin soon. Didn't it?

The two trucks were now in a rural part of Western Germany,
driving southeast through the German-Belgian Nature Park, a scenic route often
traveled by tourists and sightseers. They had chosen this side road to avoid
the military traffic on the major highways, but as they passed through
Mulartshutte, the lead driver frowned as he saw a military convoy of tanks on
low-hauler trailers. Strangely, the tanks were loaded backwards, with their
massive guns facing aft. British tanks, he saw, new Challengers. Well, he
hadn't expected to see any German Leopard tanks on the Belgian border. There
had never been any possibility of preventing a German mobilization, and he
tried to convince himself that the rest of the NATO countries had not moved as
quickly as they could have. Ah, if this mission were successful, then NATO's
communications would be seriously damaged, and maybe the armored spearheads
would indeed come to rescue them. The convoy slowed. The driver considered
pulling around them, but his orders were to be inconspicuous.

"Everyone ready?" Weber asked from his chase car.

"Ready." Bloody complex op, this, Colonel
Armstrong thought. Tankers, SAS, and the Germans all working together. But
worth it to bag a bunch of Spetznaz- The convoy slowed and stopped at a picnicking
area. Weber halted his car a hundred meters away. It was now in the hands of
the English ambush team.

Flares erupted around the two small vans.

The KGB driver cringed at being in the center of so much
light. Then he looked forward to see the barrel of the tank just fifty meters
ahead of him rise from its travel-rest and center on his windshield.

"Attention," a voice called in Russian over a
megaphone. "Spetznaz soldiers, attention. You are surrounded by a company
of mechanized troops. Come out of your vehicles singly and unarmed. If you open
fire, you will be killed within seconds." A second voice began speaking.

"Come out, Comrades, this is Major Chernyavin. There is
no chance."

The commandos exchanged looks of horror. In the lead vehicle
the captain started to pull the pin on a grenade. A sergeant leaped on him and
wrapped his hand around the captain's.

"We cannot be taken alive! Those are our orders!"
the captain shouted.

"The devil's mother we can't!" the sergeant
screamed. "One at a time, Comrades-out with hands high. And be
careful!"

A private emerged from the back door of the van, one slow
foot at a time.

"Come to the sound of my voice, Ivanov,"
Chernyavin said from a wheelchair. The major had told much to earn the chance
to save his detachment. He had worked with these men for two years, and he
could not let them be slaughtered to no purpose. It was one thing to be loyal
to the State, another to be loyal to the men he'd led in combat operations.
"You will not be hurt. If you have any weapons, drop them now. I know
about the knife you carry, Private Ivanov . . . Very good. Next man."

It went quickly. A joint team of Special Air Service and
GSG-9 commandos collected their Soviet counterparts, handcuffed them, and led
them off to be blindfolded. Soon only two were left. The grenade made it
tricky. By this time the captain had seen the futility of his action, but it
proved impossible to locate the pin for the grenade. The sergeant shouted a
warning to Chernyavin, who wanted to come forward himself, but couldn't. The
captain came out last. He wanted to throw the grenade at the officer who, he
thought, had betrayed his country, only to see a man whose legs were swathed in
plaster.

Chernyavin could see the look on the man's face.

"Andrey Ilych, would you prefer that your life should
end for nothing?" the major asked. "The bastards drugged me and
learned enough to kill you all. I could not let them do this."

"I have a live grenade!" the captain said loudly.
"I will throw it into the truck." This he did before anyone could
shout to stop him. A moment later the truck exploded, destroying the group's
maps and plans for escape. For the first time in a week, Chernyavin's face
broke into a wide grin. "Well done, Andrushka!"

Two other Spetznaz groups were less lucky, and were
intercepted within sight of their targets by German units privy to Chernyavin's
capture. But twenty additional groups were in the Federal Republic, and not
every NATO site had gotten the word in time. A score of vicious firefights
erupted on both sides of the Rhein. A war to involve millions began with squad-
and platoon-sized units fighting desperate actions in the dark.

17 - The Frisbees of Dreamland

GERMANY, FORWARD EDGE OF THE BATTLE AREA

The view would have been frightening to most men. There were
solid clouds overhead at four thousand feet. He flew through showers that he
more heard than saw on this black night, and the dark outlines of trees
appeared to reach up and snatch at his speeding fighter. Only a madman would be
so low on such a night-so much the better, he smiled inside his oxygen mask.

Colonel Douglas Ellington's fingertips caressed the control
stick of his F-19A Ghostrider attack fighter, while his other hand rested on
the side-by-side throttle controls on the left-side cockpit wall. The head-up
display projected on the windshield in front of him reported 625 knots
Indicated Air Speed, a hundred six feet of altitude, a heading of 013, and
around the numbers was a monocolor holographic image of the terrain before him.
The image came from a forward-looking infrared camera in the fighter's nose,
augmented by an invisible laser that interrogated the ground eight times per
second. For peripheral vision, his oversized helmet was fitted with low-light
goggles.

"Raisin' hell over our heads," his back-seater
reported. Major Don Eisly monitored the radio and radar signals, as well as
their own instruments: "All systems continue nominal, range to target now
ninety miles."

"Right," the Duke responded. It had been an
automatic nickname for Ellington, who even looked vaguely like the jazz
musician.

Ellington relished the mission. They were skimming north at
perilously low level over the angular terrain of East Germany, and their
Frisbee, never more than two hundred feet off the ground, jerked up and down to
the pilot's constant course adjustments.

Lockheed called her the Ghostrider. The pilots called her
the Frisbee, the F-19A, the secretly developed Stealth attack fighter. She had
no corners, no box shapes to allow radar signals to bounce cleanly off her. Her
high-bypass turbofans were designed to emit a blurry infrared signature at
most. From above, her wings appeared to mimic the shape of a cathedral bell.
From in front, they curved oddly toward the ground, earning her the
affectionate nickname of Frisbee. Though she was a masterpiece of electronic
technology inside, she usually didn't use her active systems. Radars and radios
made electronic noise that an enemy might detect, and the whole idea of the
Frisbee was that she didn't seem to exist at all.

Far over their heads on both sides of the border, hundreds
of fighter aircraft played a deadly game of bluff, racing toward the border and
then turning away, both sides trying to goad the other into committing to
battle. Each side had airborne radar aircraft with which to control such a
battle and so gain the advantage in a war which, though few yet knew it, had
already begun.

And we're getting a quick one in, Ellington thought. We're
finally doing something smart! He'd had a hundred missions over Vietnam in the
first production F-111A fighters. The Duke was the Air Force's leading expert
on covert low-level missions, and it was said that he could "bull's-eye a
chuckhole in a Kansas tornado at midnight." That wasn't quite true. The
Frisbee could never handle a tornado. The sad truth was that the F-19 handled
like a pig-a consequence of her ungainly design. But Ellington didn't care.
Being invisible was better than being agile, he judged, knowing that he was
about to prove or disprove that proposition.

The Frisbee squadron was now penetrating the most
concentrated SAM belt the world had ever known.

"Range to primary target is now sixty miles,"
Eisly advised. "All onboard systems continue nominal. No radars are locked
onto us. Lookin' good, Duke."

"Roger." Ellington pushed the stick forward and
dived as they passed over the crest of a small hill, then bottomed out at
eighty feet over a wheatfield. The Duke was playing his game to the limit,
drawing on years of experience in low-level attacks. Their primary target was a
Soviet IL-76 Mainstay, an AWACS-type aircraft that was circling near Magdeburg,
agreeably within ten miles of their secondary target, the E-8 highway bridges
over the Elbe at Hohenroarthe. The mission was getting a lot hairier. The
closer they got to the Mainstay the more radar signal hit their aircraft, its
intensity growing at a square function. Sooner or later, enough signal would be
reflected back to the Mainstay to be detectable, even by curved wings made of
radar-transparent composites. All the Stealth technology did was to make radar
detection harder, not impossible. Would they be seen by the Mainstay? If so,
when, and how quickly would the Russians react?

Keep her on the deck, he told himself. Play the game by the
rules you've practiced out. They had rehearsed this mission for nine days in
"Dreamland," the top-secret exercise area in the sprawl of Nellis Air
Force Base, Nevada. Even the E-3A Sentry could barely make them out at forty
miles, and the Sentry was a far better radar platform than the Mainstay, wasn't
it?

That's what you're here to find out, boy . . .

There were five Mainstays on duty, all a hundred klicks east
of the inter-German border. A nice safe distance, what with over three hundred
fighters between them and the border.

"Twenty miles, Duke."

"Right. Call it off, Don."

"Roge. Still no fire-control emanations on us, and no
search stuff is lingering our way. Lots of radio chatter, but mostly west of
us. Very little VOX coming from the target."

Ellington reached his left hand down to arm the four AIM-9M
Sidewinder missiles hanging under his wings. The weapon-indicator light blinked
a lethal, friendly green.

"Eighteen miles. Target appears to be circling normally,
not taking evasive action."

Ten miles to the minute, Ellington computed in his mind, one
minute forty seconds.

"Sixteen miles." Eisly read the numbers off a
computer readout keyed to the NAVSTAR satellite navigation system.

The Mainstay would not have a chance. The Frisbee would not
begin to climb until she was directly underneath the target. Fourteen miles.
Twelve. Ten. Eight. Six miles to the converted air transport.

"The Mainstay just reversed her turn-yeah, she's
jinking. A Foxfire just swept over us," Eisly said evenly. A MiG-25
interceptor, presumably acting on instructions from the IL-76, was now
searching for them. With its high power and small arc, the Foxfire stood a good
chance of acquiring them, Stealth technology or not. "The Mainstay might have
us."

"Anything locked on us?"

"Not yet." Eisly's eyes were glued to the
threat-receiver instruments. No missile-control radars had centered on the
Frisbee yet. "Coming under the target."

"Right. Climbing now." Ellington eased back on his
stick and punched up full afterburners. The Frisbee's engines could only give
him Mach 1.3, but this was the place to use all the power he had. According to
the weather people, these clouds topped out at twenty thousand feet, and the
IL-76 would be about five thousand above that. Now the Frisbee was vulnerable.
No longer lost in the ground clutter, her engines radiating their maximum
signature, the Stealth aircraft was broadcasting her presence. Climb faster,
baby . . .

"Tallyho!" Ellington said too loudly over the intercom
as he burst through the clouds, and the night-vision systems instantly showed
him the Mainstay, five miles away and diving for cover in front of him. Too
late. The head-on closing speed was nearly a thousand miles per hour. The
colonel centered his gunsight pipper on the target. A warbling tone came into
his headset: the Sidewinders' seekers had locked onto the target. His right
thumb toggled the launch-enable switch, and his forefinger squeezed the trigger
twice. The Sidewinders left the aircraft half a second apart. Their brilliant
exhaust flames dazzled him, but he did not take his eyes off the missiles as
they raced for the target. It took eight seconds. He looked them all the way
in. Both missiles angled for the Mainstay's starboard wing. Thirty feet away,
laser proximity fuses detonated, filling the air with lethal fragments. It
happened too fast. Both of the Mainstay's right-side engines exploded, the wing
came off, and the Soviet aircraft began cartwheeling violently downward, lost
seconds later in the clouds.

Jesus! Ellington thought as he rolled and dived back to the
ground and safety. Nothing like the movies. The target was hit and gone between
blinks. Well, okay, that was easy enough. Primary target gone. Now for the hard
part . . .

Aboard an E-3A Sentry circling over Strasbourg, the radar
technicians noted with satisfaction that all five Soviet radar craft had been
killed within two minutes: it all worked, the F-19 really did surprise them.

The brigadier general in command of Operation Dreamland
leaned forward in his command chair and toggled his microphone.

"Trumpeter, Trumpeter, Trumpeter," he said, then
switched off. "Okay, boys," he breathed. "Make it count."

Amid the clouds of NATO tactical fighters hovering near the
border, a hundred low-level attack fighters broke clear and dove for the
ground. Half were F-111F Aardvarks, the other half "GR. I " Tornados,
their wings heavy with fuel tanks and smart bombs. They followed the second
wave of Frisbees, already sixty miles into East Germany, fanning out to their
ground targets. Behind the strike aircraft, all-weather Eagle and Phantom
interceptors, directed by the Sentries circling over the Rhein, began to launch
their radar-guided missiles at Soviet fighters that had just lost their
airborne controllers. Finally, a third team of NATO aircraft swooped in low,
seeking out the ground radar sites that were coming on to replace the radar
coverage of the dead Mainstays.

HOHENROARTHE, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

Ellington circled his target at a thousand feet, several
miles away. It was a double bridge, a pair of concrete arches, each about five
hundred yards across, and with two traffic lanes, that crossed the River Elbe
in the middle of a gentle S-curve. Pretty bridges. Ellington guessed that they
dated back to the thirties, since this main road from Berlin to Braunschweig
had been one of the first autobahns. Ole Adolf himself might have driven across
these bridges, Ellington reflected. So much the better.

At the moment, a low-light television in his targeting
systems showed them to be covered with Russian T-80 tanks, all heading west.
Ellington evaluated the picture on his television screen. This could only be
the second echelon of the army deployed to attack NATO. There was an SA-6
battery atop Hill 76 south of the bridges on the east bank, sited there to
defend them. It had to be fully alert now. His earphones chirped constantly
with noise from his threat receiver as the search radars from a score of
air-defense batteries swept continuously over his aircraft. If only one of them
got a good return . . . Pucker factor, Ellington reflected grimly.

"How's the Pave Tack?"

"Nominal," Eisly responded curtly. Pilot and
back-seater were both under enormous stress.

"Illuminate," Ellington ordered. In the back seat,
Eisly activated the Pave Tack target-illumination laser.

The elaborate Pave Tack gear was built into the Frisbee's
drooping nosecone. Its lowermost part was a rotating turret containing a
carbondioxide laser and television camera. The major used his joystick controls
to center the TV picture on the bridge, then unmasked the infrared laser. An
invisible dot appeared in the center of the north span's bridge deck. A
computer system would keep it there until told to do otherwise, and a videotape
recorder would make a visual record of the raid's success or failure.

"The target is lit," Eisly said. "Still no
fire-control radars on us."

"Nemo, this is Shade 4. The target is lit."

"Roge."

Fifteen seconds later the first Aardvark screamed south a
bare thirty feet over the water, popped up, and loosed a single GBU-15 Paveway
laser-guided bomb before it turned hard to the east over Hohenroarthe. An
optical-computer system in the bomb's nose noted the deflected infrared beam, centered
it, and adjusted the fins accordingly.

South of the bridge, the SAM battery commander was trying to
decide what the noise was. His search radar did not show the Frisbee. He had
been told not to expect the presence of "friendly" aircraft-the safe
travel lane was fifteen miles to the north, over the Frontal Aviation base at
Mahlminkel. Maybe that's where the noise was coming from, he thought. No
special alarm has been sent out-

The northern horizon went bright yellow. Though he did not
know it, four Luftwaffe Tornados had just made a single pass over Mahlminkel,
leaving hundreds of explosive cluster munitions in their wake. A half-dozen
Soviet Sukhoi attack fighters went up in flames, sending a fireball of jet fuel
that rose up into the rain-filled sky.

The battery commander hesitated not at all-he shouted an
order for his men to switch their fire-control radars from stand-by to active,
and trace them around "their" bridges. A moment later, one detected
an F-111 coming upriver.

"Oh, shit!" The Aardvark's systems operator
instantly loosed a Shrike antiradar missile at the SAM battery, another for
good measure at the search radar, a second Paveway at the bridge, then the
F-111 turned violently left.

A missile-launch officer blanched as he realized what had
just appeared from nowhere onto his scopes, and salvoed his three missiles in
return. The incoming aircraft had to be hostile, and had just separated three
smaller objects . . .

His first SAM struck and exploded on the high-tension power
lines that spanned the river just south of the bridges. The entire valley was
strobelighted as the power lines fell sparking into the river. The other two
SAMs raced past the surreal explosion and locked onto the second F-111.

The first Paveway impacted precisely in the center of the
northern span. It was a delayed-action bomb, and penetrated into the thick
concrete before exploding a few yards from a battalion commander's tank. The
north span was strong-it had been in use for over fifty years-but the 945
pounds of high explosive ripped it apart. In an instant the graceful concrete
arch was cut in two, a ragged twenty-foot gap appearing between the two
unsecured flying buttresses. They were not designed to stand alone,
particularly with armored vehicles rumbling over them. The bomb released by the
second Aardvark struck closer to shore, and the eastern side of the span failed
entirely, taking eight tanks into the Elbe with it.

The second F-111 did not live to see this, however. One of
the racing SA-6 missiles struck it broadside and blew it to pieces three
seconds after the aircraft-launched Shrikes obliterated the pair of Soviet
radar vehicles. Neither side had time for grief. Another F-111 screamed upriver
as the surviving SAM crews frantically searched for targets.

Thirty seconds later, the north span was totally destroyed,
brick-sized chunks of ferroconcrete scattered on the river bottom from three
smartbomb impacts.

Eisly switched his laser-designator to the south span. It
was clogged with tanks, logjammed by a BMP-l personnel carrier blown whole from
one bridge span to the other by the first bomb, torn asunder and blazing on the
west end of the bridge. The fourth Aardvark lofted a pair of bombs which homed
in remorselessly on the laser-spot now stuck on the turret of a stopped tank.
The sky was alight with blazing diesel fuel and streaked with hand-launched
SAMs that had been blind-fired by panicked riflemen.

Both Paveways exploded a scant ten feet apart, and the
entire bridge span failed at once, dropping a company of armored vehicles into
the Elbe.

One more thing to do, Ellington told himself, there! The
Soviets had stockpiled bridging equipment on the secondary road paralleling the
river. The engineers were probably nearby. The Frisbee screeched over the rows
of trucks, each of which carried a section of ribbon bridge, and deployed a row
of flares before skimming back west toward the Federal Republic of Germany, and
safety. The three surviving Aardvarks came in one at a time, each dropping a
pair of Rockeye canisters into the truck park, ripping the bridging equipment
to bits, and, their pilots fervently hoped, killing some of the skilled
bridging engineers as well. Then the Aardvarks turned west to follow the F-19
home.

By this time, a second team of F-15 Eagle fighters had
darted into East Germany to clear four lanes for the returning NATO strike
aircraft. They fired their radar-and infrared-guided missiles at the MiGs
trying to vector toward the returning fighter-bombers-but the American fighters
still had their aerial radars to direct them, and the Soviets did not. The
results reflected it. The Soviet fighters had not had time to reorganize after
the loss of the Mainstays, and their formations were savaged. Even worse, the
SAM batteries that were supposed to support the MiGs were ordered to engage the
invading aircraft, and the surface-to-air missiles began to pluck targets out
of the sky entirely without discrimination as the NATO aircraft clung to the
nap of the earth.

By the time the last aircraft recrossed the border into West
Germany, Operation Dreamland had lasted a total of twenty-seven minutes. It had
been a costly mission. Two of the priceless Frisbees and eleven strike aircraft
had been lost. Yet it had been a success. Over two hundred Soviet all-weather
fighters had been destroyed by the NATO fighters, and perhaps a hundred more by
"friendly" SAMs. The most elite squadrons of the Soviet air-defense
force had been brutalized, and because of it, for the time being NATO would own
the night skies over Europe. Thirty-six major bridges had been targeted: thirty
had been destroyed and all of the rest damaged. The initial Soviet ground
attack scheduled to begin in two hours would not be supported by the second
echelon, nor by specialty units of mobile SAMs, engineers, and other crucial
late-arrivals fresh from special training in the Soviet homeland. Finally, the
attacks against airfields would give NATO air parity, at least for the moment.
The NATO air forces had fulfilled their most crucial mission: the much feared
Soviet ground superiority was decisively reduced. The land battle for Western
Europe would now be fought on nearly even terms.

USS PHARRIS

It was still the previous day on the American East Coast.
USS PHARRIS led the way out of the Delaware at 2200 hours. Behind her was a
convoy of thirty ships, with a dozen escorting vessels. In both cases it was
all that could be assembled on the short notice. Dozens of American and foreign
flag vessels were racing to American ports, many taking southerly routings to
keep as far away as possible from the Soviet submarines reported surging south
from the Norwegian Sea. The first few days would be tough, Morris knew.

"Captain, please come to communications," the
announcing system squawked. Morris immediately went aft to the always-locked
radio room.

"It's for-real." The communications officer handed
him the yellow message form. Morris read it in the dim lights.

Z0357Z15JUNE

FR:SACLANT

TO: ALL SACLANT SHIPS

TOP SECRET

1. EXECUTE UNRESTRICTED AIR AND SEA WARFARE AGAINST WARSAW
PACT FORCES.

2. WARPLAN GOLF TAC 7.

3. STOUT HEARTS. SACLANT SENDS.

Rules of Engagement War Option Seven. That meant no nukes,
he was perfectly happy to see-PHARRIS didn't have any at the moment. He was now
free to engage without warning any East Bloc warship or merchant vessel. Well .
. . Morris nodded. He tucked the message form into his pocket, returned to the
bridge, and went without a word to the microphone.

"This is the captain speaking. Listen up: It's
official. We are now in a shooting war. No more drills, gentlemen. If you hear
an alarm from now on, it means there's a Bad Guy out there, and they have live
weapons, too. That is all." He hung up and looked over to the officer of
the deck. "Mr. Johnson, I want the Prairie/Masker systems operating
continuously. If they go down, I want to know about it at once. That goes in
the order book."

"Aye, Captain."

Prairie/Masker was a system for defeating submarine sonars.
Two metallic bands surrounded the frigate's hull, fore and aft of the engine
spaces. This was Masker. It took compressed air and bled it into the water
around the ship in the form of millions of tiny bubbles. The Prairie part of
the system did the same with the propeller blades. The air bubbles created a
semipermeable barrier that tended to trap sounds made by the ship, letting only
a fraction of her propulsion noises escape-which made the ship extremely
difficult for a submarine to detect.

"How long till we clear the channel?" Morris
asked.

"We'll be at the sea buoy in ninety minutes."

"Okay, tell the bosun's mate of the watch to be ready
to stream the tail and the Nixie"-the towed-array sonar and the Nixie
torpedo decoy-"at twenty-three forty-five. I'm going to take a nap. Wake
me at twentythree thirty. Anything happens, call me."

"Aye aye, sir."

A trio of P-3C Orion antisubmarine aircraft swept the area
ahead of them. The only hazard was that of normal navigation, and suddenly the
prospect of grazing the bottom or smashing an errant buoy looked like a minor
affair. He'd need his sleep now, Morris knew, and he would not be at all
surprised to find a submarine waiting right on the continental shelf in three
hours. He'd want to be rested for that eventuality.

SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA

What was holding Washington up? the colonel asked himself
All he needed was a simple yes or no. He checked his boards. Three KH-type
photoreconnaissance satellites were currently in orbit, plus nine electronic
surveillance birds. That was his low-level "constellation." He didn't
fear for his higher-flying navigation and communications satellites, but the
twelve in low earth orbit, especially the KHs, were valuable and vulnerable.
Two of them had Russian killersats in close proximity, and one of his birds was
now approaching Soviet territory, with another only forty minutes behind. The
third Key-Hole bird didn't have a satellite assigned yet, but the last pass
over Leninsk showed another F-type booster being fueled on the pad.

"Take another look at the trailer," he ordered.

A technician made the requisite commands, and half a world
away, the satellite fired its attitude control thrusters and pivoted in space
to allow its cameras to search for the Russian killer satellite. It had held
position fifty miles behind, and nine miles below the American satellite, but
now was . . . gone.

"They moved it. They moved it in the last half
hour." He lifted the phone to tell CINC-NORAD that he was moving the
satellite on his own authority. Too late. As the satellite turned again to
point its cameras at the ground, a cylindrical mass covered a sizable
percentage of the earth's face-there was a flash and the TV screen went blank.
Just like that.

"Chris, you have those maneuver commands set up?"

"Yes, sir," the captain answered, still staring at
the screen.

"Execute them right now!"

The captain called up the command sequence on his computer
console and punched Enter. The colonel's phone rang as the satellites' onboard
rocket motors made subtle changes in their orbital paths.

"Argus Control," the colonel answered.

"This is CINC-NORAD. What the hell happened?"

"That Russian killersat closed and detonated. We have
no signal from the KH-11, sir. I must assume they have successfully negated the
bird. I've just ordered the other two Key-Holes to make a
hundred-foot-persecond delta-V. Tell Washington they waited too long,
sir."

18 - Polar Glory

KIEV, THE UKRAINE

It had been decided that all Soviet theater and front
commanders would be briefed on developments in Germany. Alekseyev and his
superior knew why: if anyone were to be relieved from his command, the new man
would have to know the situation. They listened to the intelligence report with
fascination. Neither of them had expected many of the Spetznaz attacks to fare
well, but it seemed that some had been successful, especially those in the
German ports. Then the operational intelligence brief got to the bridges on the
Elbe.

"Why weren't we warned about this?" CINC-Southwest
demanded.

"Comrade General," the Air Force officer
responded. "Our information was that this Stealth aircraft was a prototype,
not yet in regular service. Somehow the Americans have managed to construct a
number of them, at least part of a squadron. They used it to eliminate our
airborne radar coverage, thus paving the way for a massive penetration raid
against our airfields and lines of supply, plus a well-planned air battle
against our all-weather fighter aircraft. Their mission was successful, but not
decisively so."

"Oh, and the commander of Air Forces West was arrested
for successfully repelling it, eh?" Alekseyev snarled. "How many
aircraft did we lose?"

"I am not authorized to reveal that, Comrade
General."

"Can you tell us of the bridges, then!"

"Most of the bridges on the Elbe have been damaged to
some extent or another, plus attacks on the bridging units stationed near them
for tactical replacement."

"The fucking maniac-he had his bridging units right
next to the primary targets!" Southwest looked up at the ceiling as though
expecting an air attack right there in Kiev.

"That is where the roads are, Comrade General,"
the intelligence officer said quietly. Alekseyev waved him out of the room.

"Not a good start, Pasha." Already a general had
been arrested. His replacement had not yet been named.

Alekseyev nodded agreement, then checked his watch.
"The tanks will cross the border in thirty minutes, and we have a few
surprises in store for them. Only half of their reinforcements are in place.
They still have not achieved the psychological degree of preparedness that our
men have. Our first blow will hurt them. If our friend in Berlin has made his
deployments properly."

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

"Perfect weather," First Lieutenant Mike Edwards
pronounced, looking up from the chart just off the facsimile machine. "We
have this strong cold front due in from Canada in twenty to twenty-four hours.
That'll bring a lot of rain with it, maybe an inch worth, but for all of today
we have clear skies-less than two-tenths high clouds-and no precip. Surface
winds west to southwest at fifteen to twenty knots. And lots of 'shine'"
he concluded with a grin. The sun had risen for the last time nearly five weeks
before, and wouldn't truly set for another five. They were so close to the
North Pole here in Iceland that in summer the sun wandered in a lazy circle
around the azure sky, dipping fractionally below the northwestern horizon but
never truly setting. It was something that took getting used to.

"Fighter weather," agreed Lieutenant Colonel Bill
Jeffers, commander of the 57th Fighter Interceptor squadron, the "Black
Knights," most of whose F-15 Eagle interceptors were sitting in the open a
bare hundred yards away. The pilots were in those fighters, waiting. They'd
been waiting for ninety minutes now. Two hours before, they'd been warned of a
large number of Soviet aircraft taking off from their tactical air bases on the
Kola Peninsula, destination unknown.

Keflavik was always a busy place, but for the last week it
had been a madhouse. The airport was a combination Navy and Air Force base and
a busy international airport at which many airliners stopped to refuel.

The past week had seen this traffic supplemented by grim
tactical fighters transiting from the United States and Canada to Europe, cargo
aircraft transporting overloads of critical equipment, and airliners returning
to America crowded with pale tourists and dependents of the military men who
were now on the battle line. The same had happened to Keflavik. Three thousand
wives and children had been evacuated. The base facility was cleared for
action. If the Soviets kicked off the war that seemed to be springing from the
ground like a new volcano, Keflavik was as ready as it could be.

"With your permission, Colonel, I want to check a few
things at the tower. This forecast is pretty solid, for the next twelve hours
anyway."

"Jet stream?" Colonel Jeffers looked up from the
yard-square chart of isobars and wind-trees.

"Same place it's been all week, sir, no sign at all of
a change."

"Okay, go ahead."

Edwards put on his cap and walked out the door. He wore a
thin blue officer's jacket over his Marine-style fatigues, pleased that the Air
Force was still pretty casual about dress codes. His jeep held the rest of his
"battle gear," a .38 revolver and pistol belt, and the field jacket
that went with the camouflage gear everybody had been issued three days before.
They'd thought of everything, Edwards reflected as he started up the jeep for
the quarter-mile drive to the tower. Even the flak jacket.

Keflavik had to get hit, Edwards reminded himself. Everybody
knew it, prepared for it, and then tried not to think about it. This most
isolated of all NATO outposts on the western coast of Iceland was the barred
gate to the North Atlantic. If Ivan wanted to fight a naval war, Iceland had to
be neutralized. From Keflavik's four runways flew eighteen Eagle interceptors,
nine sub-hunting P-3C Orions, and deadliest of all, three E-3A AWACS birds, the
eyes of the fighters. Two were operating now; one was circling twenty miles
northeast of Cape Fontur, the other directly over Ritstain, 150 miles north of
Keflavik. This was most unusual. With only three AWACS birds available, keeping
one constantly in the air was difficult enough. The commander of the Iceland
defense forces was taking all of this very seriously. Edwards shrugged. If
there really were Backfires bearing down on them, there was nothing else for
him to do. He was the brand-new squadron meteorological officer, and he'd just
given his weather report.

Edwards parked his jeep in an officer's slot next to the
tower and decided to take his .38 with him. The lot was not fenced, and there
was no telling if someone might want to "borrow" his handgun. The
base was crawling with a company of Marines and another of Air Force police,
all looking very nasty with their M-16 rifles and web belts festooned with
grenades. He hoped they'd be careful with those. Late the next day, a whole
Marine Amphibious Unit was due to arrive to beef up base security, something
that should have been done a week earlier but had been delayed, partly because
of the Icelandic sensitivity regarding large numbers of armed foreigners, but
mainly due to the unreal speed with which this crisis had developed. He trotted
up the outside stairs and found the tower's control room crowded with eight
people rather than the usual five.

"Hi, Jerry," he said to the boss, Navy lieutenant
Jerry Simon. The Icelandic civilian controllers who usually worked here were
nowhere to be seen. Well, Edwards thought, there's no civilian traffic for them
to control.

"Morning, Mike," was the response. The ongoing
joke at Keflavik. It was 0315 hours local time. Morning. The sun was already
up, glaring in at them from the northeast through roll-down shades inside of
the tilted glass windows.

"Let's have an attitude check!" Edwards said as he
walked over to his meteorological instruments.

"I hate this fucking place!" the tower crew
answered at once.

"Let's have a positive attitude check."

"I positively hate this fucking place!"

"Let's have a negative attitude check."

"I don't like this fucking place!"

"Let's have a short attitude check."

"Fuckit!" Everyone had a good laugh. They needed
it.

"Nice to see that we're all maintaining our
equilibrium," Edwards observed. The short, scrawny officer had become
instantly popular on his arrival two months earlier. A native of Eastpoint,
Maine, and a graduate of the Air Force Academy, his glasses prevented him from
flying. His diminutive size-five-six and a hundred twenty pounds-was not
designed to command respect, but his infectious grin, ready supply of jokes,
and recognized expertise at making sense of the confused North Atlantic weather
patterns had combined to make him an acceptable companion for anyone at
Keflavik. Everyone thought he would make one hell of a TV weatherman one day.

"MAC Flight Five-Two-Zero, roger. Roll her out, Big
Guy, we need the room," said a tired controller. A few hundred yards away,
a C-5A Galaxy cargo plane began to accelerate down runway one-eight. Edwards
took a pair of binoculars to watch. It was hard to get used to the fact that
something so monstrous could actually fly.

"Any word from anywhere?" Simon asked Edwards.

"Nope, nothing since the Norwegian report. Lots of
activity at Kola. You know, I picked a hell of a time to come here to
work," Mike replied. He went back to checking the calibration of his
digital barometer.

It had started six weeks before. The Soviet Naval and
Long-Range Aviation groups based at a half-dozen airfields around Severomorsk
had exercised almost continuously, flying attack-profile missions that could
have been directed at nearly anyone or anything. Then two weeks before, the
activity had been cut way back. That was the ominous part: first they drilled
all their flight crews to perfection and then they went to a standdown
maintenance period to make sure that every bird and every instrument was also
fully operational . . . What were they doing now? An attack against Bodo in
Norway? Or Iceland maybe? Another exercise? There was no telling.

Edwards lifted a clipboard to sign off for having checked
his tower instruments that day. He could have left it to his enlisted
technicians, but they were backstopping the aircraft techs with the fighter
squadron, and he could handle it for them. Besides, it gave him an excuse to
visit the tower and-

"Mr. Simon," the senior enlisted controller said
rapidly. "I just copied a Flash from Sentry One: Warning Red. Many bandits
inbound, sir. Approaching from due north to northeast-Sentry Two is checking in
. . . they got 'em, too. Jesus. Sounds like forty to fifty bandits, sir."
Edwards noted that the inbounds were being called Bandits instead of the usual
Zombies.

"Anything friendly coming in?"

"Sir, we got a MAC C-141 twenty minutes out, eight more
behind it at five-minute intervals, all inbound from Dover."

"Tell them to turn back, and get an acknowledgment!
Keflavik is closed to all inbounds until further notice." Simon turned to
his telecommunications man. "Tell Air-Ops to radio SACLANT that we're
under attack, and to get the word out. I-"

Klaxons, erupted all around them. Below, in the
early-morning shadows, ground crewmen pulled red-flagged safety pins off the
waiting interceptors. Edwards saw a pilot drain a Styrofoam cup and begin to
strap himself in tight. The starter carts next to each fighter belched black
smoke as they generated power to turn the engines.

"Tower, this is Hunter Leader. We're scrambling. Clear
those runways, boy!"

Simon took the microphone. "Roger, Hunter Leader, the
runways are yours. Scatter Plan Alpha. Go for it! Out."

Below, canopies were coming down, chocks were pulled away
from wheels, and each crew chief gave his pilot a smart salute. The shriek of
jet engines changed to a roar as the aircraft started to roll awkwardly off the
flight line.

"Where's your battle station, Mike?" Simon asked.

"The met building." Edwards nodded and headed for
the door. "'Luck, guys."

Aboard Sentry Two, the radar operators watched a broad
semicircle of blips converging on them. Each blip had "BGR" painted
next to it, plus data on course, altitude, and speed. Each blip was a Tu-16
Badger bomber of Soviet Naval Aviation. There were twenty-four of them, inbound
for Keflavik at a speed of six hundred knots. They had approached at low
altitude to stay below the E-3A's radar horizon, and, once detected, were now
climbing rapidly, two hundred miles away. This mission profile enabled the
radar operators to classify them instantly as hostile. There were four Eagles
on Combat Air Patrol, two of them with operating AWACS, but it was close to
changeover point and the fighters were too low on fuel to race after the
Badgers on afterburner. They were directed to head for the incoming Russian
bombers at six hundred knots, and could not yet detect the Badgers on their own
missile-targeting radars.

Sentry One off Cape Fontur reported something worse. Her
blips were supersonic Tu-22M Backfires, coming in slowly enough to indicate
that they were heavily loaded with external ordnance. The Eagles here also
moved off to intercept. A hundred miles behind them, the two F-15s kept on
point defense over Reykjavik had just been topped off from an orbiting tanker
and were charging northeast at a thousand knots while the remainder of the
squadron was even now leaving the ground. The radar picture from both AWACS
aircraft was being transmitted by digital link to Keflavik's fighter-ops center
so that ground personnel could monitor the action. Now that the fighters were
rotating off the ground, the crews for every other aircraft at the air station
worked frantically to ready their birds for flight.

They had practiced this task eight times in the past month.
Some flight crews had been sleeping with their aircraft. Others were summoned
from their quarters, no more than four hundred yards away. Those aircraft just
back from patrol had their fuel tanks topped off, and were preflighted by the
ground crews. Marine and Air Force guards not already at their posts rushed to
them. It was just as well that the attack had come at this hour. There was only
a handful of civilians about, and civilian air traffic was at its lowest. On
the other hand, the men at Keflavik had been on double duty for a week now, and
they were tired. Things which might have been done in five minutes now took
seven or eight.

Edwards was back in his meteorological office, wearing his
field jacket, flak jacket, and "fritz" style helmet. His emergency
duty station-he could not think of his office as a "battle"
station-was his assigned post. As if someone might need an especially deadly
weather chart with which to attack an incoming bomber! The service had to have
a plan for everything, Edwards knew. There had to be a plan. It didn't have to
make sense. He went downstairs to Air-Ops.

"I got breakaway on Bandit Eight, one-two birds
launched. The machine says they're AS-4s," a Sentry controller reported.
The senior officer got on the radio for Keflavik.

MV JULIUS FUCIK

Twenty miles southwest of Keflavik, the "Doctor
Lykes" was also a beehive of activity. As each Soviet bomber squadron
launched its air-to-ground missiles, its commander transmitted a predetermined
codeword that the Fucik copied. Her time had come.

"Rudder left," Captain Kherov ordered. "Bring
his bow into the wind."

A full regiment of airborne infantry, many of them seasick
from two weeks aboard the huge barge-carrier, was at work testing and loading
weapons. The Fucik's augmented crew was stripping the falsework from the
aftermost four "barges," revealing each in fact to be a Lebed-type
assault hovercraft. The six-man crew of each removed the covers over the air
intakes that led to the engines they had tended with loving care for a month.
Satisfied, they waved to the craft commanders, who lit off the three engines in
each of the aftermost pair.

The ship's first officer stood at his elevator control
station aft. On a hand signal, an eighty-five-man infantry company plus a
reinforced mortar team were loaded into each craft. Power was increased, the
hovercraft lifted up on their air cushions and were winched aft. In another
four minutes, the vehicles were resting on the barge-loading elevator that
formed the stem of the Seabee vessel.

"Lower away," the first officer ordered. The winch
operators lowered the elevator to the surface. The sea was choppy, and
four-foot waves lapped at the Fucik's bifurcated stem. When the elevator was
level with the sea, first one, then the other Lebed commander increased power
and moved off. At once, the elevator returned to the topmost deck while the
first pair of hovercraft circled their mothership. In five more minutes, the
four assault craft moved off in box formation toward the Keflavik Peninsula.

The Fucik continued her turn, returning to a northerly
course to make the next hovercraft trip a shorter one. Her weather deck was
ringed with armed troops carrying surface-to-air missiles and machine guns.
Andreyev remained on the bridge, knowing this was where he belonged, but
wishing he were leading his assault troops.

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

"Kef-Ops, the bandits are all turning right back after
launching their ASMs. So far it's been two birds per aircraft. We got
fifty-make that fifty-six inbound missiles, and more are being launched. Nobody
behind them, though. I repeat, nothing behind the bomber force. At least we
don't have any paratroopers headed in. Hunker down, guys, we now have sixty
inbound missiles," Edwards heard as he came through the door.

"At least they won't be nukes," said a captain.

"They're shooting a hundred missiles at us-they don't
fuckin' need nukes!" replied another.

Edwards watched the radar picture over the shoulder of one
of the officers. It was eerily like an arcade game. Big, slow-moving blips
denoted the aircraft. Smaller, quicker blips were the Mach-2 missiles.

"Gotcha!" hooted the enlisted radar operator. The
leading Eagle had gotten within missile range of the Badgers and exploded one
with a Sparrow missile--ten seconds after it had launched its own missiles. A second
Sparrow missed its separate target, but a third appeared locked on it. The
first fighter's wingman was just launching at yet another Russian. The Soviets
had thought this one out, Edwards saw. They were attacking from all around the
northern littoral, with lots of space between the bombers so that no single
fighter could engage more than one or two. It was almost like-

"Anybody check the geometry of this?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" The captain looked around.
"How come you aren't where you belong?"

Edwards ignored the irrelevancy. "What's the chance
they're trying to draw our fighters out, like?"

"Expensive bait." The captain dismissed the idea.
"You're saying they might have launched their ASMs from farther out. Maybe
they don't fly as far as we thought. Point is, those missiles are ten minutes
out now, the first of them, with about a five- or seven-minute delay to the
last. And not a Goddamned thing we can do about it."

"Yeah." Edwards nodded. The Air-Ops/Met building
was a two-story frame structure that vibrated every time the wind hit fifty
knots. The lieutenant took out a stick of gum and started chewing on it. In ten
minutes a hundred missiles, each carrying about a ton of high explosives-or a
nuclear warhead-would start falling. The men outside would get the worst of it;
the enlisted men and the flight crews trying to get the airplanes ready to race
off. His assigned job was merely to keep out of the way. It made him a little
ashamed. The fear he could now taste along with the peppermint made him more
ashamed.

The Eagles were now all airborne, racing north. The last of
the Backfires had just launched their missiles and were turning back northeast
at full power as the Eagles raced at twelve hundred knots to catch up. Three of
the interceptors launched missiles, and they succeeded in killing a pair of
Backfires and damaging a third. The "Zulu" fighters which had
scrambled off the deck could not catch the Backfires, the commanding controller
on Sentry One noted, cursing himself for not having sent them after the older,
less valuable Badgers, some of which they might have caught. Instead, he
ordered them to slow down, and had his controllers vector them towards the
supersonic missiles.

Penguin 8, the first of the P-3C Orion antisubmarine warfare
aircraft, was rolling now, down runway two-two. It had been on patrol only five
hours before, and its flight crew was still trying to shake off the sleep as
they rotated the propjet aircraft off the concrete.

"Tipping over now," the radar operator said. The
first Russian missile was almost overhead, beginning its terminal dive. The
Eagles had hit two of the incoming missiles, but courses and altitudes had been
against them, and most of their Sparrows had missed, unable to catch the Mach-2
missiles. The F-15s orbited over central Iceland, well away from their base, as
each pilot wondered if he'd have an airfield to return to.

Edwards cringed as the first landed-or didn't land. The
air-to-surface missile had a radar-proximity fuse. It detonated twenty meters
off the ground, and the effects were horrific. It exploded directly over
International Highway, two hundred yards from Air-Ops, its fragments ripping
into a number of buildings, the worst hit being the base fire station. Edwards
fell to the floor as fragments lashed through the wooden wall. The door was
torn off its hinges by the blast and the air filled with dust. A moment later,
at the Esso facility a hundred yards away, a fuel truck exploded, sending a
fireball towering into the sky, and dropping burning jet fuel for blocks
around. Electrical power was immediately lost. Radars, radios, and room lights
went out at once, and battery-powered emergency lights didn't come on as they
were supposed to. For a terrified moment, Edwards wondered if the first missile
really might have been a nuke. The blast had rippled through his chest, and he
felt sudden nausea as his body tried to adjust to the sensations that assaulted
it. He looked around and saw a man knocked unconscious by a failing light
fixture. He didn't know if he was supposed to buckle his helmet strap or not,
and somehow this question seemed enormously important at the moment, though he
didn't remember why.

Another missile landed farther away, and then for a minute
or so the sounds blended into a series of immense thunderclaps. Edwards was
choking from the dust. It felt as though his chest would burst, and impulsively
he bolted for the door to get fresh air.

He was greeted by a solid wall of heat. The Esso facility
was a roaring mass of flames which had already engulfed the nearby photo lab
and base thrift shop. More smoke rose from the enlisted housing area to the
east. A half-dozen aircraft still on the flightline would never leave it, their
wings snapped like toys from the blast of a missile that had exploded directly
over the runway crossroads. A smashed E-3A Sentry burst into flames before his
eyes. He turned to see that the control tower had been damaged, too, all its
windows gone. Edwards ran that way, not thinking to take his jeep.

Two minutes later, he entered the tower breathlessly to find
the crew all dead, torn apart by flying glass, the tiled floor covered with
blood. Radio receivers were still making noise over desk-mounted speakers, but
he couldn't seem to find a working transmitter.

PENGUIN 8

"What the hell is that?" the Orion pilot said. He
turned his aircraft violently to the left and increased power. They had been
orbiting ten miles out from Keflavik, watching the smoke and flames rising from
their home field, when four massive objects passed under them.

"It's a-," the copilot breathed.
"Where-"

The four Lebeds were moving at over forty knots, bouncing
roughly over the four- to five-foot waves. About eighty feet long and
thirty-five wide, each had a pair of ducted propellers atop, immediately
forward of a tall, aircraft-type rudder painted with the Soviet naval ensign, a
red hammer and sickle over a blue stripe. They were already too close to shore
for the Orion to use any of her weapons.

The pilot watched incredulously as he approached, and any
doubts he had ended as a 30mm cannon fired at them. It missed wide, but the
pilot jerked the Orion around to the west.

"Tacco, tell Keflavik ASW Ops they got company coming.
Four armed hovercraft, type unknown, but Russian-and they gotta be carrying
troops."

"Flight," the tactical coordinator reported back
thirty seconds later. "Keflavik is off the air. ASW Ops Center is gone;
the tower is gone, too. I'm trying to raise the Sentries. Maybe we can get a
fighter or two."

"Okay, but keep trying Keflavik. Get our radar lit off.
We'll see if we can find where they came from. Get our Harpoons lit off,
too."

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

Edwards was surveying the damage through binoculars when he
heard the message come in-and could not answer it. Now what do I do? He looked
around and saw one useful thing, a Hammer Ace radio. He took the oversized
backpack and ran down the steps. He had to find the Marine officers and warn them.

The hovercraft raced up Djupivogur Cove and came to land a
minute later less than a mile from the airbase. The troopers gratefully noted
the smoother ride as their craft spread out to line abreast, three hundred
yards between them as they tore across the flat, rocky gorse toward the NATO
air base.

"What in the hell-" a Marine corporal said. Like a
dinosaur coming to the picnic, a massive object appeared on the horizon,
apparently coming overland at high speed.

"You! Marine, get over here!" Edwards screamed. A
jeep with three enlisted men stopped, then raced toward him. "Get me to
your CO fast!"

"CO's dead, sir," the sergeant said. "CP took
a hit, Lieutenant-fuckin' gone!"

"Where's the alternate?"

"Elementary school."

"Go, I gotta let them know, we got bad guys coming in
from the seas hit! You got a radio."

"Tried calling, sir, but no answer." The sergeant
turned south down International Highway. At least three missiles had landed
here, judging by the smoke. All around, the small city that had been the Keflavik
air base was a loose collection of smoking fires. A number of people in
uniforms were running around, doing things that Edwards didn't have time to
guess at. Was anybody in charge?

The elementary school had also been hit. The third of the
building still standing was a mass of flame.

"Sergeant, that radio work?"

"Yes, sir, but it ain't tuned into the perimeter
guards."

"Well, fix it!"

"Right." The sergeant dialed into a different
frequency.

The Lebeds halted in two pairs, each a quarter mile from the
perimeter. The bow door on each opened, and out rolled a pair of BMD infantry
assault vehicles, followed by mortar crews who began at once to set up their
weapons. The 73mm guns and missile launchers on the minitanks began to engage
the Marine defensive positions as the reinforced company in each vehicle
advanced slowly and skillfully, using their cover and taking advantage of their
fire support. The assault force had been handpicked from units that had fought
in Afghanistan. Every man had been under fire before. The Lebeds immediately
turned crablike and sped back to sea to pick up yet more infantrymen. Already,
elements of two elite airborne battalions were engaging a single company of
Marines.

The frantic words on the platoon radio nets were all too
clear. The base electrical supply was cut, and along with it the main radios.
The Marine officers were dead, and there was no one to coordinate the defense.
Edwards wondered if anyone really knew what the hell was going on. He decided
that it probably didn't matter.

"Sergeant, we gotta get the hell outa here!"

"You mean run away!"

"I mean get away and report what's happened here. Looks
like we lost this one, Sarge. Somebody's gotta report in so they don't send any
more planes to land here. What's the fastest way to Reykjavik?"

"Dammit, sir, there's Marines out there-"

"You wanna be a Russian prisoner? We lost! I say we
gotta report in and you'll do what I Goddamned tell you, Sergeant, you got
that!"

"Aye aye, sir."

"How we fixed for weapons?"

On his own, a private ran to what was left of the school. A
Marine was lying there facedown, a pool of red spreading from some invisible,
fatal wound. The private came back with the man's M-16, field pack, and ammo
belt, handing the collection to Edwards.

"We all got one now, sir."

"Let's get the hell outa here."

The sergeant threw the jeep into gear. "How we gonna
report in?"

"Let me worry about that, okay?"

"You say so." The sergeant turned the jeep
completely around, back up International, toward the wrecked satellite
antennae.

MV JULIUS FUCIK

"Aircraft sighted, port bow!" a lookout screamed.
Kherov raised his binoculars to his eyes and swore softly. He saw what could
only be missiles dangling from each wing of the multiengined aircraft.

PENGUIN 8

"Well, lookie what we got here," the Orion's pilot
said quietly. "Our old friend, the Doctor Lykes. Combat, Flight, what else
is around?"

"Nothin', Flight, not another surface ship for over a
hundred miles." They had just completed a complete circuit of the horizon,
scanning with their surface-search radar.

"And it's for Goddamned sure those hovercraft didn't
come in off no submarine." The pilot adjusted course to pass within two
miles of the ship, with the sun behind the four-engine patrol aircraft. His
copilot examined the ship through binoculars. Onboard TV cameras operated by
the weapons crew would provide even better close-up pictures. They saw a pair
of helicopters warming up. Someone aboard the Fucik panicked and fired a
hand-held SA-7 missile. It failed to lock onto the Orion and blazed off
directly into the low sun.

MV JULIUS FUCIK

"Idiot!" Kherov growled. The smoke from the rocket
motor didn't even come close to the aircraft. "He'll shoot at us now. All
ahead flank! Helmsman, be alert!"

PENGUIN 8

"Okay," the pilot said, turning away from the
merchantman. "Tacco, we got a target for your Harpoons. Any luck with
Keflavik?"

"Negative, but Sentry One is relaying the data into
Scotland. They say a bunch of missiles hit Keflavik, looks like the place is
closed whether we keep it or not."

The pilot cursed briefly. "Okay. We'll blow this pirate
right out of the water."

"Roge, Flight," the tactical coordinator replied.
"Two minutes before we can launch the-damn! I got a red light on the
portside Harpoon. The sucker won't arm."

"Well, play with the bastard!" the pilot growled.
It didn't work. In the haste to get off the ground, the missile's control
cables had not been fully attached by the weary ground crew.

"Okay, I got one working. Ready!"

"Shoot!"

The missile dropped clear of the wing and fell thirty feet
before its engine ignited. Fucik's weather deck was lined with paratroopers,
many holding hand-launched SAMs and hoping to intercept the incoming ASM.

"Tacco, see if you can raise an F-15. Maybe they can
rip this baby up with twenty-millimeters."

"Doing that already. We got a pair of Eagles coming in,
but they're skosh fuel. One or two passes'll be all they can manage."

Forward, the pilot had binoculars to his eyes, watching the
whitepainted missile skimming the wavetops. "Go, baby, go .

MV JULIUS FUCIK

"Rocket coming in, low on the horizon, portside."
At least we have good lookouts, Kherov thought. He estimated the distance to
the horizon, and gave the missile a speed of a thousand kilometers per hour . .
.

"Right hard rudder!" he screamed. The helmsman
threw the wheel over as far as it would go and held it down.

"You cannot run from a missile, Kherov," the
General said quietly.

"I know this. Watch, my friend."

The black-hulled vessel was turning radically to starboard.
As she did so, the ship 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 ship'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 altitude 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 ship 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
assess the damage.

MV JULIUS FUCIK

"Rudder amidships!" 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 mass. He ran out to the bridge wing to survey
the damage. As the ship 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 ship 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 assist. A hundred of the
paratroopers had been trained over the last ten days in shipboard 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 ship'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 passes, 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
bastards."

"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

Nobody aboard saw them come in. A moment later, the water
around the Fucik's side turned to froth from short-failing 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, passing left and right of the ship,
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 ship'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 ship to port. Go aft. Tell the first
officer to continue landing operations. You, Comrade General, supervise the
fires topside. We must get my ship 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 hell 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 Hafnarfjordur, 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
Washington 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 damned 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 Hafnarfjordur . . . 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 God somebody knows what the hell is
going on .

PENGUIN 8

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

"Yeah, how do think they managed that? Shit, 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 ship. Some fucking officer you are, he told himself.
Penguin 8 carried eighty sonobuoys, 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 principal 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 shitload 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 hell usable. Over."

"How about the ship you shot at?"

"One solid hit, I eyeballed the missile in, and two of
your '15s strafed his ass, but it ain't enough. She'll probably make port. I'd
guess she'll try to come into Reykjavik, maybe Hafnarfjordur, to unload. She's
gotta be carrying a lot of stuff. It's a forty-thousand-ton ship. 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 ship. 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."

HAFNARFJORDUR, ICELAND

Edwards parked the car in the shopping center. There had
been some people outside along the drivein, 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 groundpounder. 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 God!" 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.

"I must get my ship to safe harbor first!"

The Fucik ran almost due north, the westerly wind and sea on
her beam, and water was lapping at the missile wound. His earlier optimism was
fading. Some seams in the lower hull had sprung from the missile impact, and
water was entering the lower cargo deck, though so far the pumps were keeping
up with it. There was twenty thousand tons of cargo to deliver.

"Captain, you must have medical attention,"
Andreyev persisted.

"After we round the point. When we have the damaged
port side alee, then I shall be tended to. Tell your men to stay alert. One
more successful attack could finish us. And tell them they have done well. I
would be happy to sail with them again."

USS PHARRIS

"Sonar contact, possible submarine bearing
three-five-three," the sonarman announced.

And so it begins, Morris said to himself. PHARRIS was at
general quarters for the first leg of the trip away from the U.S. coast. The
frigate's tactical towed-array sonar was trailed out in her wake. They were
twenty miles north of the convoy, a hundred ten miles east of the coast, just
crossing the continental shelf line into truly deep water at the Lindenkohl
Canyon. A perfect place for a submarine to hide.

"Show me what you have," the ASW officer ordered.
Morris kept his peace and just watched his men at work.

The sonarman pointed to the waterfall display. It showed as
a series of small digital blocks, numerous shades of green on a black
background. Six blocks in a row were different from the random background
pattern. Then a seventh. The fact that they were in a vertical row meant that
the noise was being generated at a constant bearing from the ship, just west of
north. Up to now, all they had was a direction to a possible noise source. They
had no way of knowing the distance nor any of deterrmining if it were really a
submarine, a fishing boat with an overly loud motor, or simply a disturbance in
the water. The signal source did not repeat for a minute, then came back. Then
it disappeared again.

Morris and his ASW officer looked at the bathythermograph
reading. Every two hours they dropped an instrument that measured water
temperature as it fell through the water, reporting back by wire until it was
cut loose to fall free to the bottom. The trace showed an uneven line. The
water temperature decreased with depth, but not in a uniform way.

"Could be anything," the ASW officer said quietly.

"Sure could," the captain agreed. He went back to
the sonar scope. It was still there. The trace had remained fairly constant for
nine minutes now.

But what was the range to it? Water was a fine medium for
carrying sound energy, far more efficient at it than air, but it had its own
rules. One hundred feet below the PHARRIS was "the layer," a fairly
abrupt change in water temperature. Like an angled pane of glass, it allowed
some sound to pass through, but reflected most of it. Some of the energy would
be ducted between layers, retaining its intensity for an enormous distance. The
signal source they were listening to could be as close as five miles or as
distant as fifty. As they watched, the scope trace started leaning a bit to the
left, which meant that they were pulling east of it . . . or it was pulling
west of them, as a submarine might slide aft of her target as part of her own
hunting maneuver. Morris went forward to the plotting table.

"If it's a target, it's pretty far off, I think,"
the quartermaster said quietly. It was surprising how quiet people were during
antisubmarine warfare exercises, Morris thought, as though a submarine might
hear their voices.

"Sir," the ASW officer said after a moment.
"With no perceptible change in bearing, the contact has to be a good
fifteen miles off. That means it has to be a fairly noisy source, probably too
far to be an immediate threat. If it's a nuclear sub, we can get a
cross-bearing after a short sprint."

Morris looked to the CIC's after bulkhead. His frigate was
steaming at four knots. He lifted a "growler" phone.

"Bridge, Combat."

"Bridge aye. XO speaking."

"Joe, let's bend on twenty knots for five minutes. See
if we can get a cross-bearing on the target we're working."

"Aye, skipper."

A minute later, Morris could feel the change in his ship's
motion as her steam plant drove the frigate hard through the six-foot seas. He
waited thoughtfully, wishing his ship had one of the more sensitive 2X arrays
being fitted to the Perry-class fast-frigates. It was a predictably long five
minutes, but ASW was a game that demanded patience.

Power was reduced, and as the ship slowed, the pattern on
the sonar screen changed from random flow noise to random ambient noise,
something more easily perceived than described. The captain, his ASW officer,
and the sonar operator watched the screen intently for ten minutes. The
anomalous sound tracing did not reappear. In a peacetime exercise they would
have decided that it was a pure anomaly, water-generated noise that had stopped
as unpredictably as it had started, perhaps a minor eddy that subsided on the
surface. But now everything they detected had a potential red star and a
periscope attached.

My first dilemma, Morris thought. If he investigated by
sending his own helicopter or one of the Orion patrol aircraft, he might be
sending them after nothing at all, and away from a path that could end with a
real contact. If he did nothing, he might not be prosecuting a real contact.
Morris sometimes wondered if captains should be issued coins with YES and NO
stamped on either side, perhaps called a "digital decision generator"
in keeping with the Navy's love for electronic-sounding titles.

"Any reason to think it's real?" he asked the ASW
officer.

"No, sir." The officer wondered by this time if he
had been right to call it to his captain's attention. "Not now."

"Fair enough. It won't be the last one."

19 - Journeys End/Journeys Begin

HAFNARFJORDUR, ICELAND

Sergeant James Smith was a company clerk, which meant that
he carried his commander's maps, Edwards was grateful to learn. He would have
been less happy to learn what Smith thought about what they were doing, and who
was leading this party. A company clerk was also supposed to pack an ax with
him, but since Iceland was almost entirely devoid of trees, his was still in
the company headquarters, probably burned down to a charred axhead by now. They
walked east in silence, their eyes punished by the low sun, past two kilometers
of lava field that gave mute testimony to Iceland's volcanic birth.

They moved fast, without pausing for rest. The sea was at
their back and as long as they could see it, men on the coast might see them.
Each puff of dust raised by their boots made them feel increasingly vulnerable
and Private Garcia, who brought up the rear of their small unit, periodically
turned and walked backward for a few yards to be sure that no one was following
them. The others looked ahead, to the sides, and up. They were sure that Ivan
had thought to bring a helicopter or two along. Few things can make a man feel
as naked as an aircraft filled with eyes.

The ground was almost totally barren. Here and there a few
sprigs of grass fought their way through the rocks to sunlight, but for the
most part the terrain was as barren as the surface of the moon-the Apollo
astronauts had trained somewhere in Iceland for that very reason, Edwards
remembered. The mild surface winds scoured up the slopes they were climbing,
raising small quantities of dust that made the lieutenant sneeze periodically.
He was already wondering what they would do when their rations ran out. This
was no place to try living off the land. He'd been in Iceland only for a few
months, and hadn't had a single chance to tour the countryside. Cross one
bridge at a time, Edwards told himself. People grow their own food everywhere.
There have to be farms around, and you'll be able to find them on the maps.

"Chopper!" Garcia called out.

The private had a great set of eyes, Edwards noted. They
couldn't hear it yet, but there it was on the horizon, coming in from the sea.

"Everybody down. Let me see those glasses, Sergeant."
Edwards held out his hand as he sat. Smith came down next to him, the
binoculars already at his eyes.

"It's a Hip, sir. Troop carrier." He handed the
glasses over.

"I'll take your word for it," Edwards replied. He
could see the ungainly shape, perhaps three miles away, heading southeast
toward Hafnarfjordur. "Looks like it's heading for the piers. Oh. They
came in on a ship. They want to dock it, and they'll want to secure the
waterfront first."

"Makes sense," Sergeant Smith agreed.

Edwards followed the helicopter until it dropped behind some
buildings. Less than a minute later, it was up again, heading back northwest.
He gave the horizon a close look.

"Looks like a ship out there."

MV JULIUS FUCIK

Kherov moved slowly back to the chart table with an Army
medic at his side. His pumps were almost keeping up with the inflow of water.
The Fucik was down half a meter at the bow. Portable fire pumps were being set
near the bilges to draw more seawater out and eject it over the side through
the hole the American missile had made. He smiled wanly to himself. An Army
medic followed him around. The General had practically pulled a gun on the
captain, forcing him to allow the medic to give him a bottle of blood plasma
and some morphine. He was grateful for the latter-his pain was still there, but
not nearly so bad as it had been. The plasma container was a damned nuisance,
with the medic holding it aloft as he moved around the pilothouse. But he knew
he needed it. Kherov wanted to stay alive a few hours longer-and who knows, he
thought, if the regimental surgeon has skill, I might even live . . .

There were more important things at hand. He had studied the
charts of this port, but he had never been here before. He had no pilot. There
would be no harbor tugs, and the tiny barge-tugs carried in his ship's split
stem would be useless for docking.

The helicopter circled his ship after making its first trip.
A miracle that it flew at all, the captain thought, after having the one next
to it shattered by that strafing run. The mechanics had managed to extinguish
that fire rapidly and place a curtain of water fog around the other aircraft.
Some minor repairs had been needed, there were an even dozen holes in the sheet
metal, but there it was, hovering just aft of the superstructure, landing
slowly and awkwardly in the roiled air.

"How are you feeling, my captain?" the General
inquired.

"How do I look?" A brave smile that failed to draw
one in return. The General knew that he should physically carry the man to his
surgeon's emergency medical post, but who then would dock the ship? Captain
Kherov was dying before his eyes. The medic had made that clear enough. There
was internal bleeding. The plasma and bandages couldn't hope to keep up with
it. "Have your men secured their objectives?"

"They report some fighting still at the air base, but
it Will soon be under control. The first team at the main quay reports no one
there. That will be secure, my captain. You should rest a bit."

Kherov shook his head like a drunken man. "That will
come soon enough. Fifteen more kilometers. We race in too fast as it is. The
Americans may yet have some aircraft heading for us. We must get to the dock
and unload your equipment before noon. I have lost too many of my crewmen to
fail."

HAFNARFJORDUR, ICELAND

"We gotta report this," Edwards said quietly. He
shrugged out of his pack and opened it. He'd watched a man test the radio
before, and saw that instructions were printed on the side of the radio set.
The six pieces of the antenna fitted easily into the pistol grip. Next he
plugged in his headset and switched the radio on.

He was supposed to point the flowerlike antenna at a
satellite on the 30* meridian, but he didn't have a compass to tell him where
that was. Smith unfolded a map and selected a landmark in that general
direction. Edwards pointed the antenna at it and waved it slowly across the sky
until he heard the warbling carrier wave of the communications bird.

"Okay." Edwards turned the frequency knob to a
preselected channel and toggled the Transmit switch.

"Anyone on this net, this is Mike Edwards, first
lieutenant, United States Air Force, transmitting from Iceland. Please
acknowledge, over." Nothing happened. Edwards reread the instructions to
make sure he was doing the right thing, and rebroadcast the same message three
more times.

"Sender on this net, please identify. Over." A
voice finally answered.

"Edwards, Michael D., first lieutenant, U.S. Air Force,
serial number 328-61-4030. I'm the meteorological officer attached to the 57th
Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Keflavik. Who is this? Over."

"If you don't know that, pal, you don't belong on this
net. Clear off, we need this for official traffic," the voice answered
coldly. Edwards stared at the radio in mute rage for several seconds before
exploding.

"Listen up, asshole! The guy who knows how to work this
damned radio is dead, and I'm all you got. The base at Keflavik was hit seven
hours ago by a Russian air and ground attack. The place is crawling with bad
guys, there's a Russian ship coming into Hafnarfjordur harbor right now, and
you're playing fucking word games! Let's get it together, mister. Over!"

"Copy that. Stand by. We have to verify who you
are." Not a trace of remorse.

"Dammit, this thing works on batteries. You want me to
run them down while you open a file cabinet?"

A new voice came on the circuit. "Edwards, this is the
senior communications watch officer. Get off the air. They might be able to monitor
you. We'll check you out and be back in three-zero minutes from now. You got
that? Over."

That was more like it. The lieutenant checked his watch.
"Roger, understand. We'll be back in three-zero minutes. Out."
Edwards flipped the power switch off. "Let's get moving. I didn't know
they could track in on this." The good news was that the radio broke down
in under two minutes, and they were moving again.

"Sarge, let's head for this Hill 152. We should be able
to see pretty good from up there, and there's water on the way."

"It's hot water, sir, full of sulfur. Just as soon not
drink that shit, if you know what I mean."

"Suit yourself." Edwards moved off at a slow trot.
Once as a boy he'd had to call in to report a fire. They'd believed him then.
Why not now?

MV JULIUS FUCIK

Kherov knew that he was finishing the work that the
Americans had begun. Driving his ship into the harbor at eighteen knots was
worse than reckless. The sea bottom here was rock, not mud, and a grounding
could easily rip his bottom out. But he feared another air attack even more,
and he was sure that a flight of American fighters was heading this way, laden
with missiles and bombs that would rob him of success in the most important
mission of his life.

"Midships!" he called.

"Rudder amidships," the helmsman acknowledged.

He'd learned minutes before that his first officer was dead,
from wounds sustained in the first strafing attack. His best helmsman had died
screaming before his eyes, along with many of his skilled deck crewmen. He had
only one man qualified to take the shore sightings necessary for a positive
position fix. But the quay was in sight, and he'd depend on a seaman's eye.

"Slow to half speed," he ordered. The helmsman
relayed the order on the engine room telegraph.

"Rudder right full." He watched his ship's head
come slowly right. He stood on the centerline of the bridge, carefully lining
his jackstaff up with the quay. There was no one trained to handle the mooring
lines. He wondered if the soldiers could manage it.

The ship touched bottom. Kherov was thrown from his feet and
cursed loudly with pain and rage. He'd misjudged his approach. The Fucik
shuddered as she slid across the rocky bottom. There was no time to check his
chart. When the tide turned, the harbor's strong eddy currents would make his
landing an impossible nightmare.

"Reverse your rudder." A minute later the ship was
fully afloat again. The captain ignored the flooding alarms that hooted behind
him. The hull was penetrated, or maybe the damaged seams had sprung farther. No
matter. The dock was a mere thousand meters away. It was a massive quay made of
rough stone. "Midships. All stop."

The ship was moving far too fast to stop. The soldiers on
the dock could already see that, and were slowly backing up, away from the
edge, fearing that it would crumble when the ship struck. Kherov grunted with
dark amusement. So much for the line handlers. Eight hundred meters.

"All back full."

Six hundred meters. The ship's whole mass shuddered as the
engines fought to slow her. She headed into the berth at a thirty-degree angle,
her speed now eight knots. Kherov walked to the engine room voice tube.

"On my order, shut down the engines, pull the manual
sprinkler handle, and evacuate the engine spaces."

"What are you doing?" the General asked.

"We cannot moor to the quay," Kherov answered
simply. "Your soldiers don't know how to handle the lines, and many of my
seamen are dead." The berth Kherov had selected was precisely half a meter
shallower than his ship's draft. He went back to the voice tube.

"Now, Comrades!"

Below, the chief engineer gave the orders. His chief
machinist cut off the diesel engines and ran to the escape ladder. The engineer
yanked the emergency handle for the fire-suppression system and followed, after
counting heads to make sure that all his men had gotten out.

"Rudder hard right!"

A minute later the bow of JULIUS FUCIK rammed the quay at a
speed of five knots. Her bow crumpled as though constructed of paper, and the
whole ship pivoted to the right, her side slamming against the rocks in a shower
of orange sparks. The impact ripped the ship's bottom open at the turn of her
starboard bilges. Instantly her lower decks flooded, and the ship settled
rapidly to the bottom, only a few feet below her flat keel. The JULIUS FUCIK
would never sail again. But she had reached her objective.

Kherov waved to the General. "My men will deploy the
two baby tugboats we have in the stem. Tell them to remove two barges and set
them between the stem and the end of the quay. My men will show you how to
secure the barges properly so they don't drift off. Then use your bridging
equipment to take your vehicles off the elevator onto the barges, then from the
barges to the quay."

"We can do this easily. Now, Comrade Captain, you will
see my surgeon. I will brook no further argument." The General waved to
his orderly and both men assisted the captain below. There might still be time.

HILL 152, ICELAND

"You decide who I am yet?" Edwards asked testily.
Another really annoying thing was the quarter-second delay caused by the signal's
travel time to and from the satellite.

"That's affirmative. The problem is, how do we know
it's really you?" The officer had a telex in his hand confirming that one
First Lieutenant Michael D. Edwards, USAF, had indeed been the met officer for
the 57th FIS, information that could easily have been in Russian hands before
the attack.

"Look, turkey, I'm sitting here on Hill 152, east of
Hafnarfjordur, okay? There is a Russian helicopter flying around, and some
godawful big ship just docked in the harbor. It's too far to see a flag, but I
don't figure the son of a bitch came from New York, y'know? The Russians have
invaded this rock. They pounded hell out of Keflavik, and they got troops all
over the place."

"Tell me about the ship."

Edwards locked the binoculars to his eyes. "Black hull,
white superstructure. Big block letters on the side. Can't quite make it out.
Something-Lines. The first word begins with an L. Some kind of barge-carrying
ship. There's a tugboat moving a barge around right now."

"Have you seen any Russian troops?"

Edwards paused before answering. "No. I've just heard
radio reports of the Marines at Keflavik. They were being overrun. They've been
off the air ever since. I can see some people on the dock, but I can't tell
what they are."

"Okay, we'll be checking that out. For the moment I'd
suggest that you find a good, safe place to belly-up, and stay off the air. If
we have to contact you, we'll broadcast on the hour, every even hour. If you
want to talk to us, we'll be here. Understood?"

"Roger, copy. Out." Edwards switched off. "I
don't believe this."

"Nobody knows what the hell's going on,
Lieutenant," Smith observed. "Why should they? We sure as hell
don't."

"Ain't that the truth!" Edwards repacked his
radio. "If those idiots would listen to me, we could have some
fighter-bombers here to blast that ship inside two hours. God, but she's a big
one. How much equipment can you Marines load in something that big?"

"A lot," Smith said quietly.

"You think they'll be trying to land more troops?"

"It figures, sir. They couldn't have hit Keflavik with
all that many-figure a battalion, tops. This here's a pretty big rock. I'd sure
as hell want more troops to hold it than that. Course, I'm just a buck
sergeant."

HAFNARFJORDUR, ICELAND

The General could finally get to work. The first order of
business was to board the single working helicopter, now operating off the
dock, its pilots delighted to see the ship sunk alongside the quay. He left a
rifle company to secure the harbor area, sent another to Reykjavik airport to
reinforce that, and detailed his last to get the division's equipment moving
off the ship. Then he flew to Keflavik to survey the situation.

Most of the fires were still burning, he saw. The aircraft
fuel dump nearest the base was ablaze, but the main storage tanks five
kilometers away seemed intact, and, he could see, were already guarded by a BMD
assault vehicle and some men. The assault regiment commander met him on one of
the undamaged runways.

"Keflavik air base is secure, Comrade General!" he
proclaimed.

"How did it go?"

"Hard. The Americans were uncoordinated-one of the
missiles hit their command post-but they did not give up easily. We have
nineteen dead and forty-three wounded. We have accounted for most of the
Marines and other security troops, and we are still counting the other
prisoners."

"How many armed troops escaped?"

"None that we know of. Too early to tell, of course,
but some undoubtedly died in the fires." The colonel waved at the smashed
base area to the east. "How is the ship? I heard he took a missile
hit."

"And we were strafed by American fighters. He's tied to
the dock, and the equipment is being unloaded now. Can we use this airfield?
I-"

"Getting that report now." The colonel's radio
operator handed his radiophone over. The colonel spoke for a minute or so. A
five-man party of Air Force personnel had accompanied the second wave and was
evaluating the base facilities.

"Comrade General, the base radar and radio systems are
destroyed.

The runways are littered with debris, and they tell me that
they need some hours to sweep them clear. Also the fuel pipeline is broken in
two places. Fortunately it did not bum. For the moment we'll have to use the
airport's trucks to transfer fuel. All of them seem to be intact . . . they
recommend that the airlift come into Reykjavik. Have we secured that?"

"Yes, and it is intact. Any hope of getting information
from the American aircraft?"

"Unfortunately not, Comrade. The aircraft were badly
damaged from incoming missiles. Those that did not bum of their own accord were
burned by their crews. As I said, they fought hard."

"Very well. I'll send the remainder of your two
battalions with your equipment as soon as we can get things organized. I'll
need the third at the dock for the moment. Set up your perimeter. Start the
cleanup, we need this airfield operational as soon as possible. Get the
prisoners together and ready to move. We'll be flying them out tonight. They
are to be treated correctly." His orders on that score were very precise.
Prisoners are assets.

"As you say, Comrade General. And please get me some
engineers so that we can repair that fuel pipe."

"Well done, Nikolay Gennadyevich!"

The General ran back to his helicopter. Only nineteen dead.
He'd expected a higher number than that. Taking out the Marine command center
had been a real stroke of luck. By the time his Hip returned to the dock, the
equipment was already rolling off. The ship's barges had been fitted with
loading doors in their hulls, like miniature landing craft, which allowed
vehicles to roll straight out. The units already were being organized on the
dock and nearby lots. His staff officers were fully in charge of things, the
General saw. To this point, Operation Polar Glory was a total success.

When the Hip landed, it refueled from a line draped down
from the ship's side. The General went to his operations officer.

"Reykjavik airport is secure also, Comrade General, and
there we have complete fueling facilities. Is that where you want the airlift
to come in?"

The General thought about that one. Reykjavik's airport was
a small one, but he didn't want to wait until the larger Keflavik was clear to
bring in his reinforcements. "Yes. Send the code word to headquarters: I
want the airlift to begin at once."

HILL 152, ICELAND

"Tanks." Garcia had the binoculars. "A bunch
of 'em and they all got red stars. Heading west on Route 4 1. This oughta
convince 'em, sir."

Edwards took the field glasses. He could see the tanks, but
not the stars. "What kind are they? They don't look like real tanks."

It was now Smith's turn. "That's BMPs-maybe BMDs. It's
an infantry assault vehicle, like an amtrak. Holds a squad of men and a
73-millimeter gun. They're Russian, that's for sure, Lieutenant. I count eleven
of the bastards, and maybe twenty trucks with men in 'em.''

Edwards broke out his radio again. Garcia was right. This
did get their attention.

"Okay, Edwards, who do you have with you?"

Edwards rattled off the names of his Marines. "We
bugged out before the Russians got into the base."

"Where are you now?"

"Hill 152, four kilometers due east of Hafnarfjordur.
We can see all the way into the harbor. There are Russian vehicles heading west
towards Keflavik, and some trucks-we can't tell what kind-heading northeast
towards Reykjavik on Highway 41. Look, guys, if you can whistle up a couple of
Aardvarks, maybe we can kill that ship before she unloads," the lieutenant
said urgently.

"I'm afraid the Varks are a little busy right now,
fella. In case nobody told you, there's a shooting war in Germany. World War
III kicked off ten hours ago. We're trying to get a recon bird up your way, but
it might take awhile. Nobody's decided what to do about you either. For right
now, you're on your own."

"No shit," Edwards replied, looking at his men.

"Okay, Edwards. Use your head, avoid contact with the
enemy. If I read this right, you're the only friendly we have there right now.
It figures they'll want you to keep the reports coming in. Observe and report.
Conserve the battery power you have. Play it nice and cool, guy. Help will be
coming, but it might take awhile. Just hang in there. You can listen for us on
the hour, on even hours. You got a good watch?" In the meantime, the
communications officer thought, we'll try to figure a way to find out if you're
really who you say, and that you haven't got a Russian pistol at your head.

"Roger, it's set to Zulu time. We'll be listening.
Out."

"More tanks," Smith said. "Jeez, that ship
sure is a busy place!"

HAFNARFJORDUR, ICELAND

The General would not have believed how well things were
going. When he had seen the Harpoon coming, he was sure that his mission would
be a failure. Already a third of his vehicles had rolled off the ship and were
en route to their destinations. Next, he wanted the rest of his division flown
in. After that came more helicopters. For the present, all around him were a
hundred thousand Icelanders whose friendship he did not expect. A few hardy
souls were watching him from the opposite side of the harbor, and he'd already
sent a squad of men to get rid of them. How many people were making telephone
calls? Was the telephone-satellite relay base still intact? Might they be
calling the United States to tell what was happening in Iceland? So many things
to worry about.

"General, the airlift is under way. The first aircraft
took off ten minutes ago with a fighter escort. They should begin to arrive in
four hours," his communications officer reported.

"Four hours." The General looked up from the
ship's bridge into a clear blue sky. How long before the Americans reacted and
threw a squadron of fighter-bombers at him? He pointed to his operations
officer.

"We have too many vehicles sitting on the quay. As soon
as a platoon-sized grouping is together, move them off to their objectives.
There is no time to wait for company groups. What about Reykjavik
airport?"

"We have one company of infantrymen in place, with
another twenty minutes away. No opposition. The civilian air controllers and
the airport maintenance people are all under guard. A patrol going through
Reykjavik reports little activity on the streets. Our embassy personnel report
that a government radio broadcast told people to remain in their homes, and for
the most part they seem to be doing this."

"Tell the patrol to seize the main telephone exchange.
Leave the radio and television stations alone, but get the telephone
exchange!" He turned as a squad of paratroopers arrived at the crowd on
the far side of the harbor. He estimated perhaps thirty people there. The eight
soldiers approached quickly after dismounting from their truck, rifles at the
ready. One man walked up to the soldiers, waving his arms wildly. He was shot
down. The rest of the crowd ran.

The General shouted a curse. "Find out who did
that!"

USS CHICAGO

McCafferty returned to the attack center after a brief visit
to his private head. Coffee would always keep you awake, he thought, either
through the caffeine or the discomfort of an always-full bladder. Things were
already not going well. Whatever genius had decided to order the American
submarines out of the Barents Sea in the hope of avoiding an
"incident" had neatly gotten them out of the way. Just in time for
the war to start, the captain grumbled, forgetting that the idea hadn't seemed
all that bad at the time.

Had they stuck to the plan, he might already have put a dent
in the Soviet Navy. Instead, someone had panicked over the new Soviet missile
sub dispositions, and so far as he could tell, the result was that no one had
accomplished much of anything. The Soviet subs that had come storming out of
the Kola Fjord had not come south into the Norwegian Sea as expected. His
long-range sonar reported possible submarine noises far to his north, heading
west before fading out. So, he thought, Ivan's sending his boats down the
Denmark Strait? The SOSUS line between Iceland and Greenland could make that
idea a costly one.

USS CHICAGO was steaming at five hundred feet just north of
the 69' parallel, about a hundred miles west of Norway's rocky coastline. The
Norwegians' collection of diesel boats was inside of him, guarding their own
coast. McCafferty understood that, but didn't like it.

So far nothing had gone right, and McCafferty was worried.
That was expected, and he could suppress it. He could fall back on his
training. He knew what his submarine could do, and had a pretty good idea of
what the Russian subs were capable of. He had the superior capabilities, but
some Russian could always get lucky. This was war. A different sort of
environment, not one judged by umpires and rule books. Mistakes now were not a
matter of a written critique from his squadron commander. And so far luck
seemed to be on the other side.

He looked around at his men. They had to be thinking the
same thoughts, he was sure, but they all depended on him. The crewmen of his
submarine were essentially the physical extensions of his own mind. He was the
central control for the entire corporate entity known as USS CHICAGO, and for
the first time the awesome responsibility struck him. If he messed up, all
these men would die. And he, too, would die-with the knowledge that he had
failed them.

You can't think like this, the captain told himself. It will
eat you up. Better to have a combat situation where I can limit my thinking to
the immediate. He checked the clock. Good.

"Take her up to periscope depth," he ordered.
"It's time to check for orders, and we'll try an ESM sweep to see what's
happening."

Not a simple procedure, that. The submarine came up slowly,
cautiously, turning to allow her sonar to make certain that there was not a
ship around.

"Raise the ESM."

An electronics technician pressed the button to raise the
mast for his broad-band receiver. The board lit up instantly.

"Numerous electronic sources, sir. Three J-band search
sets, lots of other stuff. Lots of VHF and UHF chatter. The recorders are
going."

That figures, McCafferty thought. The odds against having
anyone here after us are pretty low, though. "Up scope."

The captain angled the search-scope lens upward to scan the
sky for a nearby aircraft and made a quick turn around the horizon. He noticed
something odd, and had to angle down the lens to see what it was.

There was a green smoke marker not two hundred yards away.
McCafferty cringed and spun the instrument back around. A multiengine aircraft
was coming out of the haze-directly in at them.

The captain reached up and spun the periscope wheel,
lowering the instrument. "Take her down! All ahead flank! Make your depth
eight hundred feet!" Where the hell did he come from?

The submarine's engines fairly exploded into action. A
flurry of orders had the helmsmen push their controls to the stops.

"Torpedo in the water, starboard side!'' a sonarman
screamed.

McCafferty reacted at once. "Left full rudder!"

"Left full rudder, aye!" The speed log was at ten
knots and rising quickly. They passed below one hundred feet.

"Torpedo bearing one-seven-five relative. It's pinging.
Doesn't have us yet."

"Fire off a noisemaker."

Seventy feet aft of the control room, a five-inch canister
was ejected from a launcher. It immediately started making all kinds of noise
for the torpedo to home in on.

"Noisemaker away!"

"Right fifteen degrees rudder." McCafferty was
calmer now. He'd played this game before. "Come to new course one-one-zero.
Sonar, I want true bearings on that torpedo."

"Aye. Torpedo bearing two-zero-six, coming
port-to-starboard."

Chicago passed through two hundred feet. The boat had a
twenty-degree down angle. The planesmen and most of the technicians had seatbelts
to hold them in place. The officers and a few others who had to circulate
around grasped at rails and stanchions to keep from falling.

"Conn, Sonar. The torpedo seems to be following a
circular path. Now traveling starboard-to-port, bearing one-seven-five. Still
pinging, but I don't think it has us."

"Very well. Keep those reports coming." McCafferty
climbed aft to the plot. "Looks like he made a bad drop."

"Could be," the navigator agreed. "But how in
hell-"

"Had to be a MAD pass. The magnetic anomaly detector.
Was the tape running? I didn't have him long enough for an ID." He checked
the plot. They were now a mile and a half from where they'd been when the
torpedo was dropped. "Sonar, tell me about the fish."

"Bearing one-nine-zero, dead aft. Still circling, seems
to be going down a little. I think maybe the noisemaker drew him in and he's
trying to hit it."

"All ahead two-thirds." Time to slow down,
McCafferty thought. They'd cleared the initial datum point, and the aircraft's
crew would need a few minutes to evaluate their attack before beginning a new
search. In that time they'd be two or three miles away, below the layer, and
making little noise.

"All ahead two-thirds, aye. Leveling off at eight
hundred feet."

"We can start breathing again, people," McCafferty
said. His own voice was not as even as he would have preferred. For the first
time, he noted a few shaky hands. Just like a car wreck, he thought. You only
shake after you're safe. "Left fifteen degrees rudder. Come left to
two-eight-zero." If the aircraft dropped again, no sense in traveling in a
straight path. But they should be fairly safe now. The whole episode, he noted,
had lasted less than ten minutes.

The captain walked to the forward bulkhead and rewound the
videotape, then set it up to run. It showed the periscope breaking the surface,
the first quick search . . . then the smoke marker. Next came the aircraft.
McCafferty froze the frame.

The plane looked like a Lockheed P-3 Orion.

"That's one of ours!" the duty electrician noted.
The captain stepped forward into sonar.

"The fish is fading aft, Cap'n. Probably still trying
to kill the noisemaker. I think when it hit the water it circled in the wrong
direction, away from us, I mean."

"What's it sound like?"

"A lot like one of our Mark-46s"-the leading
sonarman shuddered-it really did sound like a forty-six!" He rewound his
own tape and set it on speaker. The screeeing sound of the twin-screw fish was
enough to raise the hairs on your neck. McCafferty nodded and went back aft.

"Okay, that might have been a Norwegian P-3. Then again
it might have been a Russian May. They look pretty much alike, and they have
exactly the same job. Well done, people. We're going to clear the area."
The captain congratulated himself on his performance. He'd just evaded his
first war shot-dropped by a friendly aircraft! But he had evaded it. Not all
the luck was with the other side. Or was it?

USS PHARRIS

Morris was catnapping in his bridge chair, wondering what
was missing from his life. It took a few seconds to realize that he wasn't
doing any paperwork, his normal afternoon pastime. He had to transmit position
reports every four hours, contact reports when he had any-he hadn't yet -but
the routine paper-shuffling that ate up so much of his time was a thing of the
past. A pity, he thought, that it took a war to relieve one of that! He could
almost imagine himself starting to enjoy it.

The convoy was still twenty miles to his southeast. Pharris
was the outlying sonar picket. Her mission was to detect, localize, and engage
any submarine trying to close the convoy. To do that, the frigate was
alternately dashing-"sprinting"-forward at maximum speed, then
drifting briefly at slower speed to allow her sonar to work with maximum
efficiency. Had the convoy proceeded at twenty knots on a straight course, it
would have been nearly impossible. The three columns of merchantmen were
zigzagging, however, making life a little easier on all concerned. Except on
the merchant sailors, for whom station-keeping was as foreign as marching.

Morris sipped at a Coke. It was a warm afternoon and he
preferred his caffeine cold.

"Signal coming in from Talbot, sir," the junior
officer of the deck reported.

Morris rose and walked to the starboard bridge wing with his
binoculars. He prided himself on being able to read Morse almost as quickly as
his signalmen: REPORT ICELAND ATTACKED AND NEUTRALIZED BY SOVIET FORCES X
EXPECT MORE SERIOUS AIR AND SUB THREAT X.

"More good news, skipper," the OOD commented.

"Yeah."

USS NIMITZ

"How did they do it?" Chip wondered aloud.

"How don't matter a damn," Toland replied.
"We gotta get this to the boss." He made a quick phone call and left
for flag country.

He almost got lost. Nimitz had over two thousand
compartments. The Admiral lived in only one of them, and Toland had only been
there once. He found a Marine sentry at the door. The carrier's commander,
Captain Svenson, was already there.

"Sir, we have a Flash message that the Soviets have
attacked and neutralized Iceland. They may have troops there."

"Do they have aircraft there?" Svenson asked at
once.

"We don't know. They're trying to get a recon bird to
take a look, probably the Brits, but we won't have any hard information for at
least six hours. The last friendly satellite pass was two hours ago, and we
won't have another one of those for nine hours."

"Okay, tell me what you have," the Admiral
ordered.

Toland went over the sketchy data that had come in the
dispatch from Norfolk. "From what we know, it was a pretty off-the-wall
plan, but it seems to have worked."

"Nobody ever said Ivan was dumb," Svenson
commented sourly. "What about our orders?"

"Nothing yet."

"How many troops on Iceland?" the Admiral asked.

"No word on that, sir. The P-3 crew watched two relays
of four hovercraft. At a hundred men per load, that's eight hundred men, at
least a battalion. probably more like a regiment. The ship is large enough to
carry the equipment load for a full brigade and then some. It's in one of
Gorshkov's books that this sort of ship is uniquely useful for landing
operations."

"That's too much for a MAU to take on, sir,"
Svenson said. A Marine Amphibious Unit consisted of a reinforced battalion of
troops.

"With three carriers backing them up?" Admiral
Baker snorted, then adopted a more thoughtful pose. "You could be right at
that. What does this do to the air threat to us?"

"Iceland had a squadron of F-15s and a couple AWACS
birds. That's a lot of protection for us-gone. We've lost raid warning,
attrition, and raid-tracking capabilities." Svenson didn't like this at
all. "We should be able to handle their Backfires ourselves, but it would
have been a lot easier with those Eagles running interference."

Baker sipped at his coffee. "Our orders haven't
changed."

"What else is going on in the world?" Svenson
asked.

"Norway is being hit hard, but no details yet. Same
story in Germany. The Air Force is supposed to have gotten a heavy hit in on
the Soviets, again no details. It's still too early for any substantive intel
assessments of what's happening."

"If Ivan was able to suppress the Norwegians and fully
neutralize Iceland, the air threat against this battle group has at least
doubled," Svenson said. "I have to get talking with my air group."

The captain left. Admiral Baker was silent for several
minutes. Toland had to stay put. He hadn't been dismissed yet. "They just
hit Keflavik?"

"Yes, sir."

"Find out what else is there and get back to me."

"Yes, sir." As Toland walked back to the intelligence
shack, he pondered what he'd told his wife: The carrier is the best-protected
ship in the fleet. But the captain was worried.

HILL 152, ICELAND

They were almost thinking of it as home. The position was at
least easily defensible. No one could approach Hill 152 without being seen, and
that meant crossing a lava field, then climbing up a steep, bare slope. Garcia
found a small lake a kilometer away, evidently filled with water from the
winter snows that had only lately melted. Sergeant Smith observed that it would
have made a good mixer for bourbon, if they had any bourbon.

They were hungry, but all had four days of rations along,
and they feasted on such delicacies as canned lima beans and ham. Edwards
learned a new and indelicate name for this item.

"Anybody here know how to cook a sheep?" Rodgers
asked. Several miles south of them was a large herd of the animals.

"Cook with what?" Edwards asked.

"Oh." Rodgers looked around. There wasn't a tree
in sight. "How come there ain't no trees?"

"Rodgers only been here a month," Smith explained.
"Prive, you ain't never seen a windy day till you been here in the winter.
The only way a tree can grow here is if you set her in concrete. I seen wind
strong enough to blow a deuce-and-a-half right off the road."

"Airplanes." Garcia had the binoculars. He pointed
northeast. "Lots."

Edwards took the field glasses. They were just dots, but
they grew rapidly into shapes. "I count six, big ones, look like C-141s .
. . that makes them IL-76s, I think. Maybe some fighters, too. Sergeant, get a
pad and a pencil-we have to do a count."

It lasted for hours. The fighters landed first, rolling off
to the refueling area at once, then taxiing to one of the shorter runways. One
aircraft came in every three minutes, and Edwards couldn't help be impressed.
The IL-76, code-named the Candid by the NATO countries, was an awkward,
ungainly design, like its American counterpart. The pilots landed, stopped, and
rolled their aircraft onto the taxiway off the main north-south runway as
though they had practiced for months-as Edwards rather suspected they had. They
unloaded at the airport terminal building, then rolled to the refueling area and
took off, coordinating neatly with the landing aircraft. Those lifting off came
very close to their hill, close enough that Edwards was able to copy down a few
fail numbers. When the count reached fifty, he set up his radio.

"This is Edwards transmitting from Hill 152. Do you
copy, over."

"Roger, copy," the voice came back at once.
"From now on, your code name is Beagle. We are Doghouse. Continue your
report."

"Roger, Doghouse. We have a Soviet airlift in progress.
We have counted fifty-five-zero-Soviet transport aircraft, India-Lima-Seven-Six
type. They are coming into Reykjavik, unloading, and rolling back out to the
northeast."

"Beagle, are you sure, repeat are you sure of your
count."

"That is affirmative, Doghouse. The takeoff run brings
them right over our heads, and we got a paper record. No shit, mister,
five-zero aircraft" -Smith held up his pad-"make that five-three
aircraft, and the operation is continuing. We also have six single-seat
aircraft sitting at the end of runway four. I can't make out the type, but they
sure as hell look like fighters. You copy that, Doghouse?"

"I copy five-three transports and six possible
fighters. Okay, Beagle, we gotta get this information upstairs fast. Sit tight
and we'll keep to the regular transmission schedule. Is your position
safe?"

That's a good question, Edwards thought. "I hear you,
Doghouse We're staying put. Out." He took off the headset. "We safe,
Sergeant?"

"Sure, Lieutenant, I haven't felt this safe since
Beirut."

HAFNARFJORDUR, ICELAND

"A beautiful operation, Comrade General." The
Ambassador beamed.

"Your support was most valuable," the General lied
through his teeth. The Soviet embassy to Iceland had over sixty members, almost
all intelligence types of one sort or another. Instead of doing something useful,
like seizing the telephone exchange, on donning their uniforms they had been
rounding up local political figures. Most of the members of Iceland's ancient
Parliament, the Althing, had been arrested. Necessary, the General agreed, but
too roughly done, with one of them killed in the process and two more shot.
Better to be gentle with them, he thought. This was not Afghanistan. The
Icelanders had no warrior tradition, and a gentler approach might have shown
better returns. But that aspect of the operation was under KGB control, its
control team already in place with the embassy personnel. "With your
permission, there is much yet to be done."

The General went back up the jacob's ladder onto the Fucik-
Problem had developed in off-loading the division's missile battalion. The
barges that contained that equipment had been damaged by the missile strike The
newly installed landing doors had jammed solid and had to be torched free. He
shrugged. Up to now, Polar Glory had been a near textbook operation. Not bad for
a scratch crew. Most of his rolling equipment-two hundred armored vehicles and
many trucks-had already been mated with their troops and dispersed. The SA-11
battalion was all that remained. "

Bad news, Comrade General," the SAM commander reported.

"Must I wait for it?" the General asked testily.
It had been a very long day.

"We have three usable rockets."

"Three?"

"Both these barges were ruptured when the American
missile hit us. The shock damage accounted for several. The main damage came
from the water used to fight the fire."

"Those are mobile missiles," the General objected.
"Surely the designers anticipated that they might get wet!"

"Not with saltwater, Comrade. This is the army version,
not the naval, and it is not protected against saltwater corrosion. The men who
fought the fire did so with great gusto, and most of the rockets were soaked.
The exposed control wiring and the radar seeker beads on the missile noses were
badly damaged. My men have run electronic tests of all the rockets. Three are
fully functional. Four more we can probably clean off and repair. The rest are
ruined. We have to fly more in."

The General controlled his temper. So, a small thing that no
one had thought of. Aboard ship, fires are fought with saltwater. They should
have asked for the naval variant of this rocket. It was always the small
things.

"Divide your launchers as planned. Place all the usable
missiles at the Reykjavik airport, and the ones you think you can fix at
Keflavik. I'll order the replacement rockets to be flown in. Is there other
damage?"

"Apparently not. The radar antennae were covered with
plastic, and the instruments inside the vehicles were safe because the vehicles
themselves were sealed. If we get new rockets, my battalion is fully ready.
We'll be ready to travel in twenty minutes. Sorry, Comrade."

"Not your fault. You know where you are to go?"

"Two of my battery commanders have already checked the
routes."

"Excellent. Carry on, Comrade Colonel." The
General climbed back up the ladder to the bridge to look for his communications
officer. Within two hours a plane loaded with forty SA-11 surface-to-air
missiles was rolling off Murmansk's Kilpyavr airfield bound for Iceland.

20 - The Dance of the Vampires

USS NIMITZ

Toland had been a busy fellow for the past twelve hours. The
data on Iceland came in slowly, one confusing piece at a time, and even now he
didn't have enough to call a clear picture. The group's orders had been
changed, though only after too many hours of indecision. The mission to
reinforce Iceland was a washout. For the past ten hours the battle group had
been heading due east toward friendly air cover from England and France.
Someone had decided that if the Marines could not go to Iceland, then they
might find useful employment in Germany. Bob had expected them to be diverted
to Norway, where a Marine Amphibious Brigade was already in place, but getting
them there could prove difficult. A furious air battle had been raging over
northern Norway for almost twenty hours, with losses heavy on both sides. The
Norwegians had started the war with scarcely a hundred modem fighters. They
were screaming for help, but there was no help for anyone as yet.

"They're not just chewing the Norwegians up,"
Toland observed. "They're driving them south. Most of the attacks are on
the northern bases, and they're not giving them any breather at all."

Chip nodded. "That figures. Gives their Backfires a
straighter shot at us. Briefing time."

"Yeah." Toland packed up his notes and walked
again toward flag country. It was easier this time.

"Okay, Commander," Admiral Baker said. "Start
with the peripheries."

"Nothing much seems to be happening in the Pacific as
yet. The Soviets are evidently putting a lot of diplomatic pressure on Japan.
The same story they've given the rest of the world-it's all a German
plot."

"Horseshit," Baker observed.

"True enough, Admiral, but it's a plausible enough
story that Greece is refusing to honor its treaty commitments, and a lot of
neutral and third-world countries are buying it. Anyway, the Russians are
making noises about giving the Sakhalin Islands back if they play ball-or
pounding hell out of them if they don't. Bottom line: Japan is not allowing any
bases on its soil to be used for offensive strikes against the Soviet Union.
What we have in Korea is needed there. The only carrier group we have in the
Western Pacific is centered on Midway. They're well out to sea at present, and
they don't have the moxie to go after Kamchatka alone. There's some air
activity in the South China Sea west of the Philippines, but nothing major yet.
Cam Ranh Bay appears to be empty of Soviet shipping. So the Pacific is quiet,
but that won't last long.

"In the Indian Ocean, somebody launched a missile
attack against Diego Garcia, probably a submarine. Not much damage-just about
everything there was sent out to sea five days ago-but it got their attention.
At last report, their 10 squadron was at fifteen-north, ninety-east, a long way
from our guys, and heading south.

"No activity at all on NATO's southern flank. The Turks
aren't about to attack Russia on their own hook, and Greece is staying out of
what they call 'this German-Russian dispute.' So Ivan has a secure southern
flank, too, and so far it looks like he's happy enough to keep it that way. So
far the Russians are only fighting in Western Europe and against selected
American installations elsewhere. They are telling anyone who'll listen that
they don't even want to fight us. They've even guaranteed the safety of
American tourists and businessmen in the Soviet Union. Supposedly, they're
flying them all out through India. We've underestimated the political dimension
here, sir. So far it's working for them.

"Okay. In Europe their operations began with from
twenty to thirty Spetznaz commando attacks throughout Germany. For the most
part they were defeated, but they scored big in two places. The port of Hamburg
has been blocked. A pair of merchantmen was scuttled in the main channel, and
the team that pulled it off got away clean. The same thing was attempted in
Bremen-they blocked one channel partially and burned three ships at one of the
container terminals. This team didn't get away. The other attacks were against
nuclear weapons storage sites, communications posts, and one big one against a
tank site. Our guys were ready for it. We took losses, but those Spetznaz
troops got chewed up in most cases.

"The Soviet Army attacked west just before dawn
yesterday. The good news here is that the Air Force pulled something really
wild. That new Stealth fighter we've been hearing rumblings about is in
squadron service, and it was used to raise a lot of hell behind Russian lines.
The Air Force says they've got air superiority, or something close to it, so
Ivan must have taken a big hit. Whatever they did, the initial Russian attack
was not as powerful as expected. They're moving forward, but as of midnight
nothing more than fifteen kilometers, and in two places they got stopped cold.
So far no word on nukes or chemical weapons. Losses are reported heavy on both
sides, especially up in northern Germany, where they moved the farthest.
Hamburg is threatened. The Kiel Canal may have been hit with an airborne or airmobile
attack, we're not sure, but part is under Russian control. That situation is a
little confused. A lot of activity on the Baltic, too. The fast attack boats of
the German and Danish navies claim to have beaten up hard on a combined Soviet
and East German attack, but again things are pretty confused."

Toland went on to describe the situation in Norway.

"The direct threats against us are from submarines and
aircraft. Ivan's subs have been pretty busy. We have reports of twenty-two
merchant ships sunk. The worst was Ocean Star, a Panamanian-flag passenger
liner coming back from a Med cruise. Eight hundred miles northwest of Gibraltar
she took a missile hit, type unknown, but probably from a Juliet. She burned,
lots of casualties. Two Spanish frigates are moving in for the
search-and-rescue.

"We have three submarines reported close to our course
track, an Echo, a Tango, and a Foxtrot. There could be more, but intelligence
reports have most of them south and west of us. When Iceland got neutralized,
we lost the G-I-UK SOSUS line, and that will allow Ivan's subs an easier access
to the North Atlantic. SACLANT is dispatching subs to block the gaps. They'll
have to hustle; we have reports of numerous Soviet submarines heading for the
Denmark Strait."

"How many subs have we taken out?" Svenson asked.

''Lajes and Brunswick claim four kills. The P-3s got off to
a good start. The bad news here is that one Orion is missing, and another
reported being shot at by a sub-launched missile. This is being evaluated now,
and we expect something firm by noon. In any case, the main threat to us now
appears to be from aircraft, not subs. That could change by tomorrow,
though."

"One day at a time. Get to Iceland," Baker
ordered.

"The reports we had yesterday were correct. Evidently a
regimental-sized unit came in by sea, and the rest of its division was
airlifted in, starting around 1400 hours. We have to assume they're all in by
now."

"Fighters?" Svenson asked.

"None reported, but it's possible. Iceland has four
usable airfields--"

"Wrong, Toland, it's three," Baker said harshly.

"Beg pardon, sir, four. The big base is Keflavik. Five
runways, two of them over ten thousand feet long. We built the place to stage
B-52s out of, and it's quite a facility. Ivan got it virtually intact. His
attack was planned deliberately not to crater the runways. Second, they have
the civilian airfield at Reykjavik. The longest runway there is about two
thousand meters, plenty big enough for fighters, and it's got a city wrapped
around it. Hitting that place means running the risk of civilian casualties. On
the north side of the island is Akureyri, one hard-surface strip. The fourth
one, Admiral, is old Keflavik, about two miles southeast of the current NATO
air base. It shows on the maps as unusable, but I ran into a guy who put in two
years on Iceland. That strip is usable, certainly for rough-surface-capable
aircraft like our C- 130. The base personnel use it for racing their go-carts
and sports cars. He thinks you could use fighters out of there, too. Finally,
every city on that island has a gravel strip for their domestic airline. The
AUG-23 and several other Russian fighters have a rough-field capability, and
could use any one of those."

"You're full of good news," observed Nimitz's
commander, air group, known as the CAG. "What about the other base
facilities, like fuel?"

"The fuel depot right on the base was destroyed in the
attack, but the base tank-farm was not, and neither was the new terminal at Hakotstanger.
Unless somebody takes it out, we've left the Russians enough jet fuel to
operate for months."

"How solid is all this?" Baker wanted to know.

"We have an eyeball report from a Navy P-3 crew who
surveyed the damage immediately after the attack. The RAF sent two recce birds
for a look-see. The first one got good shots of Keflavik and the surrounding
area. The second didn't make it back, reason unknown."

"SAMs." The CAG really looked unhappy now.

Toland nodded. "A good bet. The photos show vehicles
consistent with the presence of a reinforced Soviet Air Rifle division.
Icelandic radio and TV are off the air. The Brits report contact with ham radio
operators on the Icelandic coast, but nothing at all is coming out of the
southwest corner of the island. That's where most of the people are, and it
looks to be completely under Soviet control. We're getting some intel
information, but it can't last."

"What you're telling us is that we can't expect raid
warning from the Norwegians, and we've lost our picket fence at Iceland. What
other assets do we have?" Svenson asked.

"Evidently something. I've been told to expect possible
raid warning from an asset code-named Realtime. If a large force of Soviet
aircraft leaves Kola, we ought to know about it."

"What's Realtime?" the CAG asked.

"They didn't tell me that."

"Submarine." Baker smiled thinly. "Jesus
protect him when he transmits. Well, Ivan sent his bombers against Iceland
yesterday. Anybody wonder where they'll be coming today?"

"In case anyone wants it, my official intelligence
estimate is, right here," Toland said.

"Always nice to have a professional opinion," the
CAG observed acidly. "We ought to head north and pound on those
Russians"-by training and experience the CAG was an attack pilot-"but
we can't do that until we deal with the Backfires. What is the strength of the
threat to us?"

"I'm assuming no assistance from the Air Force units.
With Soviet Naval Aviation alone we have six regiments of strike aircraft,
three each of Backfires and Badgers. One regiment of Badger jammers. One
regiment of Bear reconnaissance birds. Add some tanker assets to that.
Twenty-seven aircraft to the regiment. That's about a hundred sixty strike
aircraft, each of which can carry two or three air-to-surface missiles."

"Those Badgers will have to stretch to get here. The
round trip must be a good four thousand miles, even if they cut across Norway.
Those are tired old birds," CAG said. "What about their
satellites?"

Toland checked his watch. "There will be a RORSAT pass
over us in fifty-two minutes. They got us twelve hours ago, too."

"I hope the Air Force gets its act together with their
ASAT pretty soon," Svenson said quietly. "If Ivan can real-time that
satellite intelligence, they don't need those damned Bears. They can figure our
course easily enough, and it's only a four-hour cruise down here for
them."

"Try a course change as it passes overhead?" CAG
wondered.

"Not much point in it," Baker replied. "We've
been heading east for ten hours. They can't miss that, and we can only do
twenty knots. We can give them a plus-minus of eighty miles. How long does it
take to fly that?"

Toland noted that Svenson and the CAG didn't like that
decision, but neither disputed the point. He'd been told that Baker wasn't a
man to argue with, and wondered if that was a good trait in a combat commander.

HILL 152, ICELAND

Edwards took some solace in having predicted the cold
front's arrival properly. The rain had come exactly on time, just after
midnight. If there was anything to make the worst situation worse still, it was
a steady cold rain. The showers were intermittent now, a ceiling of gray clouds
two thousand feet over their heads, blown along by thirty-knot winds toward
Iceland's mountainous center.

"Where are the fighters?" Edwards asked. He swept
Reykjavik airport with his binoculars, but couldn't find the six fighters he'd
reported on the previous evening. All the transports were gone also. He saw one
Soviet helicopter and some tanks. There was very little traffic on the streets
and roads he could see. Certainly not much for a Monday morning. Surely the
commercial fishermen would be driving to their boats? "Anybody see them
lift out?"

"No, sir. Weather we had last night, the whole Russian
Air Force could have come in and left." Sergeant Smith was annoyed too,
mainly with the weather. "Could be in those hangars, maybe."

About 2300 the previous night, they'd observed a streak of
light like that of a rocket taking off, but whatever it had been aimed at had
been lost in a rain shower. Edwards had not reported that, halfway wondering if
it might have been lightning.

"What's that? That's no tank. Garcia, check it out-five
hundred yards west of the terminal." The lieutenant handed the glasses
over.

"Okay. That's some kinda tracked vehicle. Looks like it
has some sort of-not a gun, there's three of them. Rocket launcher,
maybe."

"SAMs," the sergeant commented. "How much you
wanna bet that's what we saw shot off last night?"

"E.T., phone home." Edwards started putting his
radio together.

"How many launchers and what type?" Doghouse
asked.

"We see one launcher, possibly three missiles on it. We
can't tell the type. I wouldn't know the difference anyway. They might have
fired off a missile last night about 2300 local."

"Why the hell didn't you tell us?" Doghouse
demanded.

"'Cause I didn't know what it was!'' Edwards nearly
yelled. "Goddammit! We're reporting on everything we see, and you don't
even believe half of what we tell you!"

"Settle down, Beagle. We believe you. I know it's hard.
Anything else happening?"

"He knows it's hard," Edwards told his men.
"Can't see much activity at all, Doghouse. Stiff early, but we'd expect
civilian traffic on the streets."

"Copy that. Okay now, Edwards, real fast, what's your
father's middle name?"

"Doesn't have one," Edwards said.
"What-"

"The name of his boat?"

"The Annie Jay. What the hell is this?"

"What happened to your girlfriend Sandy?"

It was like a knife in the guts. The tone of his voice
answered for him. "You go and fuck yourself 1"

"Copy that," the voice replied. "Sorry,
Lieutenant, but you had to pass that test. We have no further orders for you
yet. Tell you the truth, nobody's decided what to do about you. Stay cool and
avoid contact. Same transmission schedule. If you get tagged and they try to
make you play radio games, start off every transmission with our call sign and
say that everything is going great. Got that? Going great."

"Roger. If you hear me say that, you know something's
wrong. Out."

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

The major commanding the Air Force detachment was enjoying
himself despite having been up for over thirty hours. Keflavik was a
magnificent base, and the paratroopers had captured it nearly intact. Most
importantly, the Americans had thoughtfully stored their maintenance equipment
in protective shelters dispersed throughout the base, and all of it had
survived. As he watched from the smashed control tower, a half-dozen sweeper
trucks were brushing the last fragments from runway nine. In thirty minutes it would
be safe to use. Eight fuel bowsers sat filled and ready on the field, and by
the end of the day the pipeline should be repaired. Then this would be a fully
functional Soviet air base.

"How long before our fighters arrive?"

"Thirty minutes, Comrade Major."

"Get the radar operating."

The Soviets had packed most of the equipment for a forward
air base in one of the Fucik's barges. A mobile long-range radar was now
operating just west of the main runway intersection, plus a van from which
ground controllers could direct radar intercepts of incoming targets. Three
truck-vans of spare parts and air-to-air missiles were on the base, and three
hundred maintenance personnel had been flown in the previous day. A full
battery of SA-11 missiles guarded the runways, plus eight mobile antiaircraft
guns and a platoon of infantrymen armed with handheld SAMs for low-flying
raiders. The only hangup had been with the SAMs, and the replacements flown in
a few hours ago had already been loaded on the launcher vehicles. Any NATO
aircraft that came waltzing into Iceland was in for a rude surprise, as a Royal
Air Force Jaguar had discovered the night before, shot out of the sky over
Reykjavik before its pilot could react.

"Runway nine is cleared for operation," the radio
operator reported. "Excellent! Now get them working on one-eight. I want
every strip operational by this afternoon."

HILL 152, ICELAND

"What's that?" Edwards saw it first for a change.
The wide silver wings of a Badger bomber skirted in and out of the lower cloud
layer. Then something else. It was smaller, and it disappeared back into the
clouds.

"Was that a fighter?"

"I didn't see anything, sir." Garcia had been
looking in the wrong direction. The sound passed overhead, the distinctive
whine of turbojets on a low throttle setting.

The lieutenant was becoming a master at getting his radio in
operation. "Doghouse, this is Beagle, and things are rotten. Do you
copy?"

"Roger, Beagle. What do you have for us?"

"We have aircraft flying overhead, westbound, probably
for Keflavik. Stand by."

"I can hear 'em, but I don't see nothin'." Garcia
handed the glasses over.

"I saw one twin-engine aircraft, probably a bomber, and
one other aircraft, a lot smaller, like a fighter. We have aircraft sounds
overhead, but we got solid clouds at about two thousand feet. No more visual
sightings."

"You say heading towards Keflavik?"

"That's affirm. The bomber appeared to be westbound and
descending."

"Any chance you can walk back to Keflavik to see what's
happening there?"

Edwards didn't speak for a second. Couldn't the bastard read
a map? That meant walking thirty miles over bare ground.

"Negative. Say again, negative, no chance. Over."

"Understood, Beagle. Sorry about that. I had orders to
ask. Get back to us when you have a better count. You're doing good, guys. Hang
in there. Out."

"They asked if we wanted to walk over to
Keflavik," Edwards announced as he took off his headset. "I said
no."

"Real good, sir," Smith observed. At least Air
Force officers weren't total idiots.

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

The first MiG-29 Fulcrum landed at Keflavik a minute later.
It taxied behind a base jeep and stopped close to the tower. The major in
command of the base was there to meet it.

"Welcome to Keflavik!"

"Excellent. Find me a lavatory," the colonel
replied.

The major motioned him to his own jeep-the Americans had
left seventy jeeps behind, plus over three hundred private automobiles-and
drove toward the tower. The American radios had been destroyed, but the
plumbing was made of sterner stuff.

"How many?"

"Six," the colonel answered. "A Goddamned
Norwegian F-16 jumped us off Hammerfest and got one before we knew he was
there. Another aborted with engine trouble, and a third had to land at
Akureyri. Do we have men there?"

"Not yet. We have only one helicopter. More should be
coming in today." They pulled to the door. "Inside, second door on
the right."

"Thank you, Comrade Major!" The colonel was back
in three minutes. "The unglamorous side of flying fighter aircraft.
Somehow we never warn our cadets about this."

"Here, coffee. The previous occupants were most kind to
us." The major unscrewed an American thermos. The colonel took the cup,
savoring the flavor as though it were fine brandy while he watched his fighters
land. "We have your missiles all ready for you, and we can refuel every
aircraft from our trucks. How soon can you fly again?"

"I'd prefer that my men get at least two hours to rest
and eat. And I want those aircraft dispersed after they're fueled. Have you
been hit yet?"

"Only two reconnaissance aircraft, and we killed one.
If we're lucky-"

"Luck is for fools. The American will hit us today. I
would."

USS NIMITZ

"We have a new intel source on Iceland, code name
Beagle," Toland reported. They were in the carrier's Combat Information
Center now. "He counted over eighty transport flights into Reykjavik last
night, at least six fighters with them. That's enough airlift capacity for a
whole airborne division and then some. Doghouse in Scotland says that they have
an unconfirmed report of Soviet fighters landing now."

"Have to be a long-range one. Foxhound, maybe a
Fulcrum," CAG said. "If they have them to spare. Well, we weren't
planning to visit the place just yet. We might have a problem with them trying
raid-escort, though."

"Any word on E-3 support from the U.K." Baker
asked Svenson.

"Looks like none."

"Toland, when do you expect our friends to
arrive?"

"The RORSAT passes overhead in twenty minutes. They'll
probably want that data before they take off. They could take off at any time
after that, Admiral. If the Backfires tank up partway down and proceed at max
power, two hours. That's worst case. More likely four to five hours."

"CAG?"

The air group commander looked tense. "Each carrier has
a Hummer radar bird up, a pair of F-14 Tomcats with each. Two more Tomcats on
the catapults, ready to go at five minutes' notice, another Hummer and a
tanker. The rest of the fighters are at plus-fifteen on the roof, loaded and
fueled. The flight crews are briefed. One Prowler over the formation, the rest
ready to go at fifteen. The A-7s have buddy stores rigged. We're ready. Foch
has her Crusaders at plus-fifteen. Good birds, but short legs. When the time
comes we'll use them for overhead coverage."

KIROVSK, R.S.F.S.R.

The Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite, called a RORSAT,
passed over the formation at 0310. Its radar transmitter noted the formation
and its cameras tracked in on their wakes. Five minutes later, the data was in
Moscow. Fifteen minutes after that, flight crews were given their final brief
at four military air bases grouped around the city of Kirovsk on the Kola
Peninsula. The crews were quiet, no less tense than their American targets.
Both sides mulled over the same thoughts. This was the exercise both sides had
practiced for over fifteen years. Millions of hours of planning, studies and
simulations were about to be put to the test.

The Badgers lifted off first, pushed by their twin Mikulin
engines. Each takeoff was an effort. The bombers were so heavily loaded that
the tower controllers reached out with their minds to wish every aircraft into
the still morning air. Once off the ground they headed north, forming up into
loose regimental formations just north of Murmansk before heading west and
skirting past the North Cape, before their slow left turns took them toward the
North Atlantic.

Twenty miles off the North Russian coast, USS Narwhal
hovered beneath the surface of a slate-gray sea. The quietest submarine in the
U.S. fleet, she was a specialized intelligence-gathering platform that spent
more time on the Soviet coast than did some ships in the Russian Navy Her three
thin ESM antennae were raised, as was a million-dollar search periscope.
Technicians aboard listened in on low-power radio conversations between
aircraft as they formed up. Three uniformed intelligence specialists and a
civilian from the National Security Agency evaluated the strength of the raid
and decided that it was large enough to risk a warning broadcast. An additional
mast was raised and aimed at a communications satellite twenty-four thousand
miles away. The burst transmission lasted less than a fifteenth of a second.

USS NIMITZ

The message was automatically relayed to four separate
communications stations, and within thirty seconds was at SACLANT headquarters.
Five minutes after that, Toland had the yellow message form in his hand. He
walked immediately to Admiral Baker, and handed the message over: 0418Z
REALTIME SENDS WARNING AIR RAID TAKE OFF 0400 HEADING WEST FROM KOLA ESTIMATE
FIVE REGIMENT PLUS.

Baker checked his watch. "Fast work. CAG?"

The air group commander looked at the form and walked to a
phone. "Shoot off the plus-fives, recall the patrol aircraft when they get
to station, and set up two more Tomcats and a Hummer on plus-five. I want the
returning aircraft turned around immediately. Reserve one catapult for
tankers." He came back. "With your permission, sir, I propose to put
another pair of F-14s and another Hummer up in an hour, and put all the
fighters on plus-five. At 0600, the rest of the fighters go up, with tankers in
support. We'll meet them with everything we have about two hundred miles out
and kick their ass."

"Very well. Comments?"

Svenson looked pensively at the master plot. Circles were
already being drawn for the farthest possible advance of the Soviet bombers.

"The Brits get the same warning?"

"Yes, sir," Toland answered. "Norwegians, too.
With luck, one or the other might make contact with the raid and nibble at it
some, maybe put a trailer with them."

"Nice idea, but don't count on it. If I was running the
attack, I'd come way west and turn south right over Iceland." Svenson
looked back at the plot. "You think Realtime would have broadcast a
warning for BearDs?"

"My information, sir, is that they are allowed to
broadcast only for three regiments or more. Ten or twenty Bears wouldn't be
enough. They might not even notice."

"So right now we probably have a herd of Bears out
there, not emitting anything, just flying around listening for our radar
signals."

Toland nodded agreement. The battle group was a circle of
ships with a radius of thirty miles, the carriers and troop ships in the center
surrounded by nine missile-armed escorts and six more specialized antisubmarine
ships. None of the ships had a radar transmitter working. Instead they got all
their electronic information from the two circling E-2C air surveillance aircraft,
known colloquially as Hummers, whose radars swept a circle over four hundred
miles across.

The drama being played out was more complex than the most
intricate game. More than a dozen variable factors could interact, with their
permutations running into the thousands. Radar detection range depended on
altitude and consequent distance to the horizon that neither eyes nor radar can
see past. An aircraft could avoid, or at least delay, detection by skimming the
waves. But this carried severe penalties in fuel consumption and range.

They bad to locate the battle group without being detected
by it first. The Russians knew where the carrier group was, but it would move
in the four hours required for the bombers to get there. Their missiles needed
precise information if they were to home in on the raid's primary target, the
two American and one French carrier, or the mission was a wasted effort.

Putting the group's fighters on station to intercept the
incoming raid depended on expert prognostication of its direction and speed.
Their job: to locate and engage the bombers before they could find the
carriers.

For both sides, the fundamental choice was whether or not to
radiate, to use their radar transmitters. Either choice carried benefits and
dangers, and there was no "best" solution to the problem. Nearly
every American ship carried powerful air-search radars that could locate the
raid two hundred or more miles away. But those radar signals could be detected
at an even greater range, generating a return signal, that would potentially
allow the Soviets to circle the formation, pinpoint it, then converge in from
all points of the compass.

The game was hide and seek, played over a million square
miles of ocean. The losers died.

NORTH ATLANTIC

The Soviet Bear-D reconnaissance bombers were passing south
of Iceland. There were ten of them, covering a front of a thousand miles. The
monstrous propeller-driven aircraft were packed full of electronics gear and
crewed by men with years of training and experience in locating the American
carrier groups. At the nose, tail, and wingtips, sensitive antennae were
already reaching out, searching for the signals from American radar
transmitters. They would close on those signals, chart them with great care,
but remain forever outside the estimated detection radius. Their greatest fear
was that the Americans would use no radar at all, or that they would switch
their sets on and off at random intervals and locations, which posed the danger
of the Bears' blundering directly into armed ships and aircraft. The Bear had
twenty hours of endurance, but the penalty for it was virtually no combat
capability. It was too slow to run from an interceptor, and had no ability to
fight one. "We have located the enemy battle force," the crews' bitter
joke ran: "Dosvidania, Rodinia!" But they were a proud group of
professionals. The attack bombers depended on them-as did their country.

Eight hundred miles north of Iceland, the Badgers altered
their course to one-eight-zero, due south at five hundred knots. They had
avoided the still-dangerous Norwegians, and it was not thought that the British
would reach this far out. These air crews kept a nervous watch out their
windows nevertheless, their own electronic sensors fully operative and under
constant scrutiny. An attack by tactical fighters against Iceland was expected
at any time, and the bomber crews knew that any NATO fighter pilot worthy of
his name would instantly jettison his bombload for a chance at air-to-air
combat with so helpless a target as a twenty-year-old Badger. They had reached
the end of their useful lives. Cracks were developing in the wings. The turbine
blades in their jet engines were worn, reducing performance and fuel
efficiency.

Two hundred miles behind them, the Backfire bombers were finishing
their refueling operations. The Tu-22Ms had been accompanied by tankers, and,
after topping off their tanks, they headed south, slightly west of the Badgers'
course track. With an AS-6 Kingfish missile hanging under each wing, the
Backfires, too, were potentially vulnerable, but the Backfire had the ability
to run at high Mach numbers and stood a fair chance at survival, even in the
face of determined fighter opposition. Their crews were the elite of Soviet
Naval Aviation, well-paid and pampered by Soviet society, their commanders had
reminded them at the regimental briefings. Now it was time to deliver.

All three groups of aircraft came south at optimum cruise
speed, their flight crews monitoring fuel consumption, engine heat, and many
other gauges for the long over-water flight.

USS NIMITZ

Toland stepped outside for a breath of air. It was a fine
morning, the cottonball clouds overhead turning briefly pink from the sunrise.
Saratoga and Foch were visible on the horizon, perhaps eight miles away, their
size impressive even at this distance. Closer in, Ticonderoga was cutting
through the five-foot seas, white-painted missiles visible on her twin
launchers. A few blinker lights traded signals. Otherwise the ships in view
were gray shapes without noise, waiting. Nimitz's deck was covered with
aircraft. F-14 Tomcat interceptors sat everywhere. Two were hooked up on the
midships catapults, only a hundred feet from him, their two-man flight crews
dozing. The fighters carried Phoenix long-range missiles. The attack bombers
carried buddy-store tanks instead of weapons. They'd be used to refuel the
fighters in flight, enabling them to remain aloft an extra two hours. Deck
crewmen in multicolored shirts scurried about, checking and rechecking the
aircraft. The carrier began turning to port, coming around into the westerly
wind in preparation for launching aircraft. He checked his watch. 0558. Time to
get back to CIC. The carrier would go to general quarters in two minutes. The
intelligence watch officer took one more breath of fresh sea air and wondered
if it would be his last.

NORTH ATLANTIC

"Contact!" the technician said over the Bear's
interphone. "Signals indicate an American airborne radar transmitter,
carrier type."

"Give me a bearing!" the pilot commanded.

"Patience, Comrade Major." The technician made an
adjustment on his board. His radio-interferometers timed the signals as they
arrived at antennae arrayed all over the aircraft. "Southeast. Bearing to
signal is one-three-one. Signal strength one. He is quite distant. Bearing is
not changing as yet. I recommend we maintain a constant course for the
present."

The pilot and copilot exchanged a look, but no words.
Somewhere off to their left was an American E-2C Hawkeye radar aircraft. A
flight crew of two-a radar intercept officer and two radar operators. It could
manage the air battle for over a hundred enemy aircraft, could vector a
missile-armed interceptor in at them within seconds of detection. The pilot
wondered just how accurate his information was on the Hawkeye's radar. What if
they had already detected his Bear? He knew the answer to that. His first
warning would come when he detected the fire-control radar of an American F-14
Tomcat heading right at him. The Bear held course one-eight-zero while the plotting
officer tracked the change in bearing to the radar signal. In ten minutes they
might just have an accurate fix. If they lived that long. They would not break
radio silence until they had a fix.

"I have it," the plotting officer reported.
"Estimate distance to contact is six hundred fifty kilometers, position
forty-seven degrees, nine minutes north, thirty-four degrees, fifty minutes
west."

"Get it out," the pilot ordered. A directional HF
antenna in the aircraft's tail fin turned within its housing and radioed the
information to the raid commander, whose Bear command aircraft was a hundred
miles behind the snoopers.

The raid commander compared this datum with that from the
reconnaissance satellite. Now he had two pieces of information. The Americans'
position three hours ago was sixty miles south of the estimated plot for the
Hawkeye. The Americans probably had two of them up, northeast and northwest of
the formation. That was normal fleet doctrine. So, the carrier group was right
about . . . here. The Badgers were heading right for it. They would encounter
the American radar coverage in . . . two hours. Good, he said to himself.
Everything is going according to plan.

USS NIMITZ

Toland watched the aircraft plot in silence. The radar
picture from the Hawkeyes was being transmitted to the carrier by digital radio
link, enabling the battle group commander to follow everything. The same data
went to the group air defense boss on Ticonderoga and every other ship fitted
with the Naval Tactical Data System. That included the French ships, which had
long since been equipped to operate closely with the U.S. Navy. So far there
was nothing to be seen except the tracks of American military and commercial
aircraft ferrying men and supplies across the ocean, and dependents back to the
States. These were beginning to swing south. Warned that an air battle was
possible, the pilots of DC-10s and C-5As were prudently keeping out of the way,
even if it meant having to land and refuel on the way to their destinations.

The group's forty-eight Tomcat interceptors were now mostly
on station, spread in a line three hundred miles across. Each pair of Tomcats
had a tanker aircraft in attendance. The attack birds, Corsairs and Intruders,
carried oversized fuel tanks with refueling drogues attached, and one by one
the Tomcats were already beginning to top off their fuel tanks from them. Soon
the Corsairs began returning to their carriers for refills. They could keep
this up for hours. The aircraft remaining on the carriers were spotted on the
decks for immediate takeoff. If a raid came in, they would be shot off the
catapults at once to eliminate the fire hazard inherent in any type of
aircraft.

Toland had seen all this before, but could not fail to be
amazed by it. Everything was going as smoothly as a ballet. The aircraft
loitered at their stations, tracing lazy, fuel-efficient circles in the sky.
The carriers were racing east now at thirty knots to make up the distance lost
during launch operations. The Marines' landing ships Saipan, Ponce, and Newport
could make only about twenty knots, and were essentially defenseless. East of
the group, carrier S-3A Viking and land-based P-3C Orion antisubmarine aircraft
were patrolling for Soviet submarines. They reported to the group ASW commander
on the destroyer Caron. There was as yet nothing for anyone to direct his
frustration against. The old story known to all fighting men. You wait.

NORTH ATLANTIC

The raid commander was rapidly accumulating data. He now had
positions on four American Hawkeyes. The first two had barely been plotted when
the second pair had showed up, outside and south of the first. The Americans
had unwittingly given him a very accurate picture of where the battle group
was, and the steady eastward drift of the Hawkeyes gave him course and speed.
His Bears were now in a wide semicircle around the Americans, and the Badgers
were thirty minutes north of American radar cover, four hundred miles north of
the estimated location of the ships.

"Send to Group A: 'Enemy formation at grid coordinates
456/810, speed twenty, course one-zero-zero. Execute Attack Plan A at 0615 Zulu
time.' Send the same to Group B. Tactical control of Group B switches to Team
East Coordinator." The battle had begun.

The Badger crews exchanged looks of relief. They had
detected the American radar signals fifteen minutes before, and knew that each
kilometer south meant a greater chance that they would run into a cloud of
enemy fighters. Aboard each aircraft the navigator and bombardier worked
quickly to feed strike information into the Kelt missiles slung under each
wing.

Eight hundred miles to their southwest, the Backfire crews
advanced their throttles slightly, plotting a course to the datum point
supplied by the raid commander. Having circled far around the American
formation, they would now be controlled by the strike officer aboard the first
Bear to make electronic contact with the Hawkeyes. They had a solid fix on the
NATO formation, but they needed better if they were to locate and engage the
carriers. These crews were not relieved, but excited. Now came the challenging
part. The battle plan had been formulated a year before and practiced-over land
exclusively-five times. Four times it had worked.

Aboard eighty Badger bombers, pilots checked their watches,
counting off the seconds to 0615 Zulu.

"Launch!"

The lead Badger launched eight seconds early. First one,
then the second, aircraft-shaped Kelt dropped free of its pylon, falling
several hundred feet before their turbojet engines ran up to full power.
Running on autopilot, the Kelts climbed back to thirty thousand feet and
cruised on south at six hundred knots indicated air speed. The bomber crews
watched their birds proceed for a minute or two, then each of the bombers
turned slowly and gracefully for home, their mission done. Six Badger-J
stand-off jamming aircraft continued south. They would stay sixty kilometers
behind the Kelts. Their crews were nervous but confident. It would not be easy
for American radar to bum through their powerful jammers, and in any case, the
Americans would soon have many targets to concern them.

The Kelts continued on, straight and level. They carried
their own electronic equipment, which would be triggered automatically by
sensors in their tail fins. When they entered the theoretical arc of the
Hawkeyes' radar range, transponders in their noses clicked on.

USS NIMITZ

"Radar contacts! Designate Raid-1, bearing
three-four-niner, range four-six-zero miles. Numerous contacts, count
one-four-zero contacts, course one-seven-five, speed six hundred knots."

The master tactical scope plotted the contacts
electronically, and a pair of plexiglass plates showed another visual display.

"So, here they come," Baker said quietly.
"Right on time. Comments?"

"I-" Toland didn't get a chance.

The computer display went white.

"Clipper Base, this is Hawk-Three. We're getting some
jamming," reported the senior airborne control officer. "We plot six,
possibly seven jammers, bearing three-four-zero to zero-three-zero. Pretty
powerful stuff. Estimate we have stand-off jammers, but no escort jammers.
Contacts are lost for the present. Estimate burn-through in ten minutes.
Request weapons free, and release to vector intercepts."

Baker looked over to his air operations officer. "Let's
get things started."

Air/Ops nodded and picked up a microphone. "Hawk-Three,
this is Clipper Base. Weapons free. I say again, weapons are free. Release
authority is granted. Splash me some bombers. Out."

Svenson frowned at the display. "Admiral, we're coming
about to clear decks. Recommend the formation stays together now." He got
a nod. "Clipper Fleet, this is Clipper Base, come left to two-seven-zero.
Launch all remaining aircraft. Execute."

On the single command, the formation made a
hundred-eighty-degree left turn. Those ships that did not as yet have missiles
on their launchers rectified this. Fire-control radars were trained north, but
kept in standby mode. Thirty different captains waited for the word to
activate.

NORTH ATLANTIC

She was pissed off. Sure, she thought, I'm good enough to
fly. I'm good enough to be an instructor pilot for the Eagle. Engineering test
pilot, assistant project officer for the ASAT program-I'm good enough to get an
invite to Houston, even-but will they let me fly combat? No, there's a war
going on and I'm nothing but a Goddamned ferry pilot!

"Shit." Her name was Amy Nakamura. She was a
major, United States Air Force, with three thousand hours of jet time, two-thirds
of it in F-15s. Short and stocky like many fighter pilots, only her father had
ever called her beautiful. He also called her Bunny. When her fellow pilots
found that one out, they shortened it to Buns. She and three men were ferrying
four brand-new Eagle fighters to Germany where others-men!-would get to use
them properly. They each carried fast-pack conformal fuel tanks to make the
trip in one long hop, and for self-defense a single Sidewinder missile, plus
their usual load of 20mm cannon shells. The Russians let women fly combat in
World War II! she thought. A couple even made ace!

"Hey, Buns, check your three o'clock!" called her
wingman.

Nakamura had phenomenal eyesight, but she could scarcely
believe it. "Tell me what you see, Butch."

"Badgers ... ?"

"Fuckin' Tu-16 Badgers-tallyho! Where's the Navy
supposed to be?"

"Close. Try and raise 'em, Buns!"

"Navy task force, Navy task force, this is Air Force
ferry flight Golf-Four-Niner. We are eastbound with four Foxtrot-One-Fives. We
have a visual on a Russian bomber formation position-shit, do you read,
over?"

"Who the hell is that?" a Hawkeye crewman asked
aloud.

The communications technician answered,
"Golf-Four-Niner, we need authentication. November Four Whiskey."
This could be a Russian playing radio games

Major Nakamura swore to herself as she ran her finger down
the list of communication codes. There! "Alpha Six Hotel."

"Golf-Four-Niner, this is Navy Hawk-One, say your
position. Warning, we are calling in the clans on those Badgers. You'd better
get clear, acknowledge."

"Like hell, Navy, I got visual on three-plus Badgers
northbound, position forty-nine north, thirty-three east."

"Northbound?" the intercept officer said.
"Golf, this is Hawk-One. Confirm your visual. Say again your visual."

"Hawk-One, this is Golf, I now have a dozen Badger, say
again Tango-Uniform-One-Six bombers visual, south of my position, heading
towards me and closing fast. We are engaging. Out."

"Nothing on radar, boss," the radar operator said.
"That's way the hell north of here."

"Then what the hell is he talking about?"

Major Amelia "Buns" Nakamura reached down without
looking to toggle up her missile and head-up display to tactical. Then she
flipped the switch for her air-intercept radar. Her IFF system interrogated the
target as a possible friendly and came up blank. That was enough.

"Frank, take your element east. Butch, follow me.
Everybody watch your fuel states. Charge!"

The Badger pilots were a little too relaxed, now that the
most dangerous part of their mission was behind them. They didn't spot the four
American fighters until they were less than a mile away, their robin's-egg-blue
paint blending them in perfectly with the clear morning sky.

Buns selected her cannon for the first pass and triggered
two hundred rounds into the cockpit of a Badger. The twin-engine bomber went
instantly out of control and rolled over like a dead whale. One. The major
howled with delight, pulled the Eagle up into a five-g loop, then over to dive
on the next target. The Soviets were alerted now, and the second Badger
attempted to dive away. It had not the slightest chance. Nakamura fired her
Sidewinder from a range of less than a mile and watched the missile trace all
the way into the Badger's left-side engine, and blast the wing right off the
airplane. Two. Another Badger was three miles ahead. Patience, she told
herself. You have a big speed advantage. She nearly forgot that the Russian
bomber had tail guns. A Soviet sergeant reminded her of it, missing, but
scaring the hell out of her. The Eagle jerked in a six-g turn to the left and
closed on a parallel course before turning in. The next burst from her cannon
exploded the Badger in midair, and she had to dive to avoid the wreckage. The
engagement lasted all of ninety seconds, and she was wringing wet with
perspiration.

"Butch, where are you?"

"I got one! Buns, I got one!" The Eagle pulled up
alongside.

Nakamura looked around. Suddenly the sky was clear. Where
had they all gone?

"Navy Hawk-One, this is Golf, do you read, over?"

"Roger, Golf."

"Okay, Navy. We just smoked four, repeat four, Badgers
for you."

'Make that five, Buns!" the other element leader called
in.

"Something's wrong, sir." The radar operator on
Hawk-One motioned to his scope. "We have these buggers just popped through,
and they say they bagged some, gotta be three, four hundred miles away."

"Clipper Base, this is Hawk-One, we just had contact
with an Air Force ferry flight eastbound. They claim they just splashed five
Badgers northbound several hundred miles north of us. Say again
northbound."

Toland's eyebrows went up.

"Probably some had to abort," Baker observed.
"This is close to their fuel limit, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir," replied Air/Ops. He didn't look happy
with his own answer.

"Burn-through," announced the radar operator.
"We have reacquired the targets."

The Kelts had flown on, oblivious to the furor around them.
Their radar transponders made them look like hundred-ten-foot Badgers. Their
own white-noise jammers came on, somewhat obscuring them yet again on the radar
scopes, and autopilot controls began to jerk them up, down, left, right, in
hundred-meter leaps as an aircraft might do when trying to avoid a missile. The
Kelts had been real missiles once, but on retirement from front-line service
six years earlier, their warheads had been replaced with additional fuel
tankage, and they had been relegated to a role as target drones, a purpose they
were serving admirably now.

"Tallyho!" The first squadron of twelve Tomcats
was now a hundred fifty miles away. The Kelts showed up perfectly on radar, and
the intercept officers in the back seat of each fighter quickly established
target tracks. The Kelts were approaching what would have been nominal
missile-launch distance-if they were the bombers everyone thought they were.

The Tomcats launched a volley of million-dollar AIM-54C
Phoenix missiles at a range of a hundred forty miles. The missiles blazed in on
their targets at Mach-5, directed by the fighters' targeting radars. In under a
minute the forty-eight missiles had killed thirty-nine targets. The first
squadron broke clear as the second came into launch position.

USS NIMITZ

"Admiral, something is wrong here," Toland said
quietly.

"What might that be?" Baker liked the way things
were going. Enemy bomber tracks were being wiped off his screen just as the war
games had predicted they would.

"The Russians are coming in dumb, sir."

"So?"

"So this far the Soviets have not been very dumb!
Admiral, why aren't the Backfires going supersonic? Why one attack group? Why
one direction?"

"Fuel constraints," Baker answered. "The
Badgers are at the limit of their fuel, they have to come in direct."

"But not the Backfires!"

"The course is right, the raid count is right."
Baker shook his head and concentrated on the tactical plot.

The second squadron of fighters had just launched. Unable to
get a head-on shot, their missile accuracy suffered somewhat. They killed
thirty-four targets with forty-eight missiles. There had been a hundred
fifty-seven targets plotted.

The third and fourth Tomcat squadrons arrived together and
launched as a group. When their Phoenixes had been fully expended, nineteen
targets were left. The two fighter squadrons moved in to engage the remaining
targets with their cannon.

"Clipper Base, this is SAM Boss. We're going to have
some leakers. Recommend we start lighting up SAM radars."

"Roger, SAM Boss. Permission granted," answered
the group tactical warfare coordinator.

NORTH ATLANTIC

"I have air-search radars, bearing zero-three-seven,"
the Bear ESM officer noted. "They have detected us. Recommend we
illuminate also." The Bear lit off its Big Bulge look-down radar.

USS NIMITZ

"New radar contact. Designate Raid-2-"

"What?" snapped Baker. Next came a call from the
fighters.

"Clipper Base, this is Slugger Lead. I have a visual on
my target." The squadron commander was trying to examine the target on his
long-range TV camera. When he spoke, the anguish in his voice was manifest.
"Warning, warning, this is not a Badger. We've been shooting at Kelt
missiles!"

"Raid-2 is seventy-three aircraft, bearing
two-one-seven, range one-three-zero miles. We have a Big Bulge radar tracking
the formation," said the CIC talker.

Toland cringed as the new contacts were plotted.
"Admiral, we've been had."

The group tactical warfare officer was pale as he toggled
his microphone. "Air Warning Red. Weapons free! Threat axis is
two-one-seven. All ships turn as necessary to unmask batteries."

The Tomcats had all been drawn off, leaving the formation
practically naked. The only armed fighters over the formation were Foch's eight
Crusaders, long since retired from the American inventory. On a terse command
from their carrier, they went to afterburner and rocketed southwest toward the
Backfires. Too late.

The Bear already had a clear picture of the American
formations. The Russians could not determine ship type, but they could tell
large from small, and identify the missile cruiser Ticonderoga by her
distinctive radar emissions. The carriers would be close to her. The Bear
relayed the information to her consorts. A minute later, the seventy Backfire
bombers launched their hundred forty AS-6 Kingfish missiles and turned north at
full military power. The Kingfish was nothing like the Kelt. Powered by a
liquid-fuel rocket engine, it accelerated to nine hundred knots and began its
descent, its radar-homing head tracking on a preprogrammed target area ten
miles wide. Every ship in the center of the formation had several missiles
assigned.

"Vampire, Vampire!" the CIC talker said aboard
Ticonderoga. "We have numerous incoming missiles. Weapons free."

The group antiair warfare officer ordered the cruiser's
Aegis weapons system into full automatic mode. Tico had been built with this
exact situation in mind. Her powerful radar/computer system immediately
identified the incoming missiles as hostile and assigned each a priority of
destruction. The computer was completely on its own, free to fire on its
electronic will at anything diagnosed as a threat. Numbers, symbols, and
vectors paraded across the master tactical display. The fore and aft twin
missile launchers trained out at the first targets and awaited the orders to
fire. Aegis was state-of-the-art, the best SAM system yet devised, but it had
one major weakness: Tico carried only ninety-six SM2 surface-to-air missiles;
there were one hundred forty incoming Kingfish. The computer had not been
programmed to think about that.

Aboard Nimitz, Toland could feel the carrier heeling into a
radical turn, her engines advanced to flank speed, driving the massive warship
at over thirty-five knots. Her nuclear-powered escorts, Virginia and
California, were also tracking the Kingfish, their own missiles trained out on
their launchers.

The Kingfish were at eight thousand feet, one hundred miles
out, covering a mile every four seconds. Each had now selected a target,
choosing the largest within their fields of view. Nimitz was the nearest large
ship, with her missile-ship escorts to her north.

Tico launched her first quartet of missiles as the targets
reached a range of ninety-nine miles. The rockets exploded into the air,
leaving a trail of pale gray smoke. They had barely cleared the launch rails
when the mounts went vertical and swiveled to receive their reloads. The
load-and-fire time was under eight seconds. The cruiser would average one
missile fired every two seconds. Just over three minutes later, her missile
magazines were empty. The cruiser emerged from the base of an enormous gray
arch of smoke. Her only remaining defenses were her gun systems.

The SAMs raced in at their targets with a closing speed of
over two thousand miles per hour, directed in by the reflected waves of the
ship's own fire-control radars. At a range of a hundred fifty yards from their
targets, the warheads detonated. The Aegis system did quite well. Just over 60
percent of the targets were destroyed. There were now eighty-two incoming
missiles targeted on a total of eight ships.

Other missile-equipped ships joined the fray. In several
cases two or three missiles were sent for the same target, usually killing it.
The number of incoming "vampires" dropped to seventy, then sixty, but
the number was not dropping quickly enough. The identity of the targets was now
known to everyone. Powerful active jamming equipment came on. Ships began a
radical series of maneuvers like some stylized dance, with scant attention paid
to station-keeping. Collision at sea was now the least of anyone's worries.
When the Kingfish got to within twenty miles, every ship in the formation began
to fire off chaff rockets, which filled the air with millions of aluminized
Mylar fragments that fluttered on the air, creating dozens of new targets for
the missiles to select from. Some of the Kingfish lost lock with their targets
and started chasing Mylar ghosts. Two of them got lost, and selected new
targets on the far side of the formation.

The radar picture on Nimitz suddenly was obscured. What had
been discrete pips designating the positions of ships in the formation became
shapeless clouds. Only the missiles stayed constant: inverted V-shapes, with
line vectors to designate direction and speed. The last wave of SAMs killed
three more. The vampire count was down to forty-one. Toland counted five
heading for Nimitz Topside, the final defensive weapons were now tracking the
targets. These were the CIWS, 20mm Gatling guns, radar-equipped to explode
incoming missiles at a range of under two thousand yards. Designed to operate
in a fully automatic mode, the two after gun mounts on the carrier angled up
and began to track the first pair of incoming Kingfish. The portside mount
fired first, the six-barrel cannon making a sound like that of an enormous
zipper. Its radar system tracked the target, and tracked the outgoing slugs,
adjusting fire to make the two meet.

The leading Kingfish exploded eight hundred yards from
Nimitz's port quarter. The thousand kilograms of high explosive rocked the
ship. Toland felt it, wondering if the ship had been hit. Around him, the CIC
crewmen were concentrating frantically on their jobs. One target track vanished
from the screen. Four left.

The next Kingfish approached the carrier's bow and was
blasted out of the sky by the forward CIWS, too close aboard. Fragments ripped
across the carrier's deck, killing a dozen exposed crewmen.

Number three was decoyed by a chaff cloud and ran straight
into the sea half a mile behind the carrier. The warhead caused the carrier to
vibrate and raised a column of water a thousand feet into the air.

The fourth and fifth missiles came in from aft, not a
hundred yards apart. The after gun mount tracked on both, but couldn't decide
which to engage first. It went into Reset mode and petulantly didn't engage
any. The missiles hit within a second of one another, one on the after port
corner of the flight deck, the other on the number two arrestor wire.

Toland was thrown fifteen feet, and slammed against a radar
console. Next he saw a wall of pink flame that washed briefly over him. Then
came the noises. First the thunder of the explosion. Then the screams. The
after CIC bulkhead was no longer there; instead there was a mass of flame. Men
twenty feet away were ablaze, staggering and screaming before his eyes.
Toland's only thought was escape. He bolted for the watertight door. It opened
miraculously under his hand and he ran to starboard. The ship's
fire-suppression systems were already on, showering everything with a curtain
of saltwater. His skin burned from it as he emerged, hair and uniform singed,
to the flight deck catwalk. A sailor directed a water hose on him, nearly
knocking him over the side.

"Fire in CIC!" Toland gasped.

"What the hell ain't!" the sailor screamed.

Toland fell to his knees and looked outboard. Foch had been
to their north, he remembered. Now there was a pillar of smoke. As he watched,
the last Kingfish was detonated a hundred feet over Saratoga's flight deck. The
carrier seemed undamaged. Three miles away, Ticonderoga's after superstructure
was shredded and ablaze from a rocket that had blown up within yards of her. On
the horizon a ball of flame announced the destruction of yet another-my God,
Toland thought, might that be Saipan? She had two thousand Marines aboard . . .

"Get forward, you dumbass!" a firefighter yelled at
him. Another man emerged to the catwalk.

"Toland, you all right?" It was Captain Svenson,
his shirt torn away and his chest bleeding from a half-dozen cuts.

"Yes, sir," Bob answered.

"Get to the bridge. Tell 'em to put the wind on the
starboard beam. Move!" Svenson jumped up onto the flight deck.

Toland did likewise, racing forward. The deck was awash in
firefighting foam, slippery as oil. Toland ran recklessly, falling hard on the
deck before he reached the carrier's island. He was in the pilothouse in under
a minute.

"Captain says put the wind on the starboard beam!"
Toland said.

"It is on the fucking beam!" the executive officer
snapped back. The bridge deck was covered with broken glass. "How's the
skipper?"

"Alive. He's aft with the fire."

"And who the hell are you?" the XO demanded.

"Toland, group intel. I was in CIC."

"Then you're one lucky bastard. That second bird hit
fifty yards from you. Captain got out? Anyone else?"

"I don't know. Burning like hell."

"Looks like you caught part of it, Commander."

Bob's face felt as if he'd shaved with a piece of glass. His
eyebrows crumpled to his touch. "Flashburns, I guess. I'll be okay. What
do you want me to do?"

The XO pointed to Toland's water wings. "Can you conn
the ship.? Okay, do it. Nothing left to run into anyway. I'm going aft to take
charge of the fire. Communications are out, radar's out, but the engines are
okay and the hull's in good shape. Mr. Bice has the deck. Mr. Toland has the
conn," XO announced as he left.

Toland hadn't conned anything bigger than a Boston Whaler in
over ten years, and now he had a damaged carrier. He took a pair of binoculars
and looked around to see what ships were nearby. What he saw chilled him.

Saratoga was the only ship that looked intact, but on second
glance her radar mast was askew. Foch was lower in the water than she ought to
have been, and ablaze from bow to stem.

"Where's Saipan?"

"Blew up like a fucking firework," Commander Bice
replied. "Holy Jesus, there were twenty-five hundred men aboard! Tico took
one close aboard. Foch took three hits, looks like she's gone. Two frigates and
a destroyer gone, too-just fucking gone, man! Who fucked up? You were in CIC,
right? Who fucked up?"

The eight French Crusaders were just making contact with the
Backfires. The Russian bombers were on afterburner and were nearly as fast as
the fighters. The carrier pilots had all heard their ship go off the air and
were consumed with rage at what had happened, no longer the cool professionals who
drove fighters off ships. Only ten Backfires were within their reach. They got
six of them with their missiles and damaged two more before they had to break
off.

USS Caron, the senior undamaged ship, tracked the Russians
on her radar, calling Britain for fighters to intercept them on the trip home.
But the Russians had anticipated this, and detoured far west of the British
Isles, meeting their tankers four hundred miles west of Norway.

Already the Russians were evaluating the results of their
mission. The first major battle of modem carriers and missile-armed bombers had
been won and lost. Both sides knew which was which.

The fire on Nimitz was out within an hour. With no aircraft
aboard, there were few combustibles about, and the ship's firefighting abilities
equaled that of a large city. Toland brought her back to an easterly course.
Saratoga was recovering aircraft, refueling them, and sending all but the
fighters to the beach. Three frigates and a destroyer lingered to recover
survivors, as the large ships turned back toward Europe.

"All ahead full," Svenson ordered from his seat on
the bridge. "Toland, you all right?"

"No complaints." No point in it, the ship's
hospital was more than full with hundreds of major injury cases. There was no
count of the dead yet, and Toland didn't want to think about that.

"You were right," the captain said, his voice
angry and subdued. "You were right. They made it too easy and we fell for
it."

"There'll be another day, Captain.,,

"You're Goddamned right there will! We're heading for
Southampton.

See if the Brits can fix anything this big. My regulars are
still busy aft. Think you can handle the conn a little longer?"

"Yes, sir. "

Nimitz and her nuclear escorts bent on full speed, nearly
forty knots, and rapidly left the formation behind. A reckless move, racing too
fast for antisubmarine patrols, but a submarine would have to move quickly
indeed to catch them.

21 - Nordic Hammer

HILL 152, ICELAND

"I know that was a fighter, and there had to be more
than one," Edwards said. It was raining again, probably for the last time.
The clouds to the southwest were breaking up, and there was a hint of clear sky
on the horizon. Edwards just sat there in his helmet and poncho, staring into
the distance.

"I suppose you're right, sir," Smith replied. The
sergeant was nervous. They'd been on this hilltop for almost twenty-four hours,
a long time to be stationary in hostile country. The best time to move out
would have been during the rain showers, when visibility was cut to a few hundred
yards. Soon the sky might be clear again, and it wouldn't get dark again for
quite a while. As it was, they sat on their hilltop in camouflage ponchos that
kept them partly dry and wholly miserable.

There was a heavy shower north of them that prevented their
seeing Reykjavik, and they could barely make out Hafnarfjordur to the west,
which worried the sergeant, who wanted to know what Ivan was up to. What if
they detected Edwards's satellite radio and began to triangulate on it? What if
there were patrols out?

"Lieutenant?"

"Yeah, Sarge?"

"We got those phone lines on one side of us, and those
power lines on the other--"

"You want to blow some up?" Edwards smiled.

"No, sir, but Ivan is going to start patrolling them
soon, and this ain't a very good place for us to make contact."

"We're supposed to observe and report, Sarge,"
Edwards said without conviction.

"Yes, sir."

Edwards checked his watch. It was 1955Z. Doghouse might want
to talk with them, though they hadn't called in to him yet. Edwards broke the
radio out of the pack again, assembled the pistol-grip antenna, and donned his
headset. At 1959 he switched on and tracked in on the satellite carrier wave.

"Doghouse calling Beagle. Doghouse calling Beagle. Do
you copy? Over."

"Well, how about that." He toggled the Transmit
switch. "Roger we're here, Doghouse."

"Anything new to report?"

"Negative, unless you want to know about the rain.
Visibility is down. We can't see very much."

The communications watch officer at Doghouse looked at a
weather map. So it really was raining there. He hadn't been able to convince
his boss that Beagle could be trusted. Edwards had answered the questions that
the counterintelligence guys had come up with. They'd even had a voice-stress
analyzer handy to check the tapes of his answers. The needle had pegged on the
last answer about his girlfriend. That hadn't been faked. Copies of the
relevant parts of his personnel package had been faxed to them. Upper fifth of
his class at Colorado Springs. Good in math and engineering studies, did
extremely well in his post-graduation studies in meteorology. His eyesight had
worsened slightly during his tenure at Colorado Springs, becoming just bad enough
to keep him from flying. Regarded as quiet and shy, but evidently well liked by
his classmates. Not a warrior type, the psychological profile said. How long
would the kid last?

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

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
finishing 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 hit the built-in self-starters, turning the jet engines even as
the pilots climbed into the cockpits. 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 compass,
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 altitude,
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 CO, 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 passed 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
crenelated 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 assigned to him, he
conducted a hasty visual search. One saw an undamaged SAM launcher and streaked
toward it, dropping Rockeye clusterbomb 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 massive
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 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 altitude 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 bomb
loads 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' group, swooping low over a crashed B-52 east of Hafnarfjordur.
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 passive 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 sonobuoys. On striking the water, these miniature passive
sonar sets deployed a non-directional 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 passive sonar track, however, still showed a submarine or
something that sounded like a submarine. The helo began moving outward,
dropping sonobuoys 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
sonobuoys, 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 impassive now.

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

"Transient! Transient!" called the ship 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 classification-madman! Madman, madman, smoke away! We have a NLAD
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 passed exclusively to the tactical coordinator on the Orion.
The big patrol aircraft orbited two miles away as the helicopter lined up for
the final pass. The pilot made a very careful check of his tactical display,
then locked his eyes on the gyrocompass.

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 sonobuoy, 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 sonobuoys and Pharris's tactical sonar.

The torpedo was in ping-and-listen mode, using both active
and passive sonar to find its target. As it completed its first circle, the
passive 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 stem 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 passive 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 assist 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.

"Assist, hell!" 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 ship. The
arrester wire systems would have to be fully replaced. The main search radar
was gone. The list went on.

Tugs were pushing the wounded carrier into Southampton's
Ocean Dock, a task made doubly hard because of the ship'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 Vosper Ship Repair Yard were aboard, reviewing the damage
below and cataloging the material needed to enable the ship to operate again.
Captain Svenson watched the messenger lines being shot off to handlers who
would secure the ship. 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."

"Excuse me, sir?''

"The air wing is being split. The fighters and Hawkeyes
are going north. Ivan's been pounding on the Brits' northern radar line, and
their fighters have taken a beating trying to help the Norwegians out. The
Tomcats are already on the way, and we'll be loading their missiles onto the
dock so the Brits can fly them north. I want you to operate with the fighter
teams to evaluate what Ivan's up to with his Badgers, and maybe help our guys
to cull off some of the bastards. The attack birds are joining the NATO
tactical air reserve for the present."

"When do I leave?" Toland reflected that he had
nothing to pack. The Kingfish had taken care of that, too. His first order of
business was to cable his family that he was all right.

ICELAND

"Doghouse, this is Beagle, and what the hell just
happened, over?"

"Beagle, I am authorized to tell you that an attack was
just made against Keflavik."

"No kidding, guy. A B-52 just crashed right on our
Goddamned hill. Didn't you tell anybody that I reported fighters?"

"Your information was evaluated as unconfirmed and was
not passed on, Beagle. I did not concur in that. Continue your report."

"I saw four, repeat four, Soviet single-seat aircraft
with a twin-rudder configuration. I can't be sure of the type, but they had
double tails, you copy that?"

"Twin rudders, copy that. Confirm you saw four."

"One-two-three-four, Doghouse. I can't arrange them to
parade over head. But if you send bombers in here unescorted again, mister,
don' blame me."

"Any survivors from the crash you saw?"

"Negative. No 'chutes, and no way anyone would have
survived the crash. Saw one fireball on the horizon, but I'm not sure what that
was. How did the Weasels do?"

"Can't say, Beagle, but thanks for the word on the SAMs."

"You have instructions for me?"

"Your status is being reevaluated now. We'll be back on
the hour."

"Make it two, fella. We have to move some before the
bad guys send a patrol this way. Out." The Marines were around him,
weapons ready, alert for the patrol or helicopter, or both, that had to be
heading their way. Edwards tore off the headset and repacked the radio.
"Great, just great," he muttered. "Let's move it, people."

They had already jogged a full kilometer from their former
home, heading due east into the uninhabited wasteland that formed this part of
the island. Smith kept them on slopes, off the crests and hilltops that could
silhouette them against the clearing sky. There was a lake off to their left,
with many houses on its western side. They had to be careful here. There was no
telling who might note their passing and inform someone of it. They passed
under the main power transmission lines at a run, angling south to keep a crest
line between them and most of the houses. An hour later, they were in the
Holmshraun lava field, an incredible collection of rocks overlooking Highway 1,
one of Iceland's two major thoroughfares. There were vehicles on the road
heading in both directions. Many of them carried soldiers.

"What are we figuring to do now, sir?" Smith asked
pointedly.

"Well, Sarge, we got good concealment here. Hell, a guy
fifty yards away would have trouble spotting us in this crap. I say we wait for
it to get a little dark tonight and get north of the road. Once we get past
that, the population thins out-at least that's what the map says. It ought to
be fairly safe once we get away from the population centers."

"What will our friends on the other side of that radio
say about that?"

"I guess we better find out." Edwards checked his
watch. He was nearly two hours overdue. Doghouse was annoyed with him.

"What kept you off the air?"

"We just moved about eight klicks. Maybe you'd prefer
we waited around and counted the Russians picking over the wreckage. Listen up,
we're all alone here and that's a little scary, you know?"

"Understood, Beagle. Okay, we got orders for you. You
have a map of the area you're in?"

"That's affirm, a one-to-fifty-thousand one."

"Okay, they want you to move to Grafarholt. There's a
hill there. You're supposed to find a safe place near there and belly-up for
further instructions."

"Hey, Doghouse, before we get any farther, what if Ivan
starts playing DF games and tries to track us down from our radio
transmissions?"

"Okay, about time you asked that. The radio you got is
encrypted UHF, single-sideband. That means it's got thousands of channels, and
having him lock into one is not real likely. Second, you have a directional
antenna. When you transmit, make sure there's a hill between you and them. UHF
is line-of-sight only. So you ought to be safe on that score, too. Happy?"

"It helps."

"How soon can you get to that hill for us?"

Edwards looked at the map. About seven kilometers. A
comfortable two-hour walk in peacetime, maybe three or four not so comfortable
hours, given the terrain here. They'd have to wait for darkness, detour around
a few villages . . . and there was that one other little thing to be concerned
about . . . "Twelve hours, minimum."

"Roger, understood, Beagle. Copy twelve hours. That's
fine. We'll be calling for you then. Anything else to report?"

"Some activity on the road below us. Several trucks,
Army-type, painted green. A lot of personal vehicles, four-by-fours. No armored
stuff, though."

"Okay. Take your time and play it safe. Your mission is
to avoid contact and report. We'll be here if you need us. Out."

At Doghouse in northern Scotland, the communications officer
leaned back in his swivel chair.

"The lad sounds somewhat rattled," an intelligence
officer commented over his tea.

"Not quite SAS material, is he?" another asked.

"Let's not be too hasty," said a third. "He's
bright, something of an athlete, and he had the presence of mind to escape when
events called for it. Seems a bit high-strung, but given his position that's
understandable, I think."

The first pointed on the map. "Twelve hours to go this
little distance?" "Across hilly, open terrain, with a whole bloody
division of paras running about in lorries and BMPs, and with a sun that never
sets, what the hell do you expect of four men?" demanded the fourth, a man
dressed in civilian clothes who had been gravely wounded while in the 22nd SAS
Regiment. "If that lad had any sense, he'd have packed it in yesterday.
Interesting psychological profile here. If he manages to get to this hill on
time for us, I think he'll do all right."

USS PHARRIS

The convoy had scattered. Toland looked at the radar
display, an expanding ring of ships, now beginning to turn back east to
reassemble. One merchantman had been sunk, another badly damaged and limping
west. Three frigates were trying to locate the submarine that had done the
damage. Gallery had gotten a possible contact and fired a torpedo at it,
without result. Four helicopters were dropping sonobuoys in hope of reacquiring
it, and a half-dozen sonars were pinging away, but so far it looked as though
the submarine had evaded the angry escorts.

"That was a beautiful approach," the tactical
action officer observed grudgingly. "His only goof was hitting the back
end of the convoy."

"His fire control wasn't all that great," Morris
said. "They say they had sonar readings on five fish. Figure three
targets. Two hits for a kill on one, and a scratch hit on another for damage.
The other was a clean miss. Not a bad afternoon's work. What's he doing now,
people?"

"How much you want to bet it's an old nuc boat?"
TAO asked. "Their fire-control systems aren't up to current standards, and
they can't run very fast and still stay covert. He just barely made the
intercept, and bit off two ships. When they scattered he didn't have the speed
to pursue without advertising his position, and he's too smart for that."

"Then what did he do?" ASW asked.

"He was in close when he launched. Ducked inside the
convoy and went deep. Used the noise from the thundering herd to mask himself,
then motored off clear . . ."

"North." Morris bent over the display. "Most
of the merchies went northeast when the scatter order went out. He probably
went north to trail, and maybe hope to get another shot in later. What do you
think we're up against?"

"Intel says this area had three Foxtrots and a November,
plus maybe another nuc. The one we killed was probably a Fox. Doesn't have the
speed to trail the convoy." The ASW officer looked up. "But a
November would. We're not up against a new nuc. He'd still be shooting. Call it
a November."

"Okay, say he came north at six or seven knots, then
turned east hoping to pick us up again tomorrow, say. Where would he be?"

"Right now . . . here, sir," ASW said. He pointed
to a spot fifteen miles aft of the frigate. "We can't go back after
him."

"No, but we can listen for him if he tries to play
catchup." Morris thought hard. The convoy would be altering base course to
one-two-zero on the hour to head farther south, away from the suddenly
increased threat of Soviet long-range bombers. More time would be needed for
them to re-form and establish proper stations. That would allow the submarine
to cut the corner and close the target. With all the zigzagging the merchies
were doing, their effective speed of advance was only about sixteen knots, and
a November might try to catch up with that. "I want the operators to pay
particular attention to this sector. Our friend just might be back."

"Call in a P-3?" TAO wondered.

Morris shook his head. "They want to keep station
forward. The main threat is still ahead of us. Us 'cans have to worry about the
trailers, until we get a hot contact, anyway. I think this guy will trail, and
he might try and get off a contact report."

KIEV, THE UKRAINE

"Good news," the naval officer said. "Our
bombers report sinking three aviation ships, two cruisers, and two
destroyers."

Alekseyev and his boss exchanged a look: their colleagues in
blue would be insufferable now.

"How firm is that evaluation?" CINC-Southwest
asked.

"There were four carrier-type ships photographed before
the attack. The next satellite pass eight hours after the attack showed only
one. Two cruisers and two destroyers were also missing. Finally we have
intelligence reports of numerous carrier-type aircraft landing at French naval
air bases in Brittany. Our submarines were unable to make contact with the
formation-it would seem that one was sunk, unfortunately, but our first naval
air battle was a smashing success. We will close the Atlantic for you,
Comrades," the captain predicted.

"We may need it closed," Alekseyev said after the
captain left.

His boss grunted agreement. Things in Germany were not going
well. The Soviet Air Force had been hurt even worse than they had feared, and
as a result the land campaign was already far behind schedule. On the second
day of the war, the first day's objectives had been met in only one army's
zone, and that one was being heavily counterattacked twenty kilometers east of
Hamburg. Tank losses had been 50 percent higher than predicted, and control of
the air was in jeopardy, with many units reporting heavier-than-expected air
attacks. Only half of the Elbe bridges had been replaced as yet, and the
floating ribbon bridges could not carry all the load of the highway bridges
they replaced. The NATO armies had not yet reached their peak strength. American
reinforcements were still arriving by air, mating up with their pre-positioned
equipment. The Soviet first echelon was being bled, and the second echelon was
still largely trapped behind the Elbe.

ICELAND

"About as dark as it's gonna get," Edwards said. The
light level was what meteorologists and sailors called nautical twilight.
Visibility was down to five hundred yards with the sun just below the northwest
horizon. The lieutenant put on his pack and rose. His Marines did the same,
with as much enthusiasm as a child on his way to school.

They headed down the shallow slope towards the Sudura River,
more a fair-sized creek, Edwards thought. The lava field provided good cover.
The ground was littered with rocks, some as much as three feet high, a
landscape that broke up shapes and disguised movement to the casual observer.
He hoped there was nothing more than that out there. They had observed a number
of Soviet patrols, mainly on military trucks that passed through the area at
intervals of about thirty minutes. They saw no fixed positions. Certainly they
had garrisoned the hydroelectric power station at Burfell, farther east on
Route 1. No one had bombed that yet: the lights were still bright in some of
the homes below them.

The rocks got smaller as the land changed to a grassy
meadow. There had been sheep here recently-the smell was unmistakable and the
grass was short. Instinctively the men walked in a crouch toward a gravel road.
The houses and barns here were spread irregularly. They picked a spot where the
space between buildings was about five hundred yards, hoping that the dim light
and their camouflage uniforms would make them invisible to any observer. No one
was about in the open. Edwards halted his group and looked carefully through
his binoculars at the nearest houses. Lights burned in some, but no people were
visible outside. Perhaps the Russians had imposed a curfew . . . meaning that
anyone seen moving might be shot on sight. Happy thought.

The riverbanks sloped downward sharply about twenty feet to
the water, and were covered with rocks smoothed by years of erosion at
highwater time. Smith went down first as the others lay with weapons ready at
the lip of the south bank. The sergeant moved slowly at first, checking the
water depth before hurrying across, rifle held high in the air. Edwards was
surprised how quickly he went through it, then up the far bank. The sergeant
waved, and the rest of the men followed. Edwards soon found out why the
sergeant had crossed the stream quickly. The waist-deep water was icy cold,
like most of the streams on Iceland, fed by melting glaciers. He gasped and
went across as fast as he could, his rifle and radio held above his head. A
minute later he was atop the far bank.

Smith chuckled in the dark. "I guess that woke
everybody up."

"Like to froze my balls off, Sarge," Rodgers
groused.

"Looks clear ahead," Edwards said. "Beyond
this meadow is another creek, then the main road, a secondary road, then up a
hill into a lava field. Let's keep moving."

"Right, Lieutenant." Smith got to his feet and
moved off. The others trailed behind him at five-yard intervals. The little
bastard's in a hurry, isn't he?

The ground here was agreeably flat, the grass as high as
their boot tops. They moved rapidly, keeping low, weapons held ready across
their chests as they angled slightly east to avoid the village of Holmur. The
next stream was shallower than the Sudura, though no less cold. They stopped on
crossing it, now only two hundred yards from the highway. Again Smith moved off
first, this time with his back bent double, moving in rushes followed by pauses
while he knelt to examine the terrain repeatedly. The men behind him matched
his movements exactly, and the team got together again in tall grass fifty feet
from the road.

"Okay," Smith said. "We cross one at a time,
a minute apart. I go first. I'll stop fifty feet on the other side by those
rocks. When you cross, don't screw around-run and keep low, and come to me. If
you see something coming, get as far from the road as you can and drop. They
can't see you if you lay still, people. Take things real easy. Okay?"
Everyone, Edwards included, nodded agreement.

The sergeant was as good as his word. After a final look to
be sure that nothing was moving in their direction, he raced off across the
road, his personal gear flopping and slapping against his body as he did so.
They waited a minute, then Garcia followed. After another minute, Rodgers went.
Edwards counted to sixty and darted forward. The lieutenant was d appalled-at
how stressful this was. His heart pounded with terror as he reached the
roadway, and he froze dead in the center. Automobile lights were approaching
them from the north. Edwards just stood there, watching them come closer

"Move your ass, Lieutenant!'' the sergeant's voice
rasped at him.

The lieutenant shook his head clear and ran to the sound of
the sergeant's voice, one hand holding his helmet in place on his head.

"Lights coming down!'' he gasped.

"No shit. Be cool, sir. People, let's get spread out.
Find some good cover and freeze. And make Goddamned sure those weapons are on
safe! You stay with me, sir."

The two privates moved left and right into tall weeds,
disappearing from view as soon as they stopped moving. Edwards lay next to
Sergeant Smith.

"You think they saw me?"

The darkness prevented him from seeing the angry expression
accompanying Smith's reply: "Prob'ly not. Don't freeze in the road like
that again, sir."

"I won't. Sorry, Sarge, this isn't exactly my
thing."

"Just listen and learn what we tell ya', okay?"
Smith whispered. "We're Marines. We'll take good care of you."

The lights approached slowly, proceeding down the steep
grade to their north. The driver didn't trust the loose gravel surface. The
north-south road split here, forking left and right to Route 1. It had to be a
military truck, they saw. The lights were rectangular, taped slips over
headlights installed at the Soviets' massive Kama River factory, built largely
with Western aid. The truck stopped.

Edwards did not allow himself to react, except that his grip
tightened on the plastic stock of his rifle. What if someone had seen them
cross the road and telephoned the Russians? Smith's hand reached out and pushed
the lieutenant's rifle down.

"Let's be careful with that, Lieutenant," Smith
whispered.

The ten men in the truck dismounted and spread into the
grass off the road, perhaps fifty yards away. Edwards couldn't tell if they
carried weapons or not. Each man stopped, and almost in unison they unbuttoned
their flies to urinate. Edwards gawked and nearly laughed. Finished, they moved
back to the truck, which started up and proceeded west on the fork to the main
road, motoring off with the sound on a poorly muffled diesel engine. The
Marines re-formed as the truck's taillights dipped under the horizon.

"Too bad." Rodgers smiled in the semidarkness.
"I coulda blow'd one guy's pecker right off!"

"You done good, people," Smith said. "Ready
to move out, Lieutenant?"

"Yeah." Shamed by his performance, the lieutenant
let Smith lead them off. They crossed the gravel road and a hundred yards later
were in yet another lava field, climbing over rocks into the wasteland. Their
wet fatigue pants clung to their legs, drying slowly in the cool westerly
breeze.

USS PHARRIS

"Our friend the November doesn't have an anechoic
coating," ASW said quietly, pointing to the display. "I think that's
him, running to catch up with the convoy."

"We have this trace plotted at about forty-six thousand
yards," the tactical action officer said.

"Get the helo up," Morris ordered.

Five minutes later, Pharris's helicopter was running
southwest at full speed, and Bluebird-Seven, another P-3C Orion, was closing on
the datum point from the east. Both aircraft flew low, hoping to surprise the
submarine that had killed one of their flock and gravely damaged another. The
Russian had probably made a mistake by increasing his speed. Maybe he had
orders to trail the convoy and radio data for other submarines to use. Maybe he
wanted to catch up to make another attack. Whatever the reason, his reactor
pumps were running and making noise that his hull could not contain. His
periscope was up, and that gave the aircraft a chance to spot him with their
look-down radars. The helo was closer, and its pilot was communicating with the
tactical coordinator of the Orion. This could be a textbook attack if things
worked out right.

"Okay, Bluebird, we are now three miles from datum
center. Say your position."

"We're two miles behind you, Papa-One-Six.
Illuminate!"

The systems operator flipped the cover off the radar switch
and moved it from Standby to Active. Instantly, energy began to radiate from
the radar transmitter slung under the helicopter's nose.

"Contact, we have a radar contact bearing one-six-five,
range eleven hundred yards!"

"Stream the MAD gear!" The pilot advanced his
throttles to race toward the contact.

"We got him, too,"-the Tacco called swiftly. The
petty officer beside him armed a torpedo, setting its initial search depth for
a hundred feet.

The helicopter's anticollision lights came on, the red
lights flashing in the darkness. No sense in hiding their approach now. The sub
must have detected their radar signals and would now be attempting a crash
dive. But that took more time than he had.

"Madman, madman, smoke away!" the systems operator
screamed.

The smoke was invisible in the darkness, but the short green
flame was an unmissable beacon in the darkness. The helo banked left, clearing
the way for the Orion now only five hundred yards behind him.

The P-3C's powerful searchlights came on, spotting the
telltale wake left by the now-invisible periscope. The MAD contact had been
right on, the pilot saw at once. The Orion's bomb doors swung open and the
torpedo dropped toward the black waters along with a sonobuoy.

"Positive sonar contact, evaluate as submarine!" a
sonar-board operator said over the intercom. The tone lines displayed on his
screen were exactly what a November at high speed looked like, and the torpedo
chasing her was already on continuous pinging. "Torpedo is closing the
target rapidly . . . Looks good, Tacco, closing . . . closing-impact!" The
torpedo's sound tracing merged with that of the submarine, and a brilliant
splotch appeared in the waterfall display. The Orion's operator switched the
sonobuoy from active to passive, recording the recurring rumbles of the torpedo
warhead explosion. The submarine's screw sounds stopped, and again he heard the
sound of blowing air that quickly stopped as the submarine began her last dive.

"That's a kill, that's a kill!" exulted the Tacco.

"Confirm the kill," Morris said over the radio.
"Nice job, Bluebird. That was a real quick-draw!"

"Roger, copy, Pharris. Thank you, sir! Beautiful job
with the helo and the detection, guy. You just got another assist. Hell, we
might just orbit you for a while, Captain, looks like you got all the action.
Out."

Morris walked to the corner and poured himself a cup of
coffee. So, they had just helped to kill a pair of Soviet submarines.

The TAO was less enthusiastic. "We got a noisy old
Foxtrot and a November who did something dumb. You suppose he had orders to
trail and report, and that's why we got him?"

"Maybe," Morris nodded. "if Ivan's making his
skippers do things like that-well, they like central control, but that can
change if they find out ifs costing them boats. We learned that lesson
ourselves once."

USS CHICAGO

McCafferty had his own contact. They had been tracking it
for over an hour now, the sonar operators struggling to discern random noise
from discrete signal on their visual displays. Their data was passed to the
firecontrol tracking party, four men hovering over the chart table in the after
comer of the attack center.

Already the crew was whispering, McCafferty knew. First the
yard fire before they were commissioned. Then being pulled out of the Barents
Sea at the wrong time. Then being attacked by a friendly aircraft . . . was
Chicago an unlucky boat? they wondered. The chiefs and officers would work to
dispel that thought, but the chiefs and officers held it, too, since all
sailors believed in luck, an institutional faith among submarines. If you're
not lucky, we can't use you, a famous submarine admiral once said. McCafferty
had heard that story often enough. He had so far been devoid of luck.

The captain moved back to the chart table. "What's
happening?"

"Not much in the way of a bearing change. He has to be
way out there, skipper, like the third convergence zone. Maybe eighty miles. He
can't be closing us. We would have lost the signal as he passed out of the
zone." The executive officer was showing the strain of the past week's
operations, too. "Captain, if I had to guess, I'd say we're tracking a
nuclear sub. Probably a noisy one. Acoustical conditions are pretty good, so we
have three CZs to play with. And I'd bet he is doing the same thing we are,
patrolling a set position. Hell, he could be running back and forth on a
racetrack pattern, same as us. That would account for the minimal bearing
changes."

The captain frowned. This was the only real contact he'd had
since the war started. He was close to the northern border of his patrol area,
and the target was probably just on the other side of it. Going after it meant
leaving the bulk of his assigned sector unprotected

"Let's go after him," McCafferty ordered.
"Left ten degrees rudder, come left to new course three-five-one. All
ahead two thirds."

Chicago rapidly turned to a northerly heading, accelerating
to fifteen knots, her maximum "silent" speed. At fifteen knots the
submarine radiated only a small amount of noise. The risk of counterdetection
was slight, since even at this speed her sonars could detect a target five to
ten miles off. Her four tubes were loaded with a pair of Mk-48 torpedoes and
two Harpoon antiship missiles. If the target was a submarine or a surface ship,
Chicago could handle it.

GRAFARHOLT, ICELAND

"You're early, Beagle," Doghouse replied.

Edwards was sitting between two rocks and leaning back
against a third, the antenna resting on his knee. He hoped it was pointing in a
safe direction. The Russians, he figured, were strung mostly along the coast
from Keflavik to Reykjavik, well to the west of the direction to the satellite.
But there were houses and factories below him, and if they had a listening post
down there . . .

"We had to get here before it got too light," the
lieutenant explained. They had run the last kilometer with the rising sun
behind them. Edwards took some small comfort in the fact that the Marines were
puffing harder than he was.

"How secure are you?"

"There is some movement on the road below us, but
that's a good ways off, maybe a mile."

"Okay, you see the electrical switching station
southwest of you?"

Edwards got out his binoculars with one hand to check. The
map called the place Artun. It held the main electrical transformers for the
power grid on this part of the island. The high-voltage lines came in from the
east, and the feeder cables radiated out from this point.

"Yeah, I see it."

"How are things going, Beagle?"

Edwards almost said they were going great, but stopped
himself. "Lousy. Things are going lousy."

"Roger that, Beagle. You keep an eye on that power
station. Anything around it?"

"Stand by." Edwards set down the antenna and gave
the place a closer look. Aha! "Okay, I got one armored vehicle, just
visible around the comer on the west side. Three-no, four armed men are in the
open. Nothing else that I can see."

"Very good, Beagle. Now you keep watch on that place.
Let us know if any SAMs show up. We also want data if you see any more
fighters. Start keeping records of how many trucks and troops you see, where
they're heading. Be sure to write things down. Got that?"

"Okay. We write it all down and report in."

"Good. You're doing all right, Beagle. Your orders are
to observe and report," Doghouse reminded them. "Avoid contact. If
you see enemy troops heading in your direction, bug out. Don't worry about
calling in, just bug the hell out and report when you can. Now get off the air
for a while."

"Roger that. Out." Edwards repacked the radio. It
was getting so that he could do it with his eyes closed.

"What gives, Lieutenant?" Smith asked.

The lieutenant grunted. "We sit tight and watch that
electrical place off that way."

"You s'pose they want us to turn some lights off?"

"There's too many troops down there, Sarge,"
Edwards replied. He stretched and opened his canteen. Garcia was on guard atop
the knoll to his right, and Rodgers was asleep. "What's for
breakfast?"

"Well, if you got peanut butter and crackers, I'll
trade you my peaches for it."

Edwards ripped open the C-Ration container and inspected the
contents. "Deal."

22- Ripostes

USS CHICAGO

The submarine slowed to reacquire the target. She'd run deep
at fifteen knots for over an hour, and now reduced speed and came up to five
hundred feet, right in the middle of the deep sound channel. McCafferty ordered
an easterly course, which allowed the towed-array sonar-his "tail"-to
bear on the supposed target to the north. It took several minutes before the
array was straight and aligned in the proper direction so that the sonar
operators could begin their work in earnest. Slowly the data came up on their
displays, and a senior petty officer plugged in a set of headphones, hoping for
an aural detection. There was nothing to detect. For twenty minutes the screen
showed only random noise patterns.

McCafferty examined the paper plot. Their erstwhile contact
would now be exactly two convergence zones away and should have been easily
detected, given known water conditions. But their screens showed nothing.

"We never did have a classification." The
executive officer shrugged. "He's gone."

"Take her up to antenna depth. Let's see what's cooking
topside." McCafferty moved back to the periscope pedestal. He could not
fail to note the instant tension in the compartment. The last time they'd done
this, they'd nearly been sunk. The submarine leveled off at a depth of sixty
feet. Sonar did another check and found nothing. The ESM mast went up, and the
electronics technician reported only weak signals. The search periscope went up
next. McCafferty made a very quick check of the horizon-nothing in the air,
nothing on the surface.

"There's a storm to the north, line squall," he
said. "Down scope."

The executive officer grumbled an inaudible curse. The noise
from the storm would make the normally difficult task of finding a conventional
sub motoring along on battery power nearly impossible. It was one thing for
them to dart a short distance out of their patrol area with a good chance for a
kill. It was another to leave for a whole day looking for something that they
might never find. He looked at the captain, waiting for the decision to be
made.

"Secure from general quarters," McCafferty said.
"XO, take us back to station at ten knots. Keep her deep. I'm going to
take a nap. Wake me in two hours."

The captain walked a few steps forward to his stateroom. The
bunk was already folded down, unmade, from the portside bulkhead. Instrument
repeaters would show him course and speed, and a TV set could show him whatever
the periscope might be looking at, or a taped movie. McCafferty had been awake
for about twenty hours now, and the added stress that comes from a combat
environment made it feel like a week. He took off his shoes and lay down, but
sleep would not come.

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

The colonel ran his hand along the bomber silhouette painted
on the side of his fighter. His first combat victory, recorded on his gun
cameras. Not since a handful of his comrades had fought in the skies of North
Vietnam had a Soviet Air Force pilot won a real air-to-air victory, and this
one had been over a nuclear-capable bomber that might otherwise have threatened
the homeland.

There were now twenty-five MiG-29 fighters on Iceland, and
four of them were aloft at all times to protect the bases as the ground troops
tightened their control of the island.

The B-52 raid had hurt them. Their main search radar was
slightly damaged, but another was being flown out today, a more modem, mobile
unit whose position would be changed twice a day. He wished they had an
airborne radar, but learned that losses over Germany had severely limited their
availability. The news of the air war there was not good, though the two
regiments of MiG-29s were doing well. The colonel checked his watch. In two
hours he would be leading a squadron escorting a small force of Backfires that
was searching for a convoy.

GRAFARHOLT, ICELAND

"Okay, Doghouse, I can see six fighter aircraft sitting
on the runways at Reykjavik. They all got red stars on them. They have
twin-rudder configuration and appear to be armed with air-to-air missiles. Two
SAM launchers, and some kind of gun-looks like a Gatling gun-mounted on a
tracked vehicle."

"That's a Zulu-Sierra-Uniform Three-Zero, Beagle.
They're very bad news. We want to know all about those bastards. How many of
them?"

"Only one, located on the grassy triangle a few hundred
yards west of the terminal building."

"Are the fighters together or dispersed?"

"Dispersed, two on each runway. There's a small van
with each pair, plus five or six soldiers. I estimate a hundred troops here,
with two armored vehicles and nine trucks. They're patrolling the airport
perimeter, and there are several machine-gun emplacements. The Russians also
seem to be using the local short-haul airliners for moving troops around. We've
seen soldiers boarding the little twin-prop birds. I've counted four flights
today. We have not seen a Russian chopper since yesterday."

"How's Reykjavik city look?" Doghouse asked.

"It's hard to see into the streets. We can look down a
valley towards the airport, but we can only see down a few streets. One armored
vehicle is visible in there parked, like, at an intersection. Troops are just
hanging around, like cops or something at every intersection we can see. If I
had to guess, I'd say most of their troops are around Reykjavik and Keflavik.
Not many civilians around, and almost no civilian traffic. There's a lot of
movement on the main roads, both along the coast to our west, and also east on
Route 1. It's all back-and-forth traffic, like they're patrolling. We've
counted a total of fifty-some trips, split about even on the two highways. One
other thing. We saw some Russians using a civilian vehicle. We haven't seen a
jeep yet, except a few of ours on the airport grounds. The Russians have
jeeps-their kind, I mean-right? I think they've commandeered the people's
four-by-fours. That's practically the national vehicle here, and a lot of them
are moving around on the roads."

"Any more incoming transport flights?"

"Five. We have clear skies, and we can watch them going
in towards Keflavik. Four were IL-76s, and the other one looked kind of like a
C-130. I don't know the designation for that one."

"Are the fighters flying?"

"We saw one take off two hours ago. I'd say they have a
patrol up, and have fighters here and Keflavik both. That's a guess, but I'll
bet money on it. I'd also say the fighters we're looking at can roll off in
less than five minutes. Looks a lot like a hot-pad alert status."

"Okay, copy that, Beagle. How is your situation?"

"We're pretty well concealed, and the sarge has two
escape routes scouted. We haven't seen the Russians beat any bushes yet. Mostly
they seem to be hanging in populated areas and on the roads. If they start
heading this way, we'll be bugging out."

"Exactly right, Beagle. We will probably be ordering
you off that hill soon anyway. You're doing good, boy. Hang in there.
Out."

SCOTLAND

"The kid's doing all right," the major said. He
was in an awkward position-an American officer in a NATO communications post
run by Brit intelligence types who were evenly split on Edwards's reliability.

"I'd say he's doing bloody marvelously," nodded
the senior Brit. He'd lost an eye, quite some time ago by the look of it, but
was still one tough looking bastard, the major thought. "Notice how he
discriminates between what his observations and opinions are."

"Weather forecaster," snorted another. "We
must get some professionals in there. How quickly can we whistle some up?"

"Perhaps by tomorrow. The Navy wants to put them in by
submarine, though, and I agree. A bit dicey for a parachute infiltration, you
know. Iceland's covered with rocks, the place is made to break ankles and legs.
Then there's the Soviet fighters. No hurry on putting troops there, is it?
We've got to reduce their air assets first and generally make life as difficult
for them as we can."

"That starts tonight," the major said.
"Nordic Hammer Phase Two will hit around the local sunset time."

"Hope it works better than Phase One did, old
boy."

STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND

"So how are things going up here?" Toland asked
his Royal Air Force counterpart. Right before boarding the flight he'd sent the
telegram to Marty: I'M ALL RIGHT. ON THE BEACH FOR A WHILE. LOVE. He hoped that
would reassure her. Probably the news of the carrier battle was already in the
papers.

"Could be better. We've lost eight Tornados trying to
assist the Norwegians. We're about down to a bare minimum for local defense,
and Ivan's begun to attack our northern radar installations. Sorry about what
happened to your aircraft carrier, but I must say we're very happy indeed to
have you chaps with us for a bit."

Nimitz's interceptors and radar birds were split among three
RAF bases. The maintenance crews were still arriving by transport aircraft, and
some hitch had developed with the missiles, but the F-14s each carried a full
load for one engagement, and they could use RAF Sparrows to reload. Operating
off a land base, the fighter could carry a larger load of fuel and ordnance,
packing a heavier punch than off a ship. The fighter crews were in a foul
humor. Having used their aircraft and precious missiles to kill drones, they
had returned to the formation to see the fearful results of the mistake. The
total loss of life was still uncertain, but scarcely two hundred men had
escaped from Saipan, and only a thousand from Foch. In terms of casualties this
had been the bloodiest defeat in the history of the United States Navy, with
thousands of men gone and not a single kill to offset the losses. Only the
French had scored against the Backfires, succeeding with twenty-year-old
Crusaders where the vaunted Tomcats had failed.

Toland sat in on their first briefing, conducted by the RAF.
The fighter pilots were absolutely silent. He had trouble gauging their mood.
No jokes. No whispered remarks. No smiles. They knew that the error had not
been theirs, that it was not their fault at all, but that didn't seem to
matter. They were shaken by what had happened to their ship.

As was he. Toland's mind kept coming back to the image of
the four-inch-thick flight deck steel bent into the sky like cellophane, a
blackened cavern below it where the hangar deck used to be. The rows of
bags-crewmen who had died aboard the world's most powerful warship . . .

"Commander Toland?" An airman tapped him on the
shoulder. "Would you come with me, please?" The two men walked to the
operations room. Bob noted instantly that a new raid was being plotted. The
operations officer, a flight lieutenant, motioned for Toland to join him.

"One regiment, perhaps less. One of your EP-3s is
snooping up there and caught their radio chatter while they were refueling
north of Iceland. They'll be going for one of these convoys, we think."

"You want the Tomcats to ambush them on the way home?
The timing's going to be tricky."

"Extremely. Another complication. They will use Iceland
as a navigational check and a secure assembly point. We know Ivan has fighters
there, and now it's reported that he has fighters operating from these two
airfields on Iceland."

"Is the source for this something called Beagle?"

"Ah, you've heard about that one. Yes."

"What kind of fighters?"

"Twin tails, is what your chap reported. Could be
MiG-25s, -29s, or -31s."

"Fulcrums," Toland said. "The others are
interceptors. Didn't the B-52s get a look at them?" The briefing he'd just
left had gone over the Air Force mission against Keflavik. More good news to
cheer the troops up.

"Evidently not a good one, and superficially they are
quite similar. I agree they're probably Fulcrums, and the sensible thing for
Ivan to do is have the fighters establish a safe corridor for his
bombers."

"They might have to tank coming back . . . go for the
tankers?"

"We've thought of that. But they have a million square
miles of ocean to use." The area on the chart was obvious. "The
timing for that will be damned near impossible, but we think it would be worth
the effort some time in the future. For the moment our primary concern is air
defense. After that, we think Ivan may be planning an amphibious operation for
Norway. If his surface fleet sorties, it's our job to hammer it."

USS PHARRIS

"Raid warning, skipper," the executive officer
said. "There's about twenty-five Backfires downbound, target
unknown."

"Well, they won't be going after the carrier group, not
with twenty-five aircraft now that they're under NATO fighter cover. Where are
they now?"

"Probably over Iceland. Three to five hours off. We're
not the biggest convoy in range, but we are the most exposed."

"On the other hand, if they go for all those
independents out there, they can hunt undefended ships in open ocean. But I
wouldn't. Our ships are carrying war materiel . . ." The convoy had only
five SAM-equipped ships. A ripe target.

GRAFARHOLT, ICELAND

"Contrails, Doghouse, we have contrails overhead, looks
like twenty or so. Passing overhead right now."

"Can you get an ID?"

"Negative. Large aircraft with no engines visible on
the wings, but I can't be sure of the type. They're pretty high, heading south.
Can't gauge the speed, either-no sonic booms, though if they were busting Mach
1, we should have heard it by now."

"Repeat your count," Doghouse ordered.

"I count twenty-one sets of contrails, two-one sets,
heading about one-eight-zero. All the fighters at Reykjavik lifted off and went
north about thirty minutes before they passed overhead. They still haven't
landed back here yet, but we do not know where they are. The bombers do not
appear to be escorted. Nothing else new to report."

"Roger, Beagle. Let us know when the fighters land.
Might be nice to get a feel for their cycle time. Out." The major turned
to his sergeant. "Get that one out in the printer right now. Confirm the
one-regiment Backfire raid downbound, over Reykjavik right now, estimated
course one-eight-zero. Possibly with fighter escort . . . yeah, better put that
in, too."

The NATO communications center was about the only thing
working as planned. The communications satellites in their as-yet unreachable
orbits over the equator were supplying information to units all over the world,
and here in Scotland was one of the main "nodes," military parlance for
a high-tech telephone exchange.

USS PHARRIS

A good day for contrails, Morris saw. Just the right mixture
of temperature and humidity at high altitude, it would cause condensation in
the hot exhaust from aircraft engines. They could see the tracks of air traffic
crossing the Atlantic. The big twenty-power binoculars usually kept on the
bridge wings for surface lookout work had been moved to the flying bridge atop
the forward superstructure, and his lookouts were using them to identify the
aircraft. They were mainly looking for Bears, the Soviet search aircraft that
scouted targets for the Backfires.

Everyone was tense, and no relief was in sight. The
submarine threat was bad enough, but with the carrier group savaged the day
before, the convoy was virtually naked to air attack. They were too far at sea
for any hope of land-based fighter protection. Pharris had only the most
rudimentary air defenses. She could barely protect herself and was of no use
whatever to anyone else. The ships equipped with surface-to-air missiles were
now assembling in line on the north side of the convoy, twenty miles south of
the frigate, while Pharris continued her antisubmarine search. All the frigate
could do was keep watch on her threat-warning instruments and radio any data
developed. They were sure that Ivan would be using his own Big Bulge search
radars aboard the Bears to locate and classify the target. The convoy
commander's plan was to use the SAM-ships as an additional row of targets,
formed up just like the merchantmen. With luck, an especially curious Bear
might mistake them for unarmed ships and be lured in for a visual search. A
long shot, it was the only card they had to play . . .

"Contact! We have a Big Bulge radar bearing
zero-zero-nine. Signal strength is low."

"Miss us, you bastard," the tactical action
officer breathed.

"Not much chance of that," Morris said. "Get
the data to the escort commander."

The Bear was on a southerly heading, using its radar only
two minutes out of every ten as it approached the convoy. Soon another was
detected slightly to the west. Plotting teams estimated their positions, and a
report was sent via satellite to CINCLANTFLT in Norfolk with an urgent request
for assistance. Norfolk receipted their message; ten minutes later they learned
that no help was available.

Pharris manned her gun mount. The point-defense missile
system and Gatling gun radar aft were switched to standby. Other radar was kept
off. The radar operators in the combat information center sat nervously at
their posts, fingering their switches while listening to the ESM reports and
stealing an occasional look at the plot.

"Both of them probably have us now."

Morris nodded. "Next come the Backfires."

The captain thought of the battles he had studied at the
naval academy-early in World War II, when the Japanese fleet had had air
superiority, or when the Germans had used long-range Condors to circle convoys,
radioing their positions to any interested party, and not a thing the Allies
back then could do about. He'd never expected to be in the same fix. The same
tactical situation repeating itself after forty years? It was absurd, Morris
told himself. Absurd and terrifying.

"We have a visual sight on a Bear, just over the
horizon at two-eight-zero," the talker said.

"Director, use your optics to track the target
aft," the tactical action officer said at once. He looked over to Morris.
"Maybe he'll fly close enough for a shot."

"Don't light off any radars just yet. He might just
wander into somebody's missile envelope if he's not careful."

"No way he'll be that dumb."

"He will try to evaluate the convoy defenses,"
Morris said quietly. "He can't have them visually yet, not quite yet. Then
for a while all he'll be able to see is bumps with wakes behind them. Not easy
to identify a ship from an airplane, mister. Let's see just how curious this
guy is . . ."

"Aircraft just changed course," the talker
reported. "Turning east towards us."

"Air action starboard! Right standard rudder. All ahead
full! Come to new course one-eight-zero," Morris ordered immediately. He
turned south to lure the Bear closer to the SAM ships. "Illuminate the
target. Weapons free! Engage when he gets within range."

Pharris heeled hard to the left as she changed course.
Forward, the five-inch gun mount rotated clockwise as the ship brought her stem
across the target bearing. As soon as the gun mount was unmasked, firecontrol
radars gave it a target solution, and the long-barrel gun elevated to thirty
degrees and locked on the target. The point-defense missile mount on the fantail
did the same.

"Target is at thirty thousand feet, range fifteen miles
and closing."

The escort commander still had not authorized a missile
launch. Better to have Ivan shoot his missiles first, before he knew what lay
in his path. Data from the carrier battle was already out to the fleet. The big
Russian air-to-surface missiles were not especially hard targets to hit, since
they ran straight for their targets, though you did have to react in a hurry:
they were mighty fast. He figured that the Bear was still doing a target
evaluation and did not yet know the strength of the escort force. The longer he
was kept in the dark, the better, because the Backfires would not have much
time to loiter this far from their bases. And if the Bear came in just a little
closer . . .

"Commence firing!" the TAO shouted.

Pharris's gun mount went to full-automatic mode, firing a
round every two seconds. The Bear was barely within range of her gun, and there
was scant chance of a kill, but it was time to give him something to worry
about.

The first five rounds fell short, exploding harmlessly a
mile from the Bear, but the next three came closer, one exploding only two
hundred yards from his left wing. The Soviet pilot instinctively turned right
to evade. That was a mistake. He didn't know that the nearest row of
"merchantmen" carried missiles.

Seconds later, two missiles launched and the Bear
immediately dove to evade, a shower of chaff in her wake as she headed right
for Pharris, which gave the frigate's gun crew another chance to score a kill.
They fired off twenty new rounds as the plane approached. Perhaps two were
close enough to damage the bomber, but there was no visible result. The
missiles came in next, tiny white darts trailing columns of gray smoke. One
missed and detonated in the chaff cloud, but the second detonated a hundred
yards away from the bomber. The warhead expanded explosively like a
watchspring, breaking into thousands of fragments, and several ripped into the
Bear's port wing. The massive propJet lost power in one engine and suffered
major wing damage before the pilot regained control just outside Pharris's gun
range. She headed off north, trailing smoke.

The other Bear remained discreetly out of everyone's range.
The raid commander had just learned a lesson that he'd pass on to his
regimental intelligence officer.

"More radars coming on. Down Beats!" warned the
ESM technician. "I count ten-count is increasing. Fourteen-eighteen!"
the air-search radar operator sang out next.

"Radar contacts, bearing zero-three-four, range
one-eight-zero miles. I count four targets, now five-six targets. Course two-one-zero,
speed six hundred knots."

"Here come the Backfires," TAO said.

"Radar contact!" came the next call.
"Vampire! Vampire! We have inbound missiles."

Morris cringed inwardly. The escorts all switched on their
radar transmitters. Missiles trained out on the incoming targets. But Pharris
was not part of that game. Morris ordered his ship to flank speed, turning
north to race away from the missiles' probable target area.

"The Backfires are turning back. The Bear is holding
position. We have some radio chatter. Now twenty-three inbound missiles.
Bearing changing on all contacts," TAO said. "They're all headed for
the convoy. Looks like we're in the clear."

Morris could hear the crew in the Combat Information Center
take one deep collective breath. He watched the radar display with marginal
relief. The missiles were streaking in from the northeast, and the SAMs were
coming up to meet them. The convoy was again ordered to scatter, the
merchantmen racing away from the center of the target. What followed had an
eerie resemblance to an arcade game. Of the twenty-three Soviet-launched
missiles, nine broke through the SAMs and dove into the convoy. They hit seven
merchantmen.

All seven were lost. Some disintegrated at once under the
hammering impact of the thousand-kilogram warheads. The others lingered long
enough for their crews to escape with their lives. The convoy had left the
Delaware with thirty ships. Only twenty were left, and there was almost fifteen
hundred miles of open ocean between them and Europe.

GRAFARHOLT, ICELAND

Two Backfires ran short of fuel and decided to land at
Keflavik. Behind them was the damaged Bear. It circled Reykjavik waiting for
the Backfires to clear the runway. Edwards reported it in as a propeller
aircraft with a damaged engine. The sun was low over the northwestern horizon,
and the Bear gleamed yellow against the cobalt-blue sky.

"Stay on the air, Beagle," Doghouse ordered. Three
minutes later, Edwards saw why.

This time there was no standoff jamming to warn the Soviets.
Eight FB-111s swept in over the rocks, southwest from the island's rocky
center. They skimmed down the bottom of Selja Valley in elements of two, their
green and gray camouflage making them almost invisible to the fighters circling
overhead. The lead pair turned due west, with another pair half a mile behind
it. The remaining four went south around Mt. Hus.

"Holy shit." Smith saw them first, two fast-moving
tail fins to the south. Just as Edwards found them, the lead aircraft popped up
and launched a pair of TV-guided bombs. The wingman did the same, and both
attackers turned north. The four bombs homed in on the transformer station
below them, and all landed within the fence perimeter. As though a single
switch had been thrown, every light in view went out. The second pair of
Aardvarks roared low over Highway 1, blazing over the rooftops of Reykjavik to
line up on their target. The leader lofted his own smart-bombs, and his wingman
broke left for the airport tankfarm on the waterfront. Moments later, the
control tower exploded, along with a hangar, and Rockeye cluster-bombs blew the
fuel tanks apart. Caught by surprise, the Russian gun and missile crews fired
too late.

The defense troops at Keflavik were surprised, too, first by
the sudden loss of electrical power, then by the bombers, which arrived only a
minute later. Here, too, the control tower and hangars were the primary
targets, and most came apart under the impact of two-thousand-pound bombs. The
second team found two parked Backfires and a missilelaunch vehicle for their
Rockeyes to hit, and sprinkled more softballsized bomblets over the runways and
taxiways. Meanwhile, the FB-111s continued west on afterburner, with gunfire
and missiles chasing them-and fighters. Six Fulcrums dove for the retreating
Varks, whose protective jammers filled the sky with electronic noise.

Free of their ordnance loads, the American bombers blazed
away at seven hundred knots, a scant hundred feet over the wavetops, but the
Soviet fighter commander would not turn away from this one. He'd seen what they
had done to Keflavik, and he was furious at having been caught unaware despite
having his fighters aloft. The Fulcrums had a slight speed advantage and closed
the gap slowly. They were over a hundred miles offshore when their missile radars
burned through the Americans' jamming. Two fighters immediately launched
missiles, and the American aircraft jinked up, then down to lose them. One
FB-111 took a hit and cartwheeled into the sea, and the Soviets were preparing
a second volley when their threat receivers came on.

Four American Phantoms were waiting in ambush for them. In a
moment eight Sparrow missiles were diving toward the Fulcrums. Now it was time
for the Soviets to run. The MiG-29s wheeled and ran back for Iceland on
afterburner. One was felled by a missile, and another damaged. The battle had
lasted all of five minutes.

"Doghouse, this is Beagle. The electrical station is
gone! The Varks knocked it flat, guy. One hell of a fire at the southwest edge
of the airport, and looks like the tower got chopped in half. Two hangars look
shot up. I see two, maybe three burning aircraft, civilian types. The fighters
got off half an hour ago. Damn, that tank farm is burning like a sonuvagun!
Lots of people running around on the ground below us." As Edwards watched,
a dozen vehicles with headlights blazing ran back and forth over the roads
below him. Two stopped a kilometer away and dismounted troops. "Doghouse,
I think it's time for us to leave this hill."

"That's a roger, Beagle. Head northeast towards Hill
482. We'll expect to hear from you in ten hours. Get moving, boy! Out."

"Time to leave, sir." Smith tossed the lieutenant
his pack and motioned for the privates to move. "Looks like we can score
one for the good guys."

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

The MiGs landed on the still undamaged runway one-eight, the
base's longest. They had barely stopped rolling when ground crews began the
process of turning them around for further combat operations. The colonel was
surprised to see the base commander still alive.

"How many did you get, Comrade Colonel?"

"Only one, and they got one of mine. Didn't you get
anything on radar?" the colonel demanded.

"Not a thing. They hit Reykjavik first. Two groups of
aircraft, they came in from the north. The bastards must have flown between the
rocks," the major snarled. He pointed to the big mobile radar that sat in
the open between two runways. "They missed it completely. Amazing."

"We must move it. Someplace high, very high. We'll
never get an airborne radar, and unless we improve radar warning, this
low-level business will eat us up. Find a good hilltop. How badly are our
facilities damaged?"

"Many small holes in the runways from these bomblets.
We'll have them all patched in two hours. The loss of the tower will hinder our
ability to operate large numbers of aircraft. When we lost electrical power, we
lost the ability to move fuel through our pipeline, probably lost the local
telephone service." He shrugged. "We can make adjustments, but it's a
major inconvenience. Too much work, too few men. We must disperse the fighters,
and we must make alternate arrangements for fueling. The next target will be
the fuel dumps."

"Did you expect this to be easy, Comrade?" The
colonel looked over at the blazing pyres that only thirty minutes before had
been a pair of Tu22M Backfires. The damaged Bear was just touching down.
"Their timing was too good. They caught us when half my fighters were
escorting a bomber force off the north coast. Luck, perhaps, but I do not
believe in luck. I want ground troops to check for enemy infiltrators around
all the airports. And I want better security arrangements. I-what the hell is
that?"

A Rockeye bomblet lay on the concrete not twenty feet from
them. The major took a plastic flag from his jeep and set it near the bomb.

"The Americans set some for delayed detonation. My men
are already searching for them. Be at ease, Comrade, all your fighters have
landed safely. Your dispersal areas are clear."

The colonel drew back a few feet. "What do you do with
them?"

"We've already practiced this. We'll use a specially
fitted bulldozer to push them off the concrete. Some will explode, some won't.
Those that do not go off of their own accord will be detonated by a marksman
with a rifle."

"The tower?"

"Three men were on duty. Good men." The major
shrugged again. "You must excuse me. I have work to do."

The colonel took a last look at the bomblet before walking
toward his fighters. He'd underestimated the major.

ICELAND

"There's a light on our hill," Garcia said.
Everyone dropped to the ground. Edwards got next to the sergeant.

"Some bastard just lit a cigarette," Smith
observed sourly. He'd finished his last one several hours before and was going
through withdrawal symptoms. "Now you see why we're carrying our trash
with us?"

"They're looking for us?" Edwards asked.

"Figures. That attack was pretty cute. They'll wonder
if the airedales had any help. I'm surprised they didn't do it sooner. Guess
they were pretty busy with other stuff."

"Think they can see us?" Edwards didn't like that
idea.

"From two miles? Pretty dark for that, and if they're
smoking, they're being pretty casual. Relax, Lieutenant. It isn't all that easy
to find four guys. Lots of hills to check out on this rock. We want to be
careful where we walk. Keep off the ridges, like. Even if they got low-light
gear, we won't be easy to see if we keep to the valleys. Let's move it out,
troops, and keep low."

USS PHARRIS

One last merchant was burning. Her crew had abandoned ship
two hours before, but still she burned on the western horizon. More deaths,
Morris thought. Only about half of the crews had been saved, and there wasn't
time for a more careful search. The convoy had sailed without a designated
rescue ship. The helicopters had pulled many out of the water, but most of them
were still needed to hunt submarines. He held a dispatch saying that Orions out
of Lajes had prosecuted and probably killed an Echo-class missile submarine in
their path. Some good news, but intelligence reported indications of two more.

The loss of Iceland was a disaster whose dimensions were
only now becoming apparent. The Soviet bombers had a clear lane to reach into
the trade route. Their submarines were racing through the Denmark Strait even
as the NATO navies were trying to position their submarines to reform the
barrier they had lost-the barrier upon which the convoys depended. The Air
Force and Navy would soon try to rearrange fighter coverage to harass the
Backfires, but those measures were an stopgaps. Until Iceland was fully neutralized,
or better yet retaken, the Third Battle of the North Atlantic hung in an uneven
balance.

At the Pacific fleet bases of San Diego and Pearl Harbor,
darkened ships stood out to sea. Once in open ocean they all headed south
toward Panama.

23 - Returns

USS PHARRIS

Things had settled down again. A very relative term: the
Backfires were still coming down the gap over Iceland, but they'd hit another
convoy this afternoon, killing eleven merchantmen in the process. All the
eastbound convoys were angling south, trading a longer voyage to Europe for
reduction of the air threat. As bad as losses were to this point-nearly sixty
ships had already been sunk-a routing south at least meant the Soviet bombers
could carry only one missile instead of two.

The strain was beginning to tell on everyone. Morris's crew
had been "port and starboard" for almost a week now, four hours on
duty, four hours off. Sleep patterns had been broken up. People didn't eat
proper meals. Crucial maintenance requirements cut into what sleep allocations
his men had. On top of that was the knowledge that a submarine or aircraft
attack could come at any time. The work was still getting done, but Morris
noted that his men were becoming terse and ill-tempered. People were beginning
to trip over doorsills, a sure sign of fatigue. More serious mistakes would
soon follow. The relationship between fatigue and errors was as certain as
gravity. In another day or so he hoped a solid routine would establish itself,
something for his men to adjust to. There were signs of this, and his chiefs
were telling him not to worry. Morris worried.

"Bridge, Combat. Sonar contact, possible submarine,
bearing zero-zero-nine."

"Here we go again," the conning officer said. For
the twenty-fourth time on this voyage, Pharris's crew raced to battle stations.

It took three hours this time. No Orions were available for
them, and the escorts pooled their helicopters to track down the submarine, an
directed by Morris and his CIC crew. This submarine driver really knew his
business. At the first suspicion that he had been detected-perhaps his sonar
had detected a helicopter overhead or heard the splash of a falling sonobuoy-he
went deep and began a confusing series of sprints and drifts, porpoising over
and under the layer, working hard to break contact-toward the convoy. This one
wasn't interested in running away. The submarine disappeared and reappeared on
their tactical plot, always closing but never revealing his position clearly
enough for a shot.

"Gone again," the antisubmarine-warfare officer
said pensively. A sonobuoy dropped ten minutes earlier had detected a weak
signal, held it for two minutes, then lost it. "This guy's
beautiful."

"And too close," Morris said. If the submarine was
continuing south, he was now at the edge of the frigate's active sonar range.
Up to now, Pharris had not revealed herself. The sub's captain would know
surface ships were about from the presence of the helicopters, but it wasn't
likely that he suspected a frigate only ten miles south of his position.

Morris looked up at the ASW officer. "Let's update our
temperature profile."

Thirty seconds later they dropped a bathythermograph probe.
The instrument measured water temperature and reported it to a display in the
sonar compartment. Water temperature was the most important environmental
condition affecting sonar performance. Surface ships checked it periodically,
but a submarine could do it continuously-yet another edge that went with a
submarine.

"There!" Morris pointed. "The gradient's a
lot stronger now and this guy's exploiting it. He's staying out of the deep
channel, probably doing his sprints on top of the layer instead of under it
where we expect. Okay . . ."

The helicopters continued to drop buoys, and the brief
glimpses they got were of a target heading south, toward Pharris. Morris waited
ten minutes.

"Bridge, Combat, left standard rudder, come to new
course zero-one-one," Morris ordered, pointing his ship at the submarine's
estimated position. The frigate was doing five knots, moving quietly on the
calm seas. The CIC crew watched the heading readout on the aft bulkhead change
slowly from the easterly heading.

The tactical display was useless. Confused by many brief
reports from sonobuoys, most of which were probably false signals to begin
with, the computer-generated estimate for the submarine's position covered over
a hundred square miles. Morris walked over to the paper display in the after
comer of the room.

"I think he's right about here." Morris tapped the
chart. "Comments?"

"Running shallow? That's contrary to doctrine,"
ASW pointed out. Soviet submariners were supposed to stick with established
doctrine, the fleet intelligence reports said.

"Let's find out. Yankee-search."

The ASW officer gave the order at once. Yankee-search meant
turning on the frigate's active sonar and hammering the water to find the sub.
Morris was taking a chance. If the submarine was as close as he thought, then
he was advertising his own ship's location and inviting a missile attack that
his point-defense systems were ill-equipped to stop. The sonar operator watched
his screen intently. The first five pings came up blank as the sonar beam swept
west-to-east. The next one painted a bright dot on the screen.

"Contact-positive sonar contact, direct path, bearing
zero-one-four, range eleven thousand six hundred yards. Evaluate as probable
submarine."

"Nail him," Morris ordered.

The solid-fuel ASROC booster ignited, blasting clear of the
ship and curving across the sky with a trail of pale gray smoke. The rocket
burned out in three seconds, coasting through the sky like a bullet. A thousand
feet over the water, the torpedo separated from the booster, retarded by a
parachute in its fall toward the water.

"He's changed course, sir," the sonar operator
warned. "Target is turning and increasing speed. I-there's the fish, we
have the torp in the water and pinging. Dropped in pretty close."

The tactical action officer was ignoring this. Three
helicopters were converging on the target datum point now. There was a good
chance the torpedo would miss, and the task now was to pin the contact down. He
ordered a right turn, allowing the frigate's passive sonar array to track in on
the submarine, which was moving swiftly now to evade the torpedo, and making a
lot of noise. The first helicopter arrived and dropped a buoy.

"Twin screws and cavitation noise. Sounds like a
Charlie at full speed, sir," a petty officer announced. "I think the
torp may have him."

The torpedo switched from ping-and-listen to continuous
pinging, chasing after the racing submarine, arcing downward. The weapon
momentarily lost the sub as she passed through the thermocline layer, then
reacquired when it too entered the colder deep water, rapidly closing the
distance. The submarine loosed a noisemaker, but it malfunctioned. Another was
loaded into the launcher. Too late. The torpedo struck the submarine on her
port screw and exploded.

"All right!" hooted a petty officer on the sonar
crew. "We have warhead detonation. We got the sucker!"

"We have impact. We have detonation," confirmed a
helo crew. "Stand by. Target engines have not stopped completely . . .
additional propulsion noises-clanking. Air blowing, he's blowing tanks. Coming
up, target is coming up. We have bubbles on the surface. Hot damn, there he
is!"

The Charlie's bow broke the surface six miles from the
frigate. Three helicopters circled the wounded vessel like wolves, and Pharris
turned north to close the target, her five-inch gun tracking it. It wasn't
necessary. The forward hatch opened and men began scrambling out. More appeared
on the sail, jumping overboard as the submarine's engine room filled with
water. A total of ten got off before the submarine slid backward below the
waves. Another appeared on the surface a few seconds later, but no more.

The helicopters dropped life jackets to the men in the
water. The helo with the rescue hoist aboard managed to lift two men before the
frigate arrived on the scene. Morris supervised the operation from the bridge.
The motor whaleboat was swiftly launched, and the rescue was an easy one. The
Russian crewmen were stunned and did not resist. The helicopters guided the
boat to each man, carefully searching the area for more. All eleven were
recovered and the whaleboat returned to the drop lines. Pharris's chief
boatswain supervised the operation, an ensign standing quietly at his side.

No one had seriously considered this possibility. A torpedo
hit on a submarine was supposed to kill her entirely. Prisoners, Morris thought
to himself. What the hell am I supposed to do with prisoners? He had to decide
where to keep them, how to treat them. How to interrogate them -did he have
anyone aboard who spoke Russian? The captain turned the conn over to his
executive officer and hurried aft.

Armed crewmen were already there, holding their M-14 rifles
awkwardly as they looked down with great curiosity at the whaleboat. The boat
crew secured the hoist lines to the lift points, and the seaman on the winch
lifted the boat up into the davits.

The Soviets were not an impressive lot, many of them clearly
in shock from their near escape from death. Morris counted three officers, one
of them probably the captain. He whispered a quick command to Bosun Clarke.

The chief had his armed party step back, and took the
whistle from his pocket. As the whaleboat settled into place, he blew a
three-tone note on his whistle and saluted the Soviet captain like an arriving
dignitary.

The Russian's reaction was one of astonishment. Morris
stepped forward to help him off the boat.

"Welcome aboard, Captain. I'm Captain Morris, United
States Navy." Ed looked around briefly to see the incredulous expressions
on his crew's faces. But his ploy failed. The Russian said something in
Russian, and either spoke no English or had the presence of mind to pretend he
didn't. Someone else would have to handle the interrogation. Morris told his
bosun to carry on. The Russians were taken below for a medical check. For the
moment, they'd be kept under guard in sickbay. The bosun hurried back for a
moment.

"Skipper, what the hell was that all about?" Chief
Boatswain's Mate Clarke inquired.

"They've probably been told that we'd shoot them in the
head. I read a book once that said the most effective technique-look, there was
this German, the guy specialized in getting information out of our guys in
World War Two, okay? He was good at it, and what he did was treat our guys
decently. Hell, they sponsored him to come over after the war, and now he's an
American citizen. Separate the officers from the enlisted, and the senior EMS
from the juniors. Keep 'em separate. Then make sure they're kept comfortable.
Feed 'em, give 'em cigarettes, make 'em feel safe. If you happen to know anyone
aboard who has a bottle, get it, and give our guests a couple of stiff drinks.
Everybody gets new clothes. We keep theirs. Send all of it to the wardroom.
We'll see if they have anything valuable. Make sure they're treated nice, and
just maybe we can get one or two to spill his guts."

"You got it, Skipper." The chief went away shaking
his head. At least he'd get to paint a whole submarine on the pilothouse this
time.

Morris went back to the pilothouse. He ordered his men to
secure from general quarters, and the frigate to return to her patrol station.
Next he called up the escort commander and reported on the prisoners.

"Pharris, " the Commodore replied. "You are
directed to paint a gold 'A' on your ASROC launcher. Well done to all aboard,
Ed. You're the champs for this crossing. I'll get back to you on the prisoners.
Out."

The captain turned around to see that the bridge watch had
not left. They'd all heard the Commodore on the radio. Their fatigue was gone,
and the grins directed at Morris meant more to him than the words of his boss.

KIEV, THE UKRAINE

Alekseyev looked over the intelligence material on his desk.
His boss was in Moscow for a high-level briefing, but this data was--should be,
he corrected himself-little different from what his commander was hearing.

"Things are not going well in Germany?" Captain
Sergetov asked.

"No. We were supposed to have reached the outskirts of
Hamburg by H+36. A day and a half, the plan called for. Instead we're not quite
there yet, and Third Shock Army has taken murderous losses from NATO
aircraft." He paused, staring at the map. "If I were the NATO commander,
I'd counterattack again, right there."

"Perhaps they are unable to do so. Their first
counterattack was repulsed."

"At the cost of a broken tank division and sixty
aircraft. Victories like that we can do without. The picture in the south is
scarcely better. The NATO forces are trading space for time, and doing it very
well. Their ground forces and tactical aircraft are operating over the same
ground they've practiced on for thirty years. Our losses are nearly double the
estimates, and we can't sustain that." Alekseyev leaned back. He chided
himself for being defeatist. It was mainly a manifestation of his desire to
join the action. He was certain, as any general would be certain, that he could
do things better.

"What about NATO losses?"

"Heavy, we think. They have been remarkably profligate
in their weapons expenditures. The Germans have staked too much on defending
Hamburg, and it has to be costing them dearly. If I could not counterattack in
their place, I would withdraw. A city is not worth breaking the balance of your
army. We learned that lesson at Kiev-"

"Excuse me, Comrade General, what about
Stalingrad?"

"A somewhat different situation, Captain. Remarkable,
nonetheless, how history can repeat itself," Alekseyev muttered, studying
the map on the wall. He shook his head. West Germany had too much in the way of
road communications for that to work. "The KGB reports that NATO has two,
at most three weeks' supply of munitions left. That will be the decisive
factor."

"What of our supplies and fuel?" the young captain
asked. His answer was a scowl.

ICELAND

At least there was water. The streams were fed by glaciers
that lay in the center of the island-water that had fallen as snow over a
thousand years before, long before atmospheric pollution, and been compressed to
ice. When finally it melted to fill the rocky streams, it turned back into
water of crystalline purity and marvelous taste, but absolutely no nutritional
value. It was also ice cold, and fords were not easily found.

"Down to one day's rations, Lieutenant," Smith
observed as they finished off their meal.

"Yeah, we'll have to think that one over." Edwards
assembled his trash. Garcia collected it all for burial. If there had been a
way to cover their footprints in the dirt, Smith would have had them doing that
too.

It wasn't easy. As Edwards assembled his radio, he listened
to muttered Spanish curses and the sound of a folding shovel slamming against
the loose rocks that passed for soil atop Hill 482.

"Doghouse, this is Beagle, and we're running out of
food, over."

"Sorry to bear that, Beagle. Maybe we'll have some
pizzas sent out."

"You funny bastard," Edwards said without toggling
the Transmit key. "What do you want us to do this time?"

"Have you been spotted by anyone?"

"We're alive, ain't we? Negative."

"Tell me what you can see."

"Okay, there's a gravel road downhill to the north,
maybe two miles away. Looks like a farm-plowed fields, like, but can't tell
what's growing there. Another sheep farm to the west of us, we passed it coming
here. Lots of sheep. Ten minutes ago we saw a truck on the road heading west.
Haven't seen anything flying yet today, but I suppose that'll change. The only
civilians we've seen have been right by their houses, we haven't even seen
farmers with their sheep, and the farm to the north has no visible activity.
No-say again zero-civilian road traffic. Ivan's got this island shut down,
Doghouse, really shut down. That's about all I can say. Tell those Vark drivers
they really did the job on that powerhouse. Nothing left but a hole in the
ground. We haven't seen an electric light lit since."

"Copy that, Beagle. Okay, your orders are to head north
towards Hvammsfjordur. You need to take a wide detour east to avoid all these
bays I see. We want you there in ten days. Say again ten days, twelve at the
most. You can make it easy. Stay out in the boonies and avoid contact with
anyone. Continue the normal contact schedule and report on anything you see
that may be of interest. Acknowledge."

"Roger, Doghouse, you want us in sight of Hvammsfjordur
at the end of next week, and keep up the usual radio routine. Anything
else?"

"Be careful. Out."

"Hvammsfjordur?" Smith asked- "That's a
hundred miles on a straight line."

"They want us to detour east to avoid contact."

"Two hundred miles--walking over this shit."
Smith's frown was enough to split a rock. "End of next week? Ten or eleven
days?"

Edwards nodded dumbly. He hadn't known it would be that far.

"Gonna be a little tough, Mr. Edwards." The
sergeant pulled a largescale map from his case. "I don't even have cards
for the whole coastline. Damn. Look here, Lieutenant. The ridges and rivers on
this rock come out from the center like the spokes on a wheel, y'see? That
means we climb a lot, and these here ain't little hills. All the low places got
roads, and sure as hell we can't follow no roads, right?" He shook his
head.

Edwards forced a grin. "Can't hack it? I thought you
Marines were in good shape."

Smith was a man who ran five miles every morning. He could
not recall ever seeing this little Air Force wimp out doing roadwork.
"Okay, Mr. Edwards. They say nobody ever drowned in sweat. On your feet,
Marines, we got orders for a little hike." Rodgers and Garcia exchanged a
look. "Mister" was not exactly a term of endearment for an officer,
but Smith figured that insubordination only counted if the officer knew he was
being insulted.

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

The helicopters took time to assemble. The big AN-22
transport had delivered two Mi-24 attack choppers, quite a load even for that
four-engine monster. Another IL-76 flight had delivered the technicians and flight
crews to assemble, service, and fly them. There had been a major oversight in
the plan, the General thought. The one helicopter that had survived the
strafing attack on the first day was now broken down-and of course the broken
part was not one which had been included in their pre-packaged equipment. There
should have been more helicopters. He shrugged eloquently. No plan was ever
perfect. More helicopters would be flown in, plus a few more mobile radar sets
and some additional SAM launchers. The Americans looked to have every intention
of making his tenure on Iceland difficult, and he needed more equipment to
counter that . . .

Then there were those KGB bastards. We have to pacify the
island, they said. As if Iceland wasn't already passive enough. There had been
not a single incident of active resistance yet-not one, the General thought,
remembering his year's service in Afghanistan. Compared with that mountainous
hell, this was paradise itself. But that wasn't good enough for the KGB!
Nekulturny barbarians. A thousand hostages had been taken, only to learn that
there was no jail space to keep them. So my paratroopers must guard the poor,
harmless wretches, using up a whole company of troops, His orders were to
cooperate with the local KGB contingent. One did not cooperate with the KGB, of
course, one was dominated by them. There were KGB officers with his mobile
patrols, to advise, they put it.

General Andreyev was beginning to worry. Crack paratroopers
were not the sort to be good jailers. Had they been ordered to go easily on the
Icelanders, that would be one thing. Instead, their orders forced them to be
harsh, which generated hostility. Some people had actually been heard to cheer
when the last American bombers had come through. Absurd, the General thought.
They had lost electricity but we had lost nothing-and they cheered. Because of
the KGB's orders. What stupidity. An opportunity lost. He considered protesting
his orders to his central command in Moscow, but to what point? An officer who
disliked the KGB was an officer who disliked the Party itself.

He was aroused from his reveries by the whining sound of
turboshaft engines. The first of the Mi-24 Hinds was turning its rotor, testing
its engines. An officer ran toward him.

"Comrade General, with your permission, we are ready
for a test flight. We're doing it light, unarmed. We'll load weapons when we
get back."

"Very well. Captain, just check out the hilltops around
Keflavik and Reykjavik. How long on the second one?" Andreyev asked.

"Two hours."

"Excellent. Good work, Comrade Captain."

A minute later the heavy attack chopper lifted into the air.

"Down and freeze!" Garcia screamed. It didn't come
close to them, but seeing it was enough.

"What kind is it?"

"Hind. It's an attack bird, like the Cobra. Bad news,
Lieutenant. It carries eight troops and a whole shitload of rockets and guns.
An' don't even think about shooting it. Sucker's armored like a damned
tank."

The Mi-24 circled the hill they'd just been on, then
disappeared, heading south to loop over another hill.

"Didn't see us, I guess," Edwards said.

"Let's keep it that way. Keep the radio stowed awhile,
Lieutenant. We can call this one in after we move out a ways, okay?"

Edwards nodded agreement. He remembered a brief on Soviet
helicopters in the Air Force Academy. "We are not afraid of the
Russians," an Afghan had been quoted, "but we are afraid of their
helicopters."

BITBURG, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

Colonel Ellington awoke at six that evening. He shaved and
walked outside, the sun still high in the evening sky. He wondered what mission
they'd have tonight. He was not a bitter man, but to have nearly a quarter of
his crews-men with whom he had worked for two straight years -lost in a week
was a difficult thing to accept. It had been too long since his experience in
Vietnam. He'd forgotten how terrible losses could be. His men could not stand
down a day to mourn their dead and ease the pain, much as they needed to. They
were being carefully rested. Standing orders gave them eight hours of sleep a
day-like night-hunters, they slept only by day.

They were making a difference, however. He was sure of that.
Every night the black and green Frisbees lifted off for some special target or
other, and the Russians still had not figured a counter. The strike cameras
mounted in each aircraft were bringing back pictures that the wing intelligence
officers could scarcely believe. But at such a cost.

Well. The colonel reminded himself that one sortie a day was
a lighter load than the other air crews were bearing, and that the
close-support crews were taking losses equal to his own. Tonight held another
mission. He ordered his brain to occupy itself with that task alone.

The briefings took an hour. Ten aircraft would fly tonight:
two planes each at five targets. As commander he drew the toughest.
Surveillance indicated that Ivan had a previously unsuspected forward fuel dump
at a position west of Wittenburg that was supporting the drive on Hamburg, and
the Germans wanted it taken out. His wingman would go in with Durandals, and
he'd follow with Rockeyes. There would be no supporting aircraft on this one,
and the colonel didn't want jammer aircraft to go in with him. Two of his lost
birds had had such support, and the jamming had merely alerted the defenses.

He examined the topographical maps closely. The land was
flat. Not much in the way of mountains and hills to hide behind, but then he
could skim at treetop level, and that was almost as good. He'd approach from
the east, behind the target. There was a twenty-knot west wind, and if he came
in from leeward, the defenders would be unable to hear his approach until bomb
release . . . probably. They'd egress the area by heading southwest. Total
mission time seventy-five minutes. He computed his necessary fuel load, careful
as always to allow for the drag of his bombs. To the bare-bones fuel
requirements he added five minutes on afterburner in case of air-to-air combat
and ten minutes to orbit Bitburg for landing. Satisfied, he went off for
breakfast. With each bite of toast his mind ran through the mission like a
movie, visualizing every event, every obstacle, every SAM site to be avoided.
He randomly inserted the unexpected. A flight of low-level fighters at the
target, what effect would this have on the mission? What would the target look
like on this approach? If he had to make a second bombing pass, from what
direction? Major Eisly ate with his commander in silence, recognizing the blank
look on his face and running through his own mental checklist.

They headed straight into East Germany for fifty miles
before turning north at Rathenow. Two Soviet Mainstay aircraft were up, a good
distance back from the border and surrounded by agile Flanker interceptors.
Staying well outside the effective range of their radar, the two aircraft flew
low and in tight formation. When they screeched over main roads, it was always
in a direction away from a course to their target They avoided cities, towns,
and known enemy depots where there might be SAMs.

The inertial navigation systems kept track of their progress
on a map display on the pilot's instrument panel. The distance to the target
shrank rapidly as the aircraft curved west.

They flashed over Wittenberg at five hundred knots. The
infrared cameras showed fueling vehicles on the roads heading right for the
target area . . . there! At least twenty tank trucks were visible in the trees
fueling from underground tanks.

"Target in sight. Execute according to plan."

"Roge," acknowledged Shade-Two. "I have them
visual."

The Duke broke left, clearing the way for his wingman to
make the first run. Shade-Two's aircraft was the only one left with the proper
ejector racks for the bulky hard-target munitions.

"Gawd!" The Duke's display showed an SA-11 launcher
right in his flight path, its missiles aimed northwest. One of his aircraft had
learned the hard way that the SA-11 had an infrared homing capacity that no one
had suspected. The colonel reefed his aircraft into a hard right turn away from
the launcher, wondering where the rest of the missile battery's vehicles were.

Shade-Two skimmed over the target. The pilot toggled off his
four bombs and kept heading west. Gunfire rippled across the sky in his wake.
Too late.

The French-made Durandal weapons fell off the ejector racks
and scattered. Once free, they pointed down, and rockets fired to accelerate
the munitions straight at the ground. They were designed to break up concrete
runways and were ideal for underground fuel tanks. The bombs did not explode on
impact. Instead, the hard-steel weapons lanced into the ground, penetrating
several feet before detonating. Three found underground fuel tanks. The
Durandals; exploded upward, breaking open a path for burning fuel to leap into
the air.

It was the next thing to a nuclear detonation. Three white
columns of flame rocketed into the air, spreading like fountains and dropping
fuel for hundreds of yards. Every vehicle in the compound was engulfed in
flame, and only those men near the perimeter escaped with their lives. Rubber
fuel bladders brought to the sight exploded a few seconds later, and a river of
burning diesel and gasoline spread through the trees. In a matter of seconds,
twenty acres of woods were transformed into a fireball that raced skyward,
punctuated by secondary explosions. Ellington's fighter rocked violently as the
shock wave passed.

"Damn," he said quietly. The plan called for him
to use his cluster munitions to ignite what the Durandals had burst open.

"Don't think the Rockeyes are necessary, Duke,"
Eisly observed

Ellington tried to blink away the dots as he turned away,
keeping as low as he could. He found himself flying right down a road.

The Soviet Commander-in-Chief of the Western Theater was
already angry, and what he saw to the east didn't help. He'd just conferred
with the commander of the Third Shock Army at Zarrentin to learn that the
attack had again bogged down within sight of Hamburg. Furious that his most
powerful tank force had failed to achieve its objective, he'd relieved its commander
on the spot and was returning to his own command post. Now he saw what could
only be one of his three major fuel depots rising into the clear sky. The
General cursed and stood, pushing aside the roof panel on his armored command
vehicle. As he blinked his dazzled eyes, a black mass seemed to appear at the
lower edge of the fireball.

What's that? Ellington wondered. His TV display showed four
armored vehicles in a tight column--one of them a SAM launcher! He flicked his
bomb-release controls to Armed and dropped his four Rockeye canisters, then
turned south. His tail-mounted strike cameras recorded what followed.

The Rockeyes split open, distributing their bomblets at a
shallow angle across the road. They exploded on impact.

CINC-West died a soldier's death. His last act was to seize
a machine gun and fire at the aircraft. Four bomblets fell within a few meters
of his vehicle. Their fragments sliced through the light armor, killing
everyone inside even before its fuel tank exploded, adding another fireball to
a sky that had still not returned to darkness.

USS CHICAGO

The submarine came slowly to the surface, spiraling up to
allow her sonar to check the entire area as she rose to antenna depth. His luck
had been bad so far, McCafferty considered, which was not a situation that
encouraged risk taking. As the submarine leveled off beneath the waves, the ESM
mast went up first, sniffing for hostile electronic signals, then the search
periscope. The captain made a quick sweep around the sky, then the surface, his
executive officer closely watching the television readout to back up the skipper's
observations. Everything looked clear. There was a moderate sea running, with
five-foot swells, and the clear blue sky was decorated with fair-weather
cumulus clouds. On the whole, a beautiful day. Except for the war.

"Okay, transmit," McCafferty ordered. His eyes
never left the periscope, which he turned continuously, angling the lens up and
down to look for trouble. A petty officer raised the UHF antenna, and the
"okay to transmit" light blinked on in the radio room aft of the
attack center.

They had been summoned to the surface by an extremely
low-frequency radio message with their call sip, QZB. The senior radioman
powered up his transmitter, keyed out QZB on the UHF satellite broadcast band,
and waited for a reply. There was none. He gave his neighbor a look and
repeated the procedure. Again the satellite missed the signal. The petty
officer took a deep breath and transmitted QZB yet a third time. Two seconds
later the hot printer in the after comer of the room began to print up a coded
reply. The communications officer keyed a command into the cipher machine, and
the clear text came up on another printer.

TOP SECRET

FR: COMSUBLANT

TO: USS CHICAGO

1. REPORT LARGE REDFLT AMPHIBIOUS GRP DEPARTING KOLA
1150Z19JUNE. FORCE COMPOSITION 10-PLUS PHIBS WITH 15-PLUS COMBATANT ESCORT INCL
KIROV, KIEV. HEAVY RPT HEAVY AIR ASW SUPPORT THIS GRP. EXPECT ALSO REDFLT
SS/SSN SUPPORT THIS GRP. WESTERLY COURSE, HIGH SPEED.

2. EVALUATE OBJECTIVE THIS GRP BODO.

3. PROCEED AT BEST SPEED TO 70N 16W.

4. ENGAGE AND DESTROY. REPORT CONTACT IF POSSIBLE BEFORE
ATTACK. OTHER NATO SS/SSN TRAFFIC THISAREA. AIR SUPPORT POSSIBLE BUT NOT RPT
NOT LIKELY AT PRESENT.

5. WILL AMPLIFY LOCATION THIS GRP AS POSSIBLE.

McCafferty read the dispatch without comment, then handed it
to the navigator. "How long to get there at fifteen knots?"

"About eleven hours." The navigator took a pair of
dividers and walked them across the chart. "Unless they're flying, we'll
be there long before they are."

"Joe?" the captain looked at his executive
officer.

"I like it. Right on the hundred-fathom curve, and
water conditions are a little squirrelly there, what with the Gulf Stream
coming in so close and fresh water coming out of the fiords. They won't want to
be too close inshore because of the Norwegian diesel boats, and they won't
stray too far out because of the NATO nucs. If I had to bet, I'd say they'll
come right to us."

"Okay, take her down to nine hundred feet and head
east. Secure from general quarters. Let's get everybody fed and rested."

Ten minutes later, Chicago was on a heading of
zero-eight-one, steaming at fifteen knots. Deep, but in relatively warm water
from the ocean current that begins in the Gulf of Mexico and runs all the way
to the Barents Sea, she enjoyed sonar conditions that made detection by a
surface ship nearly impossible. The water pressure prevented cavitation noises.
Her engines could drive the submarine at this speed with only a fraction of her
total rated power, obviating the need for the reactor pumps. The reactor's
cooling water circulated on natural convection currents, which eliminated the
major source of radiated noise. Chicago was completely in her element, a
noiseless shadow moving through black water.

The crew's mood changed slightly, McCafferty noticed. Now
they had a mission. A dangerous mission, but one they had trained for. Orders
were carried out with calm precision. In the wardroom his tactical officers
reviewed tracking and attack procedures long since memorized, and a pair of
exercises were run on a computer. Charts were examined to predict likely places
for especially bad water conditions in which they might hide. In the torpedo
room two decks below the attack center, sailors ran electronic tests on
green-painted Mk-48 "fish" and the Harpoon missiles in their white
canisters. One weapon showed an electronic fault, and a pair of torpedomen
immediately stripped off an inspection plate to replace a component. Similar
checks were made of the Tomahawk missiles in their vertical launch tubes nested
in the bow. Finally the weapons-control team ran a computer simulation through
the Mk-117 attack director to ensure that it was fully operational. Within two
hours they were sure that every system aboard was operating within expected
limits. The crewmen exchanged hopeful smiles. After all, they reasoned, it
wasn't their fault that no Russian had been dumb enough to come their way, was
it? Just a few days before, hadn't they practically landed on the beach-in
Russia!-without being detected? The Old Man was a real pro, wasn't he?

USS PHARRIS

Dinner was awkward to say the least. The three Russian
officers sat at the end of the table, mindful of the two armed guards ten feet
away, and the cook in the wardroom pantry who kept a large knife conspicuously
in view. The officers were served by a young seaman, a beardless boy of
seventeen who scowled mightily at the Russians as he served the salad.

"So," Morris said cordially, "do any of you
speak English?"

"I do," answered one. "I am instructed my
captain to thank you for rescue our men."

"Tell your captain that war has rules, and so does the
sea. Please tell him also that he showed great skill in his approach."
Morris poured some Thousand Island dressing on his lettuce as the message was
translated. His officers were keeping a close eye on their guests. Morris was
careful to avert his gaze. His remark had the desired effect. A rapid exchange
took place at the other end of the table.

"My captain ask how you find us. We-how you say-get
away from your helicopters, no?"

"Yes, you did," Morris answered. "We did not
understand your operating pattern."

"Then how you find us?"

"I knew you were attacked earlier by the Orion, and
that you ran at high speed to catch up with us. The angle for your attack was
predictable."

The Russian shook his head. "What attack is this? Who
attack us?" He turned to his commander and spoke for thirty seconds.

There's another Charlie out there, Morris thought, if he's
not lying to us. We ought to get someone who speaks Russian to talk to the
crewmen below. Damn, why don't I have one of those?

"My captain says you are mistake in this. Our first
contact with you was from helicopters. We did not expect your ship to be here.
Is this new tactic?"

"No, we've practiced this for some years."

"How you find us, then?"

"You know what a towed-array sonar is? We first
detected you on that, about three hours before we shot at you."

The Russian's eyes went wide. "Your sonar so good as
that?"

"Sometimes." After this translated the Russian
captain spoke what seemed a terse order, and the conversation stopped. Morris
wondered if his radio technicians had wired the microphones into the Russians'
quarters yet. Perhaps what they said among themselves would be useful to fleet
intelligence. Until then he'd continue to make them comfortable. "How is
the food aboard a Soviet submarine?"

"Not same as this," the navigator answered after
conferring with his boss. "Good, but not same. We eat different foods.
More fish, less meat. We have tea, not coffee."

Ed Morris saw that his prisoners were going after their
plates with scarcely concealed gusto. Even our sub guys don't get enough fresh
vegetables, he reminded himself. An enlisted man entered the wardroom and stood
by the door. It was his leading radioman. Morris waved him over.

The sailor handed the captain a message form. THE SPECIAL
JOB IS DONE, it read, and Morris noted that the man had taken the time to print
it up on a standard message format so that no one would suspect what it meant.
The Russians' accommodations were all bugged now. Morris dismissed his man with
a nod and pocketed the form. His bosun had miraculously discovered two bottles
of hard liquor-probably from the chiefs' quarters, but Morris knew better than
to inquire-and these would find their way to the Russians tonight. He hoped the
liquor would loosen tongues.

24 - Rape

USS PHARRIS

Morris didn't wave at the low-flying aircraft, but wanted
to. The French Navy's patrol plane signaled that they were within range of
land-based air cover. It would take a very brave Russian sub skipper to want to
play games here, with a screen of French diesel subs a few miles north of the
convoy lane and several ASW patrol aircraft forming a tricolored umbrella over
the convoy.

The French had also sent out a helicopter to collect the
Russian submariners. They were being flown to Brest for a full interrogation by
NATO intelligence types. Morris didn't envy them the trip. They'd be held by
the French, and he had no doubt that the French Navy was in an evil mood after
the loss of one of its carriers. The tapes his crew had made of their
conversations were also being sent. The Russians had talked among themselves,
aided by the chiefs' liquor, and perhaps their whispered conversations had some
value.

They were about to turn the convoy over to a mixed
British-French escort force and take over a group of forty merchantmen bound
for America. Morris stood on the bridge wing, turning every five minutes or so
to look at the two half and one full silhouettes that the bosun had painted on
both sides of the pilothouse-"No sense having some jerk on the wrong side
of the ship missing them," the bosun had pointed out seriously. Their ASW
tactics had worked fairly well. With Pharris as outlying sonar picket, and
heavy support from the Orions, they had intercepted all but one of the inbound
Russian subs. There had been a lot of skepticism on this point, but the tactic
had worked, by God. But it had to work better still.

Morris knew that things would be getting harder. For the
first trip the Soviets had been able to put no more than a fraction of their
submarines into action against them. Those submarines were now forcing their
way down the Denmark Strait. The NATO sub force trying to block the passage no
longer had the SOSUS line to give them intercept vectors, nor Orions to pounce
on the contacts that submarines could not reach. They would score kills, but
would they score enough? How much larger would the threat be this week? Morris
could see from their return route to the States that they were adding nearly
five hundred miles to the passage by looping far to the south-partially because
of the Backfires, but more now to dilute the submarine threat. Two threats to
worry about. His ship was equipped to deal with only one.

They'd lost a third of the convoy, mainly to aircraft. Could
they sustain that? He wondered how the merchant crews were holding up.

They had closed in on the convoy, and he could see the
northernmost line of merchies. On the horizon a big container ship was blinking
a light at them. Morris raised his glasses to read the signal.

THANKS FOR NOTHING NAVY. One question answered.

USS CHICAGO

"So, there they are," McCafferty said.

The trace showed almost white on the screen, a thick spoke
of broadband noise bearing three-two-nine. It could only be the Soviet task
force heading for Bodo.

"How far out?" McCafferty asked.

"At least two CZs, skipper, maybe three. The signal
just increased in intensity four minutes ago."

"Can you get a blade count on anything?"

"No, sir." The sonarman shook his head. "Just
a lot of undifferentiated noise for the moment. We've tried to isolate a few
discrete frequencies, but even that's all screwed up. Maybe later, but all we
got now is a thundering herd."

McCafferty nodded. The third convergence zone was a good
hundred miles off. At such ranges acoustical signals lost definition, to the
point that their bearing to target was only a rough estimate. The Russian
formation could be several degrees left or right of where they thought, and at
this range that was a difference measured in miles. He went aft to Control.

"Take her west five miles at twenty knots,"
McCafferty ordered. It was a gamble, but a small one. On reaching station,
they'd found unusually good water conditions, and the small move risked losing
the contact temporarily. On the other hand, getting precise range information
would give him a much better tactical picture and enable them to make a solid
contact report-and make it by line-of-sight UHF radio before the Soviet
formation got close enough that they could intercept the submarine's
transmission. As the boat raced west, McCafferty watched the bathythermograph
trace. As long as the temperature didn't change, he'd keep that good sound
channel. It didn't. The submarine slowed rapidly and McCafferty went back to
sonar.

"Okay, where are they now?"

"Got 'em! Right there, bearing three-three-two."

"XO, plot it and get a contact report made up."

Ten minutes later the report was sent via satellite. The
reply ordered Chicago in: GO FOR THE HEAVIES.

ICELAND

The farm was three miles away, thankfully downhill through
tall, rough grass. On first sighting it through binoculars, Edwards called it
the Gingerbread House. A typical Icelandic farmhouse, it had white stucco walls
buttressed by heavy wooden beams, a contrasting red-painted trim, and a steeply
pitched roof right out of the Brothers Grimm. The outlying barns were large,
but low-slung with sod-covered roofs. The lower meadows by the stream were
dotted with hundreds of large, odd-looking sheep with massively thick coats of
wool, asleep in the grass half a mile beyond the house.

"Dead-end road," Edwards said, folding up the map.
"And we could use some food. Gentlemen, it's worth the chance, but we
approach carefully. We'll follow this dip to the right and keep that ridgeline
between us and the farm till we're within half a mile or so."

"Okay, sir," Sergeant Smith agreed. The four men
struggled into a sitting position to don their gear yet again. They'd been
moving almost continuously for two and a half days, and were now about
thirty-five miles northeast of Reykjavik. A modest pace on flat roads, it was a
mankilling effort cross country, particularly while staying watchful for the
helicopters that were now patrolling the countryside. They had consumed their
last rations six hours before. The cool temperatures and hard physical effort
conspired to drain the energy from their bodies as they picked their way around
and over the two-thousand-foot hills that dotted the Icelandic coast like so
many fence pickets.

Several things kept them moving. One was the fear that the
Soviet division they had watched airlifted in would expand its perimeter and
snap them up. No one relished the thought of captivity under the Russians. But
worse than this was fear of failure. They had a mission, and no taskmaster is
harsher than one's own self-expectations. Then there was pride. Edwards had to
set an example for his men, a principle remembered from Colorado Springs. The
Marines, of course, could hardly let a "wing-wiper" outperform them.
Thus, without thinking consciously about it, four men contrived to walk
themselves into the ground, all in the name of pride.

"Gonna rain," Smith said.

"Yeah, the cover will be nice," Edwards said,
still sitting back. "We'll wait for it. Jesus, I never thought working in
daylight would be so Goddamned tough. There's just something weird about not
having the friggin' sun go down."

"Tell me about it. And I ain't even got a
cigarette," Smith growled.

"Rain again?" Private Garcia asked.

"Get used to it," Edwards said. "It rains
seventeen days in June, on average, and so far this's been a wet year. How
d'you think the grass got so tall?"

"You like this place?" Garcia asked, dumbfounded
enough to forget the "sir." Iceland had little in common with Puerto
Rico.

"My dad's a lobsterman working out of Eastpoint, Maine.
When I was a kid I went out on the boat every time I could, and it was always
like this."

"What we gonna do when we get down to that house,
sir?" Smith brought them back to things that mattered.

"Ask for food-"

"Ask?" Garcia was surprised.

"Ask. And pay for it, with cash. And smile. And say,
'Thank you, sir,"' Edwards said. "Remember your manners, guys, unless
you want him to phone Ivan ten minutes after we leave." He looked around
at his men. The thought sobered them all.

The rain started with a few sprinkles. Two minutes later it
was falling heavily, cutting visibility down to a few hundred yards. Edwards
wearily got to his feet, forcing his Marines to do likewise, and they all moved
downhill as the sun above the clouds dipped in the northwestern sky and slid
down behind a hill. The hill-since they'd probably have to climb it the next
day, they thought of it as a mountain-had a name, but none of them could
pronounce it. By the time they were a quarter mile from the farmhouse, it was
as dark as it would get, and the rain had the visibility down to about eighty
yards.

"Car coming." Smith saw the glare of the lights
first. All four men dropped and instinctively aimed their rifles at the dots on
the horizon.

"Relax, guys. This road here breaks off the main road,
and those lights could just be-shit!" Edwards cursed. The lights hadn't
taken the sweeping turn on the coastal highway. They were coming down the road
to the farm. Was it a car or a track with its driving lights on? "Spread
out and stay awake." Smith stayed with Edwards, and the two privates moved
downhill about fifty yards.

Edwards lay prone, his elbows propped up on the wet grass
and binoculars to his eyes. He didn't think they could be spotted. The Marine
pattern camouflage made them nearly invisible in daylight as long as they
didn't move rapidly. In the dark they were transparent shadows.

"Looks like a pickup, four-by-four, something like
that. Lights are pretty far off the ground, bouncing around too much to be a
track," Edwards thought aloud.

The lights came directly-but slowly-to the farmhouse and
stopped. Its doors opened, men got out, and one stepped in front of the
headlights before they were extinguished.

"Damn!" Smith snarled.

"Yep, looks like four or five Ivans. Get Garcia and
Rodgers over here, Sergeant."

"Right."

Edwards kept his binoculars on the house. There were no
electric lights lit. He guessed that this area got its power from Artun, and
he'd watched the bombs wipe that plant off the map. There was some internal
illumination, though, maybe from candles or a hurricane lamp. It really was a
lot like home, Edwards told himself, our electricity went off often enough,
from nor'eastern storms or ice on the wires. The people in that house had to be
asleep. Working farmers, early to bed, early to rise-wears you out and dulls
the brain, Edwards thought. Through the lenses he watched the Russians-he
counted five-circle the house. Like burglars, he thought. They looking for . .
. us? No. If they were looking for us, there'd be more than five guys in a
four-by-four. That's interesting. They must be looting-but what if somebody . .
. Jesus, we know that somebody lives there. Somebody lit that lamp. What are
they up to?

"What gives, sir?" Smith asked.

"Looks like we got five Russkies. They're playing
peeper, looking in the windows and-one just kicked the door in! I don't like
the way this is going, troops, I-"

A scream confirmed his evaluation. A woman's scream, it cut
right through the falling rain and made them feel someone's terror, chilling
men already cold.

"People, let's move in a little. We stay together and
we damned well stay alert."

"Why we movin' in now, sir?'' Smith asked sharply.

"'Cuz I say so." Edwards stowed his field glasses.
"Follow me."

Another light was lit in the building, and it seemed to be
moving around. Edwards walked quickly, keeping low in a way that punished his
back. In two minutes he was a few yards from the truck that had driven in, no
more than twenty yards from the home's front door.

"Sir, you're getting a little careless," Smith
warned.

"Yeah, well, if I guess right, so are they. I bet-"

There was a sound of breaking glass. A shot rang out through
the semidarkness. It was followed by a blood-chilling shriek-and a second shot,
and a third. Then there was another scream.

"What the hell's going on in there?" Garcia asked
in a rasp.

A hoarse male voice shouted something in Russian. The front
door opened and four men came out. They conferred for a moment, then split into
pairs, going left and right to side windows, where all four men stood to look
inside. Then there came another scream, and it was perfectly clear what was
going on.

"Those son of a bitches," Smith observed.

"Yeah," Lieutenant Edwards agreed. "Let's
back off and think about this for a minute." The four men retreated about
fifty yards and bunched together.

"I think it's time we do something. Anybody
disagree?" Edwards asked. Smith just nodded, interested in Edwards's
change of demeanor.

"Okay, we take our time and do it right. Smith, you
come with me and we go around the left. Garcia and Rodgers go around the right.
Go wide and come in slow. Ten minutes. If you can take 'em alive, that's okay.
If not, stick 'em. We try not to make noise. But if you gotta shoot, make
Goddamned sure the first burst does it. Okay?" Edwards looked around for
additional Russians. None. The four men slipped out of their packs, checked
their watches, and moved out, crawling through the wet grass.

There was another scream, but none after that. Edwards was
glad there weren't-he didn't need the distraction. The crawling was a slow,
tiring effort that sapped the strength from his arms. Edwards and Smith took a
long route, around a tractor and some other implements. When they came into the
clear there was only one man on their side of the house. Where's the other one?
the lieutenant asked himself. Now what do we do? You gotta stick to the plan.
Everyone's depending on you.

"Back me up."

Smith was amazed. "Let me, sir, I-"

"Back me up," Edwards whispered. He set his M-16
down and drew his combat knife.

The Russian soldier made it easy, as he stood on tiptoe,
entranced with the goings-on within the farmhouse. Ten feet behind him, Edwards
got to his feet and approached one slow step at a time, It took him a moment to
realize that his target was a full head taller than he was-how was he supposed
to take this monster alive?

He didn't have to. There must have been an intermission
inside. The Soviet private slumped down and reached in his pocket for a pack of
cigarettes, then turned slightly to light one from a cupped match. He caught
Edwards out of the comer of his eye, and the American lieutenant lunged forward
with his knife, stabbing the larger man in the throat. The Russian started to
cry out, but Edwards wrestled him down and slapped his left hand over the man's
mouth as he struck again with the knife. Edwards twisted the man's head one
way, and the knife the other. The blade grated against something hard, and his
victim went slack.

Edwards felt nothing, his emotions submerged in a flood of
adrenaline. He wiped the knife on his trousers and stood on the man's body to
look in the window. What he saw caught the breath in his throat.

"Hi, guys!" Garcia whispered. Two Russian privates
turned to face a pair of M-16s. They had left their rifles in the truck. Garcia
gestured at the ground with his rifle, and both men went facedown,
spread-eagled.

Rodgers frisked them both for weapons, then went around the
front to report in.

"Took 'em both alive, sir." He was surprised to
see their "wing-wiper" lieutenant with blood on his hands.

"I'm going in," Edwards told Smith. The sergeant
nodded quickly.

"I'll cover you from here. Rodgers, you back him
up."

The lieutenant moved through the half-open door. The living
room was empty and unlit. The noise of heavy breathing came from around the
comer, and a steady pale light. Edwards approached the comer-and found himself
faced with a Russian in the process of unbuttoning his pants. There was no time
for much of anything.

Edwards rammed his knife under the man's ribs, turning his
right hand within the brass-knuckled grip as he pushed the blade all the way
in. The man screamed and lifted himself up on his toes before falling backward,
trying to get himself off the knife. Edwards withdrew and stabbed again,
falling atop the man in a grotesquely sexual position. The paratrooper's hands
tried to force him off, but the lieutenant felt the strength drain from his
victim as he moved farther forward to stab him again in the chest. A shadow
moved and he looked up to see a man stumbling forward with a pistol-and the
room exploded with noise.

"Freeze, motherficker!" Rodgers screamed, his M-16
aimed at the man's chest, and everyone's ears ringing from the thunder of the
three round burst. "You okay, skipper?" It was the first time they
had called him that.

"Yeah." Edwards got to his feet, letting Rodgers
precede him as he backed the Russian up. The man was exposed below the waist,
his pants hobbling his ankles. The lieutenant picked up the pistol the Soviet
had dropped and looked down at the man he'd knifed. There was no doubt that he
was dead. His handsome Slavic face was contorted with surprise and pain, and
his uniform blouse was soaked black with blood. The eyes might have been
marbles for all the life they contained.

"You okay, ma'am?" Rodgers asked, briefly turning
his head around.

Edwards saw her for the second time, sprawled out on the
wooden floor. A pretty girl, her woolen nightdress torn apart, barely covering
one breast, and the rest of her pale body, already red and bruised in several
places, exposed for all to see. Beyond her in the kitchen Edwards saw the
unmoving legs of another woman. He went into the room and saw a dog and a man,
also dead. Each body displayed a single red circle in the chest

Smith came in. He looked around the room, then at Edwards.
The wimp had fangs. "I'll check the upstairs. Heads up, skipper."

Rodgers kicked the Russian down to the floor and placed his
bayonet point in the small of his back. "You move and I'll fuckin' cut you
in half," the private snarled.

Edwards stooped down to the blond girl. Her face was puffing
up from blows to the jaw and cheek, her breath coming in shudders. He guessed
her age at twenty or so. Her nightdress was destroyed. Edwards looked around
and, pulling the cloth off the dining room table, draped it over her.

"You okay? Come on, you're alive, honey. You're safe.
You're okay now."

Her eyes seemed pointed in different directions at first,
then they focused and came over to the young lieutenant. Edwards cringed to see
the look in them. His hand touched her cheek as gently as he could.

"Come on, let's get you up off the floor. Nobody's
going to hurt you, not now." She started shaking so violently that it
seemed the whole house would join her. He helped her up, careful to wrap the
tablecloth all around her. "Come on."

"Upstairs is clear, sir." Smith returned, holding
a robe. "You wanna put this on the lady? They do anything else to
her?"

"Killed her mom and dad. And a dog. I imagine they were
going to do her, too, when they got finished. Sarge, get things organized.
Search the Russians, get some food, anything else that looks useful. Move
quick, Jim. Lots of things we gotta do. You have a first-aid pack?"

"Right, skipper. Here." Smith tossed him a small
package of bandages and antiseptics, then went back out the door to check on
Garcia.

"Let's get you upstairs and cleaned off." Edwards
wrapped his left arm around her shoulders and helped her up the steep old
wooden steps. His heart went out to the girl. She had china-blue eyes,
obscenely empty of life though even now they caught the light in a way certain
to attract any man's attention. As they just had, Edwards thought. She was only
an inch shorter than he, with pale, almost transparent skin. Her figure was
marred by a slight bulge at the abdomen, and Mike had a good idea what that
was, the rest of her figure was so perfect. And she'd just been raped by one
Russian, paving the way for a long night of it, Mike Edwards thought, enraged
that once more this foul crime had touched his fife. There was a small room at
the top of the twisting stairs. She entered it and sat on the single bed.

"Wh-wh-who-' she stammered in accented English.

"We're Americans. We escaped from Keflavik when the
Russians attacked. What's your name?"

"Vigdis Agustdottir." The slightest sign of life
in her voice. Vigdis, the daughter of Agust, dead in the kitchen. He wondered
what Vigdis meant, sure that it wasn't pretty enough.

He set the hurricane lamp on the night table and broke open
the pack. Her skin was broken along the jawline, and he swabbed disinfectant
there. It had to hurt, but the girl didn't wince at all. The rest of her, he'd
seen, was just bruised, maybe some scrapes on her back from the hardwood floor.
She'd fought hard to defend herself, and taken a dozen punches. And certainly
she was no virgin. Just a bloodied face. It could have been far worse, but
Edwards's rage continued to grow. Such a pretty face desecrated-well, he'd
already reached that decision. "You can't stay here. We have to leave
soon. You'll have to leave, too."

"But-"

"I'm sorry. I understand-I mean, when the Russians
attacked, I lost some friends, too. Not the same as your mom and dad,
but-Jesus!" Edwards's hands shook in frustration as he stumbled through
the meaningless words. "I'm sorry we didn't get here sooner." What is
it that some of the feminists say? That rape is the crime that all men use to
subjugate all women? Then why do you want to go downstairs and-Edwards knew
that something almost as satisfying was in the works. He took her hand and she
didn't resist. "We're going to have to leave. We'll take you anywhere we
can. You must have family around here, or friends. We'll take you to them and
they can take care of you. But you can't stay here. If you stay here, you're
sure to get killed. Do you understand?" He saw her head nod jerkily in the
shadows.

"Yes. Please-please leave me alone. I must be alone for
a little."

"Okay." He touched her cheek again. "If you
need anything, call us." Edwards went back downstairs. Smith had taken
charge. There were three men on their knees, blindfolded, gagged, and hands
tied behind their backs. Garcia was standing over them. Rodgers was in the
kitchen. Smith was sorting through a pile of stuff on the table.

"Okay, what d'we got here?"

Smith regarded his officer with something akin to affection.
"Well, Sir, we got us a Russian lieutenant with a wet dick. A dead
sergeant. A dead private, and two live ones. The lieutenant had this,
sir."

Edwards took the map and unfolded it. "Damn, ain't that
nice!" The map was covered with scribbled markings.

"We got another set of binoculars, a radio-shame we
can't use that! Some rations. Looks like shit, but better'n nothin'. We done
good, skipper. Bag five Russians with three rounds expended."

"What do we need to take, Jim?"

"Just food, sir. I mean, we could take a couple of
their rifles, and that'd double up our ammo load, y'know? But we're already
loaded pretty, heavy-"

"And we aren't here to fight a war, just to play scout.
Right."

"I think we oughta take some clothes, sweaters and like
that. We taking the lady with us?"

"Have to."

Smith nodded. "Yeah, makes sense. Hope she likes
walkin', sir. Looks like she's in decent shape, 'cept for being pregnant. Four
months, I'd say."

"Pregnant?" Garcia turned. "Rapin' a pregnant
girl?" He muttered something in Spanish.

"Any of them say anything?" Mike asked.

"Not a word, sir." Garcia answered.

"Jim, take a look at the girl, and get her down here.
Her name's Vigdis. Easy on her."

"Don't worry, sir." Smith went upstairs.

"The lieutenant's the one with it hanging out,
right?" Garcia nodded and Edwards went around to face him. He had to
remove the gag and blindfold. The man was his own age. He was sweating.
"You speak English?"

The man shook his head. "Spreche deutsch.

Edwards had taken two years of German in high school, but
suddenly found himself unwilling to talk with this man. He had already decided
to kill him, and he didn't wish to speak with someone he was about to kill-it
might bother his conscience. Edwards didn't want his conscience to remember
this. But he watched the man for a minute or two, examining what sort of person
would do what he had done. He expected to discover something monstrous, but
didn't. He looked up. Smith was leading Vigdis down the stairs.

"She's got good gear, skipper. Nice warm clothes, her
boots are all broke in. I expect we can get her a canteen, a parka, and a field
pack. I'd let her bring a brush an' girl stuff, sir. I'll get us some soap,
too, and maybe a razor."

"Way to go, Sergeant. Vigdis," Edwards said,
getting her attention. "We will be leaving soon." He turned to look
back down at the Russian:

"Leutnant. Wofur? Warum?" What for-why did you do
all this? Not for me. For her.

The man knew what was coming. He shrugged.
"Afghanistan."

"Skipper, they're prisoners," Rodgers blurted.
"I mean, sir, you can't-"

"Gentlemen, you are charged under Uniform Code of
Military Justice with one specification of rape and two specifications of
murder. These are capital crimes," Edwards said, mainly so that he could
assuage his conscience for the other two. "Do you have anything to say in
your defense? No? You are found guilty. Your sentence is death." With his
left hand, Edwards pushed the lieutenant's head back. His right hand flipped
the knife into the air, reversing it; then he swung it viciously, striking the
man's larynx with the pommel. The sound was surprisingly loud in the room, and
Edwards kicked him backward.

A terrible thing to watch, it lasted several minutes. The
lieutenant's larynx was instantly fractured, and its swelling blocked his
trachea. Unable to breathe, his torso bucked from side to side as his face
darkened. Everyone in the room who could see watched. If any felt pity for the
man, none showed it. Finally he stopped moving.

"I'm sorry we weren't faster, Vigdis, but this thing
won't be hurting anyone else." Edwards hoped that his amateur psychiatry
would work. The girl went back upstairs, probably to wash, he thought. He'd
read that after being raped one thing women wanted to do was bathe, as though
there were a visible stigma from being the victim of an animal's lust. He
turned toward the remaining two. There was no way they could manage prisoners,
and what they had been up to merely provided him with a good excuse. But these
two hadn't hurt the girl yet, and-

"I'll take care of it, sir," Garcia said quietly.
The private was standing behind the kneeling prisoners. One of them was making
some noise, but even if he hadn't been gagged, none of the Americans knew a
word of Russian. They had no chance at all. Garcia stabbed from the side,
sticking his knife completely through one neck, then the other. Both men fell.
It was over quickly. The private and the lieutenant went into the kitchen to
wash their hands.

"Okay, we load them back into the four-by-four and
drive it back to the main road. We'll see if we can fake an accident and torch
the vehicle. Get some liquor bottles. We'll make it look like they were
drinking."

"They were, sir." Rodgers held up a bottle of
clear liquor.

Edwards gave the bottle a brief look, but shook off the
thought. "Figures. If I guess right, these guys were the crossroads guards
from the main highway-or maybe just a patrol. I don't think they can guard
every crossroads on this island. If we're just a little lucky, maybe their
bosses'll never figure out we were involved in this." A long shot, he
thought, but what the hell?

"Skipper," Smith said. "If you want to do
that, we gotta-"

"I know. You and Rodgers stay here and get ready. If
you see anything else we can use, pack it up. When we get back, we'll have to
haul ass."

Edwards and Garcia loaded all the bodies into the back of
the truck, careful to sort through the battle gear. They unloaded waterproof
parkas whose camouflage pattern was almost identical with their own and a few
other items that wouldn't be missed, then drove off quickly down the road.

Luck was with them. There was no permanent guard post at the
crossroads, perhaps because the farm road led nowhere. The Russians had
probably been a patrol team, and had chosen the farm for a little informal
R&R. Two hundred yards down the coastal highway the road paralleled a steep
cliff. They halted the vehicle there and manhandled the bodies into the seats.
Garcia emptied a jerrican of gasoline into the back and the two men pushed it
toward the edge with the rear hatch open. Garcia tossed a Russian grenade into
the back as it went over the edge. Neither man wanted to admire their
handiwork. They ran back the half mile to the farmhouse. Everything was ready.

"We have to bum the house, Miss Vigdis," Smith was
explaining. "If we don't, the Russians'll know for sure what happened
here. Your mom and dad are dead, ma'am, but I'm sure they'd want you to stay
alive, Okay?"

She was still too much in shock to offer more than token
resistance. Rodgers and Smith had cleaned off the bodies, and moved them
upstairs to their own bedroom. It would have been better to bury them, but
there just wasn't time.

"Let's get moving, people," Edwards ordered. They
should have been moving already. Somebody had to be coming to investigate the
burning truck, and if they used a chopper . . . "Garcia, you watch the
lady. Smith has the rear. Rodgers, take the point. We have to put six miles
between us and this place in the next three hours."

Smith waited ten minutes before tossing his grenade into the
house. The kerosene he'd spread on the first floor went up at once.

USS CHICAGO

The contact was a lot better now. They had classified one
ship as a Kashin-class missile destroyer, and her propeller-blade count
indicated a speed of twenty-one knots. The leading elements of the Soviet
formation were now thirty-seven miles away. There seemed to be two groups, the
leading formation fanned out and screening the second. McCafferty ordered the
ESM mast raised. It showed lots of activity, but he expected that.

"Up scope." The quartermaster worked the operating
ring, then snapped the handles into place and stepped back. McCafferty swept
the horizon quickly. After ten seconds, he flipped the handles up, and the
periscope was instantly lowered back into its well.

"It's going to be a busy day, troops," the captain
said; he always let the attack center crew know as much of what was going on as
possible. The more they knew, the better they could do their jobs. "I saw
a pair of Bear-Fs, one due north, the other west. Both a good way off, but you
can bet they're dropping sonobuoys. XO, take her back down to five hundred
feet, speed five knots. We'll let them come to us."

"Conn, sonar."

"Conn, aye," McCafferty answered.

"We got some pingers, active sonobuoys to the
northwest. We count six of them, all very faint." The sonar chief read off
the bearings to the signal sources. "Still no active sonar signals coming
from the target formation, sir."

"Very well." McCafferty returned the mike to its
holder. Chicago's depth was changing quickly, as they dove at a fifteen-degree
angle. He watched the bathythermograph readout. At two hundred twenty feet the
water temperature began to drop rapidly, changing twelve degrees inside of
seventy feet. Good, a strong layer to hide under, and cold water deep to allow
good sonar performance for his own sensors.

Two hours before he had removed a torpedo from one of his
tubes and replaced it with a Harpoon missile. It gave him only one torpedo
ready for instant use if he found a submarine target, but a salvo of three
missiles available to fling at surface ships, plus his Tomahawks. He could fire
either now, and expect hits, but McCafferty didn't want to fire at just
anything. There was no sense wasting a missile on a small patrol craft when
there was a cruiser and a carrier out there waiting for him. He wanted to
identify specific targets first. It wouldn't be easy, but he knew that easy
things didn't have to be done by the 688-class subs. He went forward into
sonar.

The chief caught him out the comer of his eye.
"Skipper, I may have a bearing to Kirov. I just copied six pings from a
low-frequency sonar. I think that's him, bearing zero-three-nine. Trying to
isolate his engine signature now. And if-okay, some more sonobuoys are dropping
to the right." The display showed new points of light well to the right of
the first string, and a sizable gap between the two.

"Think he's dropping them in chevrons, Chief?"
McCafferty asked. He got a smile and a nod for an answer. If the Soviets were deploying
their sonobuoys in angled lines left and right of the formation, that could
mean that their ships were heading right for Chicago. The submarine would not
have to maneuver at all to intercept them. She could stay as quiet as an open
grave.

"They seem to be alternating them above and below the
layer, sir. A pretty fair gap between them, too." The chief lit a
cigarette without averting his eyes from the screen. The ashtray next to him
was crammed with butts.

"We'll plot that one out. Good work, Barney." The
captain patted his sonar chief on the shoulder and went back to the attack
center. The firecontrol tracking party was already plotting the new contacts.
It looked like an interval of just over two miles between the sonobuoys. If the
Soviets were alternating them above and below the layer, there was a good
chance he could sneak between a pair. The other question was the presence of
passive buoys, whose presence he could not detect.

McCafferty stood at the periscope pedestal, watching his men
at work as they entered data into the fire-control computers, backed up by
other men with paper plots and hand-held calculators. The weapons-control panel
was lit up by indicators showing ready. The submarine was at battle stations.

"Take her up to two hundred feet, we'll listen above
the layer for a few minutes." The maneuver paid off at once.

"I got direct-path to the targets," the sonar
chief announced. They could now detect and track sound energy radiating
directly from the Soviet ships, without depending on the on-again, off-again
convergence zones.

McCafferty commanded himself to relax. He'd soon have work
enough.

"Captain, we're about due for another sonobuoy drop.
They've been averaging about every fifteen minutes, and this one might be
close."

"Getting that Horse-Jaw sonar again, sir," sonar
warned. "Bearing three-two-zero at this time. Signal weak. Classify this
contact as the cruiser Kirov. Stand by-another one. We have a medium frequency
active sonar bearing three-three-one, maneuvering left-to-right. We classify
this contact as a Kresta-II ASW cruiser."

"I think he's right," the plotting officer said.
"Bearing three-two-zero is close to our bearings for a pair of screen
ships, but far enough off that it's probably a different contact. Three-three-one
is consistent with the center screen ship. It figures. The Kresta will be the
screen commander, with the flagship a ways behind him. Need some time to work
out the ranges, though."

The captain ordered his submarine to stay above the layer,
able to duck beneath it in seconds. The tactical display was evolving now. He
had a workable bearing on Kirov. Almost good enough to shoot on, though he
still needed range data. There seemed to be a pair of escorts between him and
the cruiser, and unless he had a proper range estimate, any missile he launched
at the Soviet flagship might attack a destroyer or frigate by mistake. In the
interim, the solution on the attack director set the Harpoons to fly straight
for what he believed to be the battle cruiser Kirov.

Chicago began to zigzag left and right of her course track.
As the submarine changed her position, the bearing to her sonar contacts
changed also. The tracking party could use the submarine's own course deviation
as a baseline to compute ranges to the various contacts. A straightforward
process-essentially an exercise in high-school trigonometry-it nevertheless
took time because they had to estimate the speed and course of the moving
targets. Even computer support couldn't make the process go much faster, and
one of his quartermasters took great pride in his ability to use a circular
slide rule and race the computer to a hard solution.

The tension seemed to grow by degrees, then it plateaued.
The years of training were paying off. Data was handled, plotted, and acted
upon in seconds. The crew suddenly seemed a physical part of the gear they were
operating, their feelings shut off, their emotions submerged, only the sweat on
their foreheads betraying that they were men after all, and not machines. They
depended absolutely on their sonar operators. Sound energy was their only
indication of what was happening, and each new bearing report triggered furious
activity. It was clear that their targets were zigzagging, which made the range
computations even more difficult.

"Conn, sonar! Active sonobuoy close aboard to port!
Below the layer, I think."

"Right full rudder, all ahead two-thirds," the
executive officer ordered instantly.

McCafferty went to sonar and plugged in a set of headphones.
The pings were loud but . . . distorted, he thought. If the buoy was below the
temperature gradient, the signals radiating upward would be unable to detect
his submarine-probably. "Signal strength?" he asked.

"Strong," the chief replied. "Even money they
might have picked us up. Five hundred yards farther out and they lose us for
sure."

"Okay, they can't monitor them all at once."

The XO moved Chicago a thousand yards before returning to
base course. Overhead, they knew, was a Bear-F ASW aircraft armed with homing
torpedoes and a crew whose job it was to listen to the sonobuoy signals. How
good were the buoys and the men? That was one thing that they didn't know.
Three tense minutes passed and nothing happened.

"All ahead one-third, come left to three-two-one,"
the executive officer ordered. They were now through the line of buoys. Three
more such lines were between them and their target. They'd nearly determined
range for three of the escorts, but not to the Kirov yet.

"Okay, people, the Bears are behind us. That's one less
thing to worry about. Range to the nearest ship?" he asked the approach
officer.

"Twenty-six thousand yards. We think he's a Sovremenny.
The Kresta is about five thousand yards east of him. He's pinging away with
hull and VDS sonars." McCafferty nodded. The variable-depth sonar would be
below the layer and had scant chance of detecting them. The hull sonar they'd
have to pay attention to, but it wouldn't be a problem for a while yet. Okay,
the captain thought, things are going pretty much according to the plan-

"Conn, sonar, torpedoes in the water, bearing
three-two-zero! Signal faint. Say again torpedoes in the water, three-two-zero,
bearing changing ---additional, lots of active sonars just lit up. We're
getting increased screw noises for all contacts." McCafferty was in the
sonar room before the report ended.

"Torpedo bearing change?"

"Yes! Moving left-to-right-Jesus, I think somebody's
attacking the Russians. Impact!" The chief jabbed his finger at the
display. A series of three bright spokes appeared right on the bearing to
Kirov. The display suddenly went berserk. The high-and medium-frequency segment
lit up with active sonar lines. The lines indicating ships became brighter as
the ships increased engine speeds and changed direction as they began to
maneuver.

"Secondary explosion on this contact-holy shit! Lots of
explosions in the water now. Depth charges, maybe, something's really ripping
the water up. There's another torpedo-way off, bearing changing right to
left."

The display was now too complex for McCafferty to follow.
The chief expanded the time scale to allow easier interpretation, but only he
and his experienced operators could understand it.

"Skipper, it looks like somebody just got inside on
them and launched an attack. He got three solid hits on Kirov, and now they're
trying to beat on him. These two ships appear to be converging on something.
Another torpedo in the water, don't know whose. Gawd, look at all these
explosions!"

McCafferty went aft.

"Periscope depth, now!" Chicago angled upward,
taking a minute to reach her position.

He saw what might have been a mast on the horizon, and a
column of black smoke, bearing three-two-zero. Over twenty radars were
operating along with a number of voice radios.

"Down scope. We have any target solutions?"

"No, sir," the XO answered. "When they
started maneuvering, all our data went to hell."

"How far to the next sonobuoy line?"

"Two miles. We're positioned to run right through a
gap."

"Make your depth eight hundred feet. Ahead full, move
us in."

Chicago's engines sprang into life, accelerating the
submarine to thirty knots. The executive officer dived the boat to eight
hundred feet, ducking deep below a sonobuoy set for shallow search. McCafferty
stood over the chart table, took a pen from his pocket, and unconsciously began
chewing on the plastic end as he watched his sub's course take him closer and
closer to the enemy formation. Sonar performance dropped virtually to nil with
the high speed, but soon the low-frequency sounds of the exploding ordnance
echoed through the steel hull. Chicago ran for twenty minutes, zigzagging
slightly to avoid the Russian sonobuoys, as the firecontrol men kept updating
their solutions.

"Okay, all ahead one-third and take her back up to
periscope depth," McCafferty said. "Tracking party, stand by for a
firing run."

The sonar picture cleared up rapidly. The Soviets were
continuing to hunt frantically for whoever had fired at their flagship. One
ship's trace was entirely gone-at least one Russian ship had been sunk or crippled.
Explosions rippled through the water, punctuated by the screeing sound of
homing torpedoes. All were close enough to be a matter of real concern.

"Shooting observation. Up scope!"

The search periscope slid upward. McCafferty caught it low
and swept the horizon. "I-Jesus!" The TV monitor showed a Bear only
half a mile to their right, heading north for the formation. He could see seven
ships, mainly mast tops, but one Sovremenny-class destroyer was hull-down,
perhaps four miles away. The smoke he'd seen before was gone. The water
resounded with the noise of Russian sonars.

"Raise the radar, power-up, and stand by."

A petty officer pushed the button to raise the submarine's
surface-search radar, activated the system, but kept it in standby mode.

"Energize and give me two sweeps," the captain
ordered. There was a real danger here. The Soviets would almost certainly
detect the submarine's radar and try to attack it.

The radar was on for a total of twelve seconds. It
"painted" a total of twenty-six targets on the screen, two of them
close together about where he would have expected Kirov to be. The radar
operator read off ranges and bearing, which were entered into the Mk-117
fire-control director and relayed to the Harpoon missiles in the torpedo tubes,
giving them bearing to target and the range at which to switch on their
seeker-heads. The weapons officer checked his status lights, then selected the
two most promising targets for the missiles.

"Set!"

"Flood tubes." McCafferty watched the
weapons-panel operator go through the launch sequence. "Opening outer
doors."

"Solution checked and valid," the weapons officer
said calmly. "Firing sequence: two, one, three."

"Shoot!" McCafferty ordered.

"Fire two." The submarine shuddered as the
powerful impulse of high-pressure air ejected the weapon from the tube,
followed by the whoosh of water entering the void. "Fire one . . . fire
three. Two, one, and three fired, sir. Torpedo tube doors are shut, pumping out
to reload."

"Reload with Mark-48s. Prepare to fire Tomahawks!"
McCafferty said. The fire-control men switched the attack director over to
activate the bow-mounted missiles.

"Up scope!" The quartermaster spun the control
wheel. McCafferty let it come all the way up. He could see the smoke trail of
the last Harpoon, and right behind it . . . McCafferty slapped the periscope
handles up and stepped back. "Helix heading in! Take her down, all ahead
flank!" The submarine raced downward. A Soviet antisub helicopter had seen
the missile launch and was racing in at them. "Left full rudder."

"Left full rudder, aye!"

"Passing through one hundred feet. Speed fifteen
knots," the XO reported.

"There he is," McCafferty said. The pings from the
helicopter's active sonar reverberated through the hull. "Reverse your
rudder. Shoot off a noisemaker." The captain ordered his submarine back to
an easterly course and reduced speed as they dropped through the layer. With
luck the Soviets would mistake the noisemaker for the cavitation noises of the
submarine and attack it as Chicago drew clear.

"Conn, sonar, we have a destroyer heading in, bearing
three-three-nine. Sounds like a Sovremenny-torpedo in the water aft. We have
one torpedo in the water bearing two-six-five."

"Right twenty degrees rudder. All ahead two-thirds.
Come to new course one-seven-five."

"Conn, sonar, new contact, twin screws, just started
with a low-frequency sonar, probably a Udaloy, blade count says twenty-five
knots, bearing three-five-one and constant. Torpedo bearing changing, heading
aft and fading."

"Very well." McCafferty nodded. "The
helicopter dropped on the noisemaker. We don't have to sweat that one. All
ahead one-third, make your depth one thousand feet."

The Sovremenny he didn't worry too greatly about, but the
Udaloy was another thing entirely. The new Soviet destroyer carried a
low-frequency sonar that could penetrate the layer under certain conditions,
plus two helicopters and a long-range rocket-boosted torpedo weapon that was
better than the American ASROC.

Ba-wah! The sound of a low-frequency sonar. It had hit them
on the first shot. Would it report Chicago's position to the Udaloy? Or would
the submarine's rubber coating prevent it?

"Target bearing three-five-one. Blade count is down,
indicates speed of ten knots," sonar reported.

"Okay, he's slowed to search for us. Sonar, how strong
was that ping?"

"Low edge of detection range, sir. Probably did not get
a return off us. Contact is maneuvering, bearing now three-five-three.
Continuing to ping, but his sonar is search-lighting west-to-east away from us.
Another helo is pinging, sir, bearing zero-nine-eight. This one's below the
layer, but fairly weak."

"XO, take us west. We'll try to loop around them to
seaward and approach their amphibs from the west." McCafferty returned to
the sonar room. He was tempted to engage the Udaloy, but could not launch a
torpedo this deep without using a dangerously high amount of his reserve
high-pressure air. Besides, his job was to kill the command ships, not the
escorts. His fire-control team set up a solution anyway in case killing the
Russian destroyer became a necessity.

"God, what a mess," the chief breathed. "The
depth-charging up north has tapered off some. Bearing is steadying down on
these contacts here. Either they've resumed their base course or they're
heading away. Can't tell which. Uh-oh, more sonobuoys are dropping down."
The chief's finger traced the new dots, in a steady line-heading toward
Chicago. "Next one's going to be real close, sir."

McCafferty stuck his head into the attack center.
"Bring her around south, and go to two-thirds."

The next sonobuoy splashed into the water directly overhead.
Its cable deployed the transducer below the layer and began automatic pinging.

"They got us for sure, skipper!'

McCafferty ordered a course change to the west and again
increased to full speed to clear the area. Three minutes later a torpedo
dropped into the water, either dropped by the Bear or fired from the Udaloy,
they couldn't tell. The torpedo started searching for them from a mile off and
turned away. Again their rubber anechoic coating had saved them. A helo's
dipping sonar was detected ahead of them. McCafferty went south to avoid it,
knowing that he was being driven away from the Soviet fleet, but unable to do
much about it at the moment. A pair of helicopters was now after him, and for a
submarine to defeat two dipping sonars was no simple exercise. It was clear
that their mission was not so much to find him as to drive him off, and he
could not maneuver fast enough to get past them. After two hours of trying, he
broke off for the last time. The Soviet force had moved beyond sonar range,
their last reported course being southeast toward Andoya.

McCafferty swore to himself He'd done everything right,
gotten through the outer Soviet defenses, and had had a clear idea of how to
duck under the destroyer screen. But someone had gotten there first, probably
attacked Kirov-his target!-and messed everything up for his approach. His three
Harpoons had probably found targets unless Ivan had shot them down-but he'd
been unable even to monitor their impacts. If they had made impacts. The
captain of USS Chicago wrote up his contact report for transmission to
COMSUBLANT and wondered why things were going the way they were.

STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND

"A long way to go," the fighter pilot said.

"Yeah," Toland agreed. "Our last report had
the group heading southeast to evade a submarine attack. We figure they're back
to a southerly course now, but we don't know where they are. The Norwegians
sent their last RF-5 in to look, and it disappeared. We have to hit them before
they get to Bodo. To hit them, we need to know where they are."

"No satellite intel?"

"Nope."

"Okay. I go in with the reconnaissance pod, out and
back . . . four hours. I'll need a tanker to top me off about three hundred
miles out."

"No problem," the RAF group captain agreed.
"Do be careful, we need all your Tomcats to escort the strike
tomorrow."

"I'll be ready in an hour." The pilot left.

"Wish you luck, old boy," the group captain said
quietly. This was the third attempt to locate the Soviet invasion force by air.
After the Norwegian reconnaissance aircraft had disappeared, the Brits had
tried with a Jaguar. That, too, had vanished. The most obvious solution was to
send a Hawkeye with the strike to conduct a radar search, but the Brits weren't
letting the E-2s stray too far from their shore. The U.K. radar stations had taken
a fearful pounding, and the Hawkeyes were needed for local defense.

"It's not supposed to be this hard," Toland
observed. Here was a golden opportunity to pound the Soviet fleet. Once
located, they could strike the force at dawn tomorrow. The NATO aircraft would
swoop in with their own air-to-surface missiles. But the extreme range of the
mission gave no time for the strike force to loiter around looking. They had to
have a target location before they took off. The Norwegians were supposed to
have handled this, but NATO plans had not anticipated the virtual annihilation
of the Royal Norwegian Air Force in a week's time. The Soviets had enjoyed
their only major tactical successes at sea, and they were successes indeed,
Toland thought. While the land war in Germany was heading toward a
high-technology stalemate, up to now the vaunted NATO navies had been
outmaneuvered and outthought by their supposed dullard Soviet adversaries.
Taking Iceland had been a masterpiece of an operation. NATO was still scrambling
to reestablish the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom barrier with submarines
that were supposed to have other missions. The Russian Backfires were ranging
far into the North Atlantic, hitting one convoy a day, and the main Russian
submarine force hadn't even gotten there yet. The combination of the two might
just close the Atlantic, Toland thought. Then the NATO armies would surely
lose, for all their brilliant performance to date.

They had to stop the Soviets from taking Bodo 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 hell 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 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 comer. 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.

"God, 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 bastards, too. But no joy on the
fleet. We covered the coast from Orland to Skagen before we turned back, not
one surface ship 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 Bodo 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 Bodo. If you want a guess, we
need to check out Andoya, 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 massive
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 fishing rods and some lures. If we take our time, we ought
to be able to feed ourselves. Lots of good fishin' 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 fishing'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
shitload 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

"Screw it! Then were 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 damned bad. We'll get there
late, but we'll get there."

"You got 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 ships 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 ship'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 crashing sea noise tended to blanket the ship 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 some thing a nuclear submarine
officer looked kindly upon. A submarine would practically have to ram a ship 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 crenelated 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 saltwater 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
assigned 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."

"Hell, I'd settle for this all the way back,"
Morris said after finishing 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

"Andoya. They weren't heading for Bodo 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.
Bastards can dash in and out at high-mach numbers, be bloody 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 massive jamming support-but that one had been costly. RAF
Tornados bad 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 Andoya, 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 bastards? 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 Andoya, and we can't do
much about Iceland, what the hell 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 fucking 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 hell 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 bastards 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.

"Nope, nothing like this. You?"

"Yeah, 'cept we mostly practice goin' up. This here
oughta be easier. Don't worry too much about slipping. These boots hold pretty
good. Just make sure you set your feet on something solid, okay? And you take
it nice and slow. Let Garcia lead off. I already like this place, skipper. See
that pool below the falls? There's fish in there, and I don't think anybody'll
ever spot us down this hole.

"Okay, you watch the lady."

"Right. Garcia, lead off. Rodgers, cover the
rear." Smith slung his rifle across his back as he walked to Vigdis.

"Ma'am, you think you can handle this?" Smith held
out his hand.

"I have been here before." She almost smiled until
she remembered who had brought her here, and how many times. She didn't take
his hand.

"That's good, Miss Vigdis. Maybe you can teach us a
thing or two. You be careful, now."

It would have been fairly easy except for their heavy packs.
Each man carried a fifty-pound load. The added weight and their fatigue
affected their balance, with the result that someone watching from a distance
might have taken the Marines for old women crossing an icy street. It was a
fifty-degree slope down, in some places almost vertical, with some paths worn
into the slopes, perhaps by the wild deer that throve here. For the first time
fatigue worked in their favor. Fresher, they might have tried to move more
quickly; as it was, each man was near the end of his string, and feared his own
weakness more than the rocks. It took over an hour, but they made it down with
nothing worse than cuts on their hands and bruises somewhere else.

Garcia crossed the river to the east side, where the canyon
wall was steeper, and they camped out on a rocky shelf ten feet above the
water. Edwards checked his watch. They had been on the move continuously for
more than two days. Fifty-six hours. Each found himself a place in the deep
shadows.

First they ate. Edwards downed a can of something without
troubling to see what it was. His burps tasted like fish. Smith let the two
privates sleep first, and gave his own sleeping bag to Vigdis. The girl fell
mercifully asleep almost as quickly as the Marines. The sergeant made a quick
tour of the area while Edwards watched, amazed that he had any energy left at
all.

"This is a good spot, skipper," the sergeant
pronounced finally, collapsing down next to his officer. "Smoke?"

"I don't smoke. Thought you were out."

"I was. The lady's dad did, though, and I got a few
packs." Smith lit an unfiltered cigarette with a Zippo lighter bearing the
globe and anchor of the Marine Corps. He took a long pull. "Jesus, ain't
this wonderful!"

"I figure we can spend a day here to rest up."

"Sounds good to me." Smith leaned back. "You
held up pretty good, Lieutenant."

"I ran track at the Air Force Academy.
Ten-thousand-meter stuff, some marathons, that sort of thing."

Smith gave him a baleful look. "You mean I've been
trying to walk a damned runner into the ground?"

"You have walked a marathoner into the friggin'
ground." Edwards massaged his shoulders. He wondered if the pain from his
pack straps would ever go away. His legs felt as though someone had hammered on
them with a baseball bat. He leaned back and commanded every muscle in his body
to relax. The rocky ground didn't help, but he could not raise the energy even
to look for a better spot. He remembered something. "Shouldn't somebody
stand guard?"

"I thought about that," Smith said. He was lying
back also, his helmet down over his eyes. "I think just this once we can
forget it. Only way anybody'll spot us is if a chopper hovers right overhead.
Nearest road's ten miles from here. Screw it. What d'you think, skipper?"

Edwards didn't hear the question.

KIEV, THE UKRAINE

"Ivan Mikhailovich, are your bags packed?"
Alekseyev asked.

"Yes, Comrade General."

"Commander-in-Chief West is missing. He was en route
from Third Shock Army to his forward headquarters and disappeared. It is
thought he might have been killed by an air attack. We're taking over."

"Just like that?"

"Not at all," Alekseyev said angrily. "They
took thirty-six hours to decide that he was probably dead! The maniac had just
relieved Third Shock's commander, then disappeared, and his deputy couldn't
decide what to do. A scheduled attack never began, and the fucking Germans
counterattacked while our men were waiting for orders!'' Alekseyev shook his
head to clear it and went on more calmly. "Well, now we will have soldiers
running the campaign, not some politically reliable whoremonger."

Sergetov again noted his superior's puritanical streak. It
was one of the few traits that agreed exactly with Party policy.

"Our mission?" the captain asked.

"While the General takes charge at the command post,
you and I will tour the forward divisions to ascertain the situation at the
front. Sorry, Ivan Mikhailovich, I'm afraid this is not the safe posting I
promised your father."

"I speak good English in addition to Arabic," the
younger man sniffed. Alekseyev had checked that out before writing up the
transfer orders. Captain Sergetov had been a good company officer before being
lured out of uniform by the promise of a comfortable life of Party work.
"When do we leave?"

"We fly out in two hours."

"In daylight?" The captain was surprised at that.

"It would appear that air travel by day is safer. NATO
claims to dominate the night sky. Our people say otherwise, but they are flying
us out in daylight. Draw your own conclusions, Comrade Captain."

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, DELAWARE

A C-5A transport aircraft sat outside its hangar, waiting.
Within the cavernous structure a team of forty-half officers in naval dress,
half civilians wearing General Dynamics coveralls-worked on Tomahawk missiles.
While one group removed the massive antiship warheads and replaced them with
something else, the other group's task was more difficult. They were replacing
the missile guidance systems, the usual ship-hunting packages being removed in
favor of terrain-matching systems that the men knew were used only for
nuclear-tipped missiles intended for land targets. The guidance boxes were new,
fresh from the factory. They had to be checked and calibrated. A delicate job.
Though the systems had already been certified by the manufacturer, the usual
peacetime routines were gone, replaced with an urgency that all of them felt
but none of them knew the reason for. The mission was a complete secret.

Delicate electronic instruments fed pre-programmed
information into the guidance packages, and other monitors examined the
commands generated by the on-board computers. There were only enough men to
check out three missiles at a time, and each check took just over an hour.
Occasionally one would look up to see the massive Galaxy transport, still waiting,
its crew pacing about between trips to the weather office. When each missile
was certified, a grease pencil mark was made next to the "F' code letter
on the warhead, and the torpedo-shaped weapon was carefully loaded into its
launch canister. Nearly a third of the guidance packages were discarded and
replaced. Several had failed completely, but the problems with most were quite
minor, though serious enough to warrant replacement instead of adjustment. The
technicians and engineers from General Dynamics wondered about that. What sort
of target demanded this sort of precision? All in all, the job took
twenty-seven hours, six more than expected. About half of the men boarded the
aircraft, which lifted off the concrete twenty minutes later, bound for Europe.
They slept in the rear-facing seats, too tired to care about the dangers that
might await them at their destination, wherever that was.

THE SKULAFOSS, ICELAND

Edwards was sitting up almost before he knew why. Smith and
his Marines were even faster, already on their feet, weapons in their hands and
racing to cover. Their eyes scanned the rocky rim of their small canyon as
Vigdis continued to scream. Edwards left his rifle and went to her.

The automatic reaction of the Marines was to assume that she
had seen some danger upon them. Instinctively, Edwards knew different. Her eyes
looked blankly toward the bare rocks a few yards away, her hands gripped at the
bedroll. By the time he reached her, she had stopped screaming. This time
Edwards did not stop to think. He grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled
her head toward his own.

"You're safe. Vigdis, you are safe."

"My family," she said, her chest heaving as she
caught her breath. "They kill my family. Then-?'

"Yes, but you are alive."

'The soldiers, they-" The girl had evidently loosened
her clothes to sleep more comfortably. Now she drew back from Edwards, pulling
them tight around her. The lieutenant kept his hands away from her clothes and
wrapped the sleeping bag around her.

"They will not hurt you again. Remember all of what
happened. They will not hurt you again."

She looked into his face. He didn't know what to make of her
expression. The pain and grief were evident, but there were other things there,
and Edwards didn't know this girl well enough to read what she was thinking.

"The one who kill my family. You kill-killed him."

Edwards nodded. "They are all dead. They cannot hurt
you."

"Yes." Vigdis looked down at the ground.

"You all right?" Smith asked.

"Yeah," Edwards answered. "The lady had a-a
bad dream."

"They come back," she said. "They come back
again."

"Ma'am, they ain't never coming back to hurt you."
Smith grasped her arm through the sleeping bag. "We'll protect you. Nobody
will hurt you while we are here. Okay?"

The girl nodded jerkily.

"Okay, Miss Vigdis, now why don't you try to get some
sleep? Ain't nobody gonna hurt you while we're around. You need us, you can
call us."

Smith walked away. Edwards started to rise, but the girl's
hand came out of the bag and took his arm.

"Please, do not go away. I-fear, fear to be
alone."

"Okay. I'll stay with you. You lie back and get some
sleep."

Five minutes later her eyes were closed and her breathing
was regular. Edwards tried not to look at her. Should she suddenly awake and
see his eyes on her-what might she think? And she could be right, Edwards
admitted to himself. Two weeks ago, had he encountered her at the Keflavik
Officers Club . . . he was a young, unattached man, and she was evidently a
young, unattached woman. His main thought after the second drink would have
been to get her back to his quarters. A little soft music. How beautiful she
would have looked there, slipping demurely from her fashionable clothes in the
soft light coming through the shades. Instead he had met her stark naked, cuts
and bruises on her exposed flesh. So strange it was now. Edwards knew without
thinking that if another man tried to put hands on her, he'd kill him without
hesitation, and he couldn't bring himself to think of what taking the girl
himself might be like-his only likely thought if he had encountered her on the
street. What if I hadn't decided to come to her house? he wondered. She'd be
dead by now, along with her parents. Probably someone would have found them in
a few days . . . like they'd discovered Sandy. And that, Edwards knew all
along, was the reason he'd killed the Russian lieutenant and enjoyed the man's
slow trip to hell. A pity no one had seen fit to do that

Smith waved to him. Edwards rose quietly and walked over.

"I got Garcia on guard. I think we better go back to
being Marines after all. If that'd been for real, we'd all be cold meat by now,
Lieutenant."

"We're all too tired to move out just yet."

"Yes, sir. The lady okay?"

"She's had a tough time. When she wakes up-hell, I don't
know. I'm afraid she might just come apart on us."

"Maybe." Smith lit a cigarette. "She's young.
She might bounce back if we give her a chance."

"Get her something to do?"

"Same as us, skipper. You're better off doin' than
thinkin'."

Edwards checked his watch. He'd actually gotten six hours of
sleep before all this had happened. Though his legs were stiff, otherwise he
felt better than he would have imagined. It was an illusion, he knew. He needed
at least another four hours, and a good meal, before he'd be ready to move.

"We won't move out until about eleven. I want everybody
to get some more sleep and one decent meal before we head out of here."

"Makes sense. When you gonna radio in?"

"I should have done that a long time ago, I just don't
want to climb those damned rocks."

"Lieutenant, I'm just a dumbass grunt, but insteada
doing that, why don't you just walk downstream about half a mile? You oughta be
able to track in on your satellite that way, right?"

Edwards turned to look north. Walking about that far would
lower the angle to the satellite as well as climbing . . . why didn't I think
of that? Because like any good Air Force Academy graduate, you thought in terms
of up-and-down instead of sideways. The lieutenant shook his head angrily,
noting the sergeant's sly grin before he lifted the radio pack and heading down
the canyon's rocky floor.

"You're very late, Beagle," Doghouse said at once.
"Repeat your status."

"Doghouse, things are just terrible. We had a run-in
with a Russian patrol." Edwards explained for another two minutes.

"Beagle, are you out of your Goddamned mind? Your
orders are to avoid, repeat avoid, contact with the enemy. How do you know that
somebody doesn't know you're there? Over!"

"They're all dead. We rolled their vehicle over a cliff
and set fire to it. We made it look like an accident, just like on TV. It's all
over, Doghouse. No sense worrying about it now. We are now ten klicks from
where it happened. I'm resting my men for the rest of the day. We will continue
our march north tonight. This may take longer than you expect. The terrain is
rugged as hell, but we'll do our best. Nothing more to report. We can't see
much from where we are."

"Very well. Your orders are unchanged, and please don't
play white knight again-acknowledge."

"Roger that. Out." Edwards smiled to himself as he
repacked the radio. When he got back to the others, he saw that Vigdis was
stirring in her sleep. He lay down beside her, careful to stay a few feet away.

SCOTLAND

"Bloody cowboy-John Wayne rescuing the settlers from
the bloody red Indians!"

"We weren't there," said the man with the eye
patch. He fingered it briefly. "It is a mistake to judge a man from a
thousand miles away. He was there, he saw what was happening. The next thing
is, what does this tell us about Ivan's troops?"

"The Sovs do not exactly have an exemplary record for
dealing with civilians," the first man pointed out.

"The Soviet airborne troops are known for their stern
discipline," the second replied. Formerly a major in the SAS, and
invalided out, he was now a senior man with the Special Operations Executive,
the SOE- "Conduct like this is not indicative of well-disciplined troops.
That may be important later on. For the moment, as I told you earlier, this lad
is turning out very nicely indeed." He said it without a trace of
smugness.

26 - Impressions

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

The flight in was bad enough. They'd come in aboard a light
bomber, racing in at low level to a military airport east of Berlin, no more
than four staff members to an aircraft. All had arrived safely, but Alekseyev
wondered how much of it was skill and how much luck. This airfield had clearly
been visited by NATO aircraft recently and the General already had his doubts
about what his colleagues in the Air Force had told him about their ability to
control the sky even in daylight. From Berlin a helicopter took his party to
CINC-West's forward command post outside Stendal. Alekseyev was the first
senior officer to arrive at the underground bunker complex, and he did not like
what he found. The staff officers present were too concerned with what the NATO
forces were doing and not concerned enough with what the Red Army was supposed
to be doing to them. The initiative had not been lost, but his first impression
was that the danger was real. Alekseyev located the command operations officer
and started assembling information on how the campaign was going. His commander
arrived half an hour later, and immediately took Alekseyev into his office.

"Well, Pasha?"

"I have to see the front at once. We have three attacks
under way. I need to see how they are going. The German counterattack at
Hamburg was repulsed, again, but this time we lack the forces to exploit it.
The northern area is currently in stalemate. Our deepest penetration to date is
just over one hundred kilometers. The timetable has gone completely to hell,
losses are far higher than expected--on both sides, but worse for us. We have
gravely underestimated the lethality of NATO antitank weapons. Our artillery
has been unable to suppress them enough for our forces to achieve a major
breakthrough. NATO air power is hurting us badly, especially at night.
Reinforcements are not getting forward as well as we expected. We still have
the initiative in most areas, but unless we achieve a breakthrough, that may
not last more than another few days. We must find a weakness in NATO lines and
launch a major coordinated attack soon."

"The NATO situation?"

Alekseyev shrugged. "Their forces are fully in the
field. Further reinforcements are coming in from America, but from what our
prisoners have told us, not so well as they expected. My impression is that
they are stretched very thin in some areas, but we have not as yet identified a
major area of weakness. If we can find one, and exploit it, I think we can
rupture the front and stage a multidivisional breakout. They can't be strong
everywhere. The German demand for forward defense compels the NATO forces to
try and stop us everywhere. We made the same mistake in 1941. It cost us
heavily. It must be doing the same to them."

"How soon do you wish to visit the front?"

"Within the hour. I'll take Captain Sergetov with
me-"

"The Party man's son? If he's hurt, Pasha . . ."

"He's an officer in the Soviet Army, whatever his
father might be. I need him."

"Very well. Keep me posted on where you are. Send the
operations people in. We have to get control of this whorehouse."

Alekseyev commandeered a new Mi-24 attack helicopter for his
reconnaissance. Overhead, a flight of agile MiG-21 fighters guarded the General
as the helicopter skimmed low over the treetops. He eschewed the seat, instead
crouching by the windows to see what he could. A lifetime of military service
had not prepared him for the destruction that lay on the landscape below him.
It seemed that every road held a burned-out tank or truck. The major crossroads
had gotten particularly severe attention from NATO air power. Here a bridge had
been knocked out, and immediately behind it a company of tanks waiting its
repair had been savaged. The charred remains of aircraft, vehicles, and men had
transformed the neat, picturesque German countryside into a junkyard of high-technology
weapons. As they crossed the border into West Germany, things only got worse.
Each road had been fought for, each tiny village. He counted eleven smashed
tanks outside one such village, and wondered how many others had been pulled
off the battlefield for repair. The town itself was almost totally destroyed by
artillery and resulting fires. He saw only one building that looked like it
might be habitable. Five kilometers west, the same story was repeated, and
Alekseyev realized that a whole regiment of tanks had been lost in a
ten-kilometer advance down a single road. He began to see NATO equipment, a
German attack helicopter identifiable only from the tail rotor that stuck out
from the circle of ashes, a few tanks and infantry carriers. For both sides the
proud vehicles manufactured at the greatest expense and skill were scattered on
the landscape like trash thrown from a car window. The Soviets had more to
expend, the General knew, but how many more?

The helicopter landed at the edge of a forest. Just within
the treeline, Alekseyev saw, antiaircraft guns tracked them all the way to the
ground. He and Sergetov jumped out, ducking under the still-turning main rotor
as they ran into the trees. There they found a cluster of command vehicles.

"Welcome, Comrade General," said a dirty-faced Red
Army colonel.

"Where is the divisional commander?"

"I'm in command. The General was killed day before
yesterday by enemy artillery fire. We have to move the CP twice a day. They are
becoming very skilled at locating us."

"Your situation?" Alekseyev asked curtly.

"The men are tired, but they can still fight. We are
not getting sufficient air support, and the NATO fighters give us no rest at
night. We have about half our nominal combat strength, except in artillery. That's
down to a third. The Americans have just changed tactics on us. Now, instead of
attacking the leading tank formations, they are sending their aircraft after
our guns first. We were badly hurt last night. Just as we were launching a
regimental attack, four of their ground-attack fighters nearly wiped out a
battalion of mobile guns. The attack failed."

"What about concealment!" Alekseyev demanded.

"Ask the devil's mother why it doesn't work," the
colonel shot back. "Their radar aircraft can evidently track vehicles on
the ground-we've tried jamming, we've tried lures. Sometimes it works, but
sometimes not. The division command post has been attacked twice. My regiments
are commanded by majors, my battalions by captains. NATO tactics are to go for
the unit commanders, and the bastards are good at it. Every time we approach a
village, my tanks have to fight through a swarm of missiles. We've tried
rockets and artillery to suppress them, but you can't take the time to blast
every building in sight-we'd never get anywhere."

"What do you need?"

"Air support and lots of it. Get me the support to
smash through what's opposing me, and I'll give you your damned breakout!"
Ten kilometers behind the front, a tank division was waiting for this very unit
to rupture the front-but how could it exploit a breakthrough that was never
made?

"Your supply situation?"

"Could be better, but we're getting enough forward to
supply what we have left-not enough to support an intact division."

"What are you doing now?"

"We launch a two-regiment attack just over an hour from
now. Another village, named Bieben. We estimate enemy strength as two
understrength battalions of infantry, supported by tanks and artillery. The
village commands a crossroads we need. Same one we tried to get last night.
This assault should work. Do you wish to observe?"

"Yes."

"Then we'd better get you forward. Forget the
helicopter unless you want to die. Besides"-the colonel smiled-"I can
use it to support the attack. I'll give you an infantry carrier to get you forward.
It will be dangerous up there, Comrade General," the colonel warned.

"Fine. You can protect us. When do we leave?"

USS PHARRIS

The calm sea meant that Pharris was back on
port-and-starboard steaming. Half the crew was always on duty as the frigate held
her station north of the convoy. The towed sonar was streamed aft, and the
helicopter sat ready on the flight deck, its crew dozing in the hangar. Morris
slept also, snoring away in his leather bridge chair, to the amusement of his
crewmen. So, officers did it, too. The crew accommodations often sounded like a
convention of chainsaws.

"Captain, message from CINCLANTFLT."

Morris looked up at the yeoman and signed for the message
form. An eastbound convoy one hundred fifty miles north of them was under attack.
He walked back to the chart table to check distances. The submarines there were
not a threat to him. That was that. He had his own concerns, and his world had
shrunk to include them only. Another forty hours to Norfolk, where they would
refuel, replace expended ordnance, and sail again within twenty-four hours.

"What the hell's that?" a sailor said loudly. He
pointed to a low-lying trail of white smoke.

"That's a missile," answered the officer of the
deck. "General quarters! Captain, that was a cruise missile southbound a
mile ahead of us."

Morris snapped upright in his seat and blinked his eyes
clear. "Signal the convoy. Energize the radar. Fire the chaff."
Morris ran to the ladder to CIC. The ship's alarm was sounding its strident
note before he got there. Aft, two Super-RBOC chaff rockets leaped into the sky
and exploded, surrounding the frigate with a cloud of aluminum foil.

"I count five inbounds," a radar operator was
saying. One's heading towards us. Bearing zero-zero-eight, range seven miles, speed
five hundred knots."

"Bridge, come right full rudder to
zero-zero-eight," the tactical action officer ordered. "Stand by to
fire off more chaff. Air action forward, weapons free."

The five-inch gun swiveled slightly and loosed several
rounds, none of which came near the incoming missile.

"Range two miles and closing," reported the radar
man.

"Fire four more Super-Rocs."

Morris heard the rockets launch. The radar showed their
chaff as an opaque cloud that enveloped the ship.

"CIC," called a lookout. "I see it. Star
bound bow, inbound-it's gonna miss, I got a bearing change. There-there it
goes, passing aft. Missed us by a couple hundred yards."

The missile was confused by the chaff. Had its brain had the
capacity to think, it would have been surprised that it struck nothing.
Instead, on coming back to a clear sky, the radar seeker merely looked for
another target. It found one, fifteen miles ahead, and altered course toward
it.

"Sonar," Morris ordered, "check bearing
zero-zero-eight. There's a missile-armed sub out there."

"Looking now, sir. Nothing shows on that bearing."

"A five-hundred-knot sea-skimmer. That's a
Charlie-class sub, maybe thirty miles out," Morris said. "Get the
helo out there. I'm going topside."

The captain reached the bridge just in time to see the
explosion on the horizon. That was no freighter. The fireball could only mean a
warship had had her magazines exploded by a missile, perhaps the one that had
just missed them. Why hadn't they been able to stop it? Three more explosions
followed. Slowly the noise traveled across the sea toward them, reaching
Pharris as the deep sound of an enormous bass drum. The frigate's Sea Sprite
helicopter was just lifting off, racing north in the hope of catching the
Soviet sub near the surface. Morris ordered his ship to slow to five knots in
the hope that the lower speed would allow his sonar to perform just a little
better. Still nothing. He returned to CIC.

The helicopter's crew dropped a dozen sonobuoys. Two showed
something, but the contact faded, and was not reestablished. Soon an Orion
showed up and carried on the search, but the submarine had escaped cleanly, her
missiles having killed a destroyer and two merchantmen. Just like that, Morris
thought. No warning at all.

STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND

"Raid warning again," the Group Captain said.

"Realtime?" Toland asked.

"No, an asset we have in Norway. Contrails overhead
southwest. He counts twenty or so, aircraft type unknown. We have a Nimrod
patrolling north of Iceland now. If they're Backfires, and if they rendezvous
with a tanker group, we might just get something. See if your idea works,
Bob."

Four Tomcat interceptors were sitting ready on the flight
line. Two were armed with missiles. The other pair carried buddy-stores, fuel
tanks designed to transfer fuel to other aircraft. The distance they expected
for a successful intercept meant a round trip of two thousand miles, which
meant that only two aircraft could reach far enough, and they were stretching
to the limit.

The Nimrod circled two hundred miles east of Jan Mayen Land.
The Norwegian island had been subjected to several air attacks, destroying the
radar there, though so far the Russians had not launched a ground attack as
expected. The British patrol aircraft bristled with antennae but carried no
armament of her own. If the Russians sent escorting fighters out with the
bomber/tanker force, she could only evade. One team listened in on the bands
used by the Russians to communicate between aircraft, another on radar
frequencies.

It was a long, tense wait. Two hours after the raid warning,
a garbled transmission was heard, interpreted as a warning to a Backfire pilot
approaching a tanker. The bearing was plotted, and the Nimrod turned east
hoping for a cross bearing on the next such signal. None was detected. Without
a firm fix, the fighters had only the slimmest hope of an intercept. They were
kept on the ground. Next time, they decided, there'd be a pair of snoopers up.

USS CHICAGO

The QZB bell-ringer call arrived just after lunch.
McCafferty brought his submarine to antenna depth and received orders to
proceed to Faslane, the Royal Navy submarine base in Scotland. Since losing
contact with the Russian surface force, they had not tracked a single positive
contact. It was crazy. All the pre-war assessments told McCafferty to expect a
"target-rich environment." So far he was rich only in frustration.
The executive officer took them back down to a deep cruising depth while McCafferty
began to write up his patrol report.

BIEBEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

"You're pretty exposed here," the captain
observed, crouching just behind the turret.

"True enough," Sergeant Mackall agreed. His M-1
Abrams tank was dug into the reverse slope of a hill, its gun barely clear of
the ground behind a row of shrubs. Mackall looked down a shallow valley to a
treeline fifteen hundred meters away. The Russians were in there, surveying the
ridges with powerful field glasses, and he hoped that they could not make out
the squat, ominous profile of the main battle tank. He was in one of three
prepared firing positions, a sloped hole in the ground dug by the engineers'
bulldozers, helped over the last few days by local German farmers who had taken
to the task with a will. The bad news was that the next line of such positions
required traversing five hundred meters of open fields. They'd been planted
with something a bare six weeks before. Those crops would never amount to much,
the sergeant knew.

"Ivan must love this weather," Mackall observed.
There was an overcast at about thirteen hundred feet. Whatever air support he
could expect would have a bare five seconds to acquire and engage their targets
before having to break clear of the battlefield. "What can you give us,
sir?"

"I can call four A-10s, maybe some German birds,"
the Air Force captain replied. He surveyed the terrain himself from a slightly
different perspective. What was the best way to get the ground-attack fighters
in and out? The first Russian attack on this position had been repulsed, but he
could see the remains of two NATO aircraft that had died in the effort.
"There should be three choppers, too."

That surprised Mackall-and worried him. Just what sort of
attack were they expecting here?

"Okay." The captain stood and turned back to his
armored command vehicle. "When you hear 'Zulu, Zulu, Zulu,' that means the
air is less than five minutes out. If you see any SAM vehicles or antiair guns,
for Christ's sake take them out. The Warthogs have been hit real hard,
Sarge."

"You got it, Cap'n. You better get your ass outa here,
it's gonna be showtime soon." One thing Mackall had learned was just how
important a good forward air-control officer was, and this one had dug the
sergeant's troop out of a really bad scrape three days before. He watched the
officer sprint fifty yards to the waiting vehicle, its engine already turning.
The rear door hadn't yet closed when the driver pulled out fast, zigzagging
down the slope and across the plowed field toward the command post.

B Troop, 1st Squadron, 1lth Armored Cavalry Regiment had
once been fourteen tanks. Five of the originals were gone, and there had been
only two replacements. Of the rest, all had been damaged to one degree or
another. His platoon leader had been killed on the second day of the war,
leaving Mackall in command of the three-tank platoon, covering nearly a
kilometer of front. Dug in between his tanks was a company of German
infantry-men of the Landwehr, the local equivalent of the National Guard,
farmers and shop owners for the most part, men fighting to defend not just
their country, but their own homes. They, too, had taken serious losses. The
"company" was no more than two platoons of effectives. Surely the
Russians know just how thin we're spread, Mackall thought. Everyone was dug
in-deep. The power of Russian artillery had come as a shock despite all the
pre-war warnings they'd had.

"The Americans must love this." The colonel
gestured at the low clouds. "Their damned airplanes come swooping in too
low for our radar, and this way we have practically no chance to see them
before they fire."

"How badly have they hurt you?"

"See for yourself." The colonel gestured at the
battlefield. Fifteen tanks lay in view-the burned-out remains. "That American
low-level fighter did this-the Thunderbolt. Our men call it the Devil's
Cross."

"But you killed two aircraft yesterday," Sergetov
objected.

"Yes, and only one of four gun vehicles survived the
effort. The same vehicle got both--Senior Sergeant Lupenko. I recommended him
for the Red Banner. It will be posthumous--the second aircraft crashed right on
his vehicle. My best gunner," the colonel said bitterly. Two kilometers
away, the wreckage of a German Alphajet was a charred garnish atop the remains
of a ZSU-30 gun vehicle. No doubt it had been deliberate, the colonel thought,
that German had wanted to kill just a few more Soviets before he died. A
sergeant handed his colonel a radio headset. The officer listened for half a
minute before speaking a few words that he punctuated with a quick nod.

"Five minutes, Comrades. My men are fully in place.
Would you follow me, please?"

The command bunker had been hastily built of logs and earth,
with a full meter of overhead cover. Twenty men were crammed into it, communications
men for the two regiments in the assault. The division's third regiment waited
to exploit the breakthrough and pave the way for the reserve armored division
to break into the enemy's rear. If, Alekseyev reminded himself, everything went
as planned.

No enemy troops or vehicles could be seen, of course. They
would be in the woods atop the ridge less than two kilometers away, dug in
deep. He watched the divisional commander nod to his artillery chief, who
lifted a field phone and spoke two words:

"Commence firing."

It took several seconds for the sound to reach them. Every
gun the division owned, with an additional battery from the tank division,
spoke as one dreadful voice, and the thunder echoed across the countryside The
shells arched overhead, at first striking short of the opposite ridgeline, then
closing on it. What had once been a gentle hill covered with lush grass turned
into a brown obscenity of bare earth and smoke.

"I think they're serious, Sarge," the loader said,
pulling his hatch down tight.

Mackall adjusted his helmet and microphone as he peered out
the view ports built into his commander's cupola. The thick armor plate kept
most of the noise out, but when the ground shook beneath them, the shock came
through the treads and suspension to rock the vehicle, and each crewman
reflected to himself on the force needed to budge a sixty-ton tank. This was
how the lieutenant had bought it-a one-in-a-thousand shot from a heavy gun had
landed a round right on his turret, and it had burrowed through the thin
overhead armor to explode the vehicle.

Left and right of Mackall's tank, the largely middle-aged
German territorials cowered in their deep, narrow holes, their emotions
oscillating between terror and rage at what was happening to them and their country-and
their homes!

"Good fire plan, Comrade Colonel," Alekseyev said
quietly. A screaming sound passed overhead. "There is your air
support."

Four Russian ground-attack fighters wheeled overhead to
trace parallel to the ridgeline and dropped their loads of napalm. As they
turned back toward Russian fines, one exploded in midair.

"What was that?"

"Probably a Roland," the colonel answered.
"Their version of our SA-8 rocket. Here we go. One minute."

Five kilometers behind the command bunker, two batteries of
mobile rocket launchers ripple-fired their weapons in a continuous sheet of
flame. Half were high-explosive warheads, the other half smoke.

Thirty rockets landed in Mackall's sector and thirty in the
valley before him. The impact of the explosives shook his tank violently, and
he could hear the pings of fragments bouncing off his armor. But it was the
smoke that frightened him. That meant Ivan was coming. From thirty separate
points, gray-white smoke billowed into the air, forming an instant manmade cloud
that enveloped all the ground in view. Mackall and his gunner activated their
thermal-imaging sights.

"Buffalo, this is Six," the troop commander called
in over the command circuit. "Check in."

Mackall listened in closely. All eleven vehicles were intact,
protected by their deep holes. Again he blessed the engineers-and the German
farmers-who had dug the shelters. No further orders were passed. None were
needed.

"Enemy in view," the gunner reported.

The thermal sight measured differences in temperature and
could penetrate most of the mile of smoke cover. And the wind was on their
side. A ten-mile-per-hour breeze was driving the cloud back east. Sergeant
First Class Terry Mackall took a deep breath and went to work.

"Target tank, ten o'clock. Sabot! Shoot!"

The gunner trained left and centered the sight reticle on
the nearest Soviet battle tank. His thumbs depressed the laser button, and a
thin beam of light bounced off the target. The range display came up in his sight:
1310 meters. The fire-control computer plotted target distance and speed,
elevating the main gun. The computer measured wind speed and direction, air
density and humidity, the temperature of the air, and the tank's own shells,
and all the gunner had to do was place the target in the center of his sights.
The whole operation took less than two seconds, and the gunner's fingers jammed
home on the triggers.

A forty-foot muzzle blast annihilated the shrubs planted two
years earlier by some German Boy Scouts. The tank's 105mm gun jerked back in
recoil, ejecting the spent aluminum case. The shell came apart in the air, the
sabot failing free of the projectile, a 40mm dart made of tungsten and uranium
that lanced through the air at almost a mile a second.

The projectile struck the target one second later at the
base of the gun turret. Inside, a Russian gunner was just picking up a round
for his own cannon when the uranium core of the shot burned through the
protective steel. The Russian tank exploded, its turret flying thirty feet into
the air.

"Hit!" Mackall said. "Target tank, twelve
o'clock. Sabot! Shoot!"

The Russian and American tanks fired at the same instant,
but the Russian shot went high, missing the defiladed M-1 by nearly a meter.
The Russian was less lucky.

"Time to leave," Mackall announced. "Straight
back! Heading for alternate one."

The driver already had reverse engaged, and twisted hard on
his throttle control. The tank surged backward, then spun right and headed
fifty yards to another prepared position.

"Damned smoke!" Sergetov swore. The wind blew it
back in their faces, and they couldn't tell what was going on. The battle was
now in the hands of captains, lieutenants, and sergeants. All they could see
was the orange fireballs of exploding vehicles, and there was no way to know
whose they were. The colonel in command had his radio headset on and was
barking orders to his subunit commanders.

Mackall was in his fast alternate position in less than a
minute. This one had been dug parallel to the ridgeline, and his massive turret
trained to the left. He could see the infantry now, dismounted and running
ahead of their assault carriers. Allied artillery, both German and American,
ripped through their ranks, but not quickly enough .

"Target-tank with an antenna, just coming out of the
treeline."

"Got 'em!" the gunner answered. He saw a Russian
T-80 main battle tank with a large radio antenna projecting from the turret.
That would be a company commander-maybe a battalion commander. He fired.

The Russian tank wheeled just as the shot left the muzzle.
Mackall watched the tracer barely miss his engine compartment.

"Gimme a HEAT round!'' the gunner shouted over the
intercom.

"Ready!"

"Turn back, you mother-"

The Russian tank was driven by an experienced sergeant who
zigzagged his way across the valley floor. He jinked every five seconds, and
now brought his tank left again-

The gunner squeezed off his round. The tank jumped at the
recoil and the spent round clanged off the turret's rear wall. Already the
closed tank hull stank of the ammonia-based propellant.

"Hit! Nice shot, Woody!"

The shell hit the Russian between the last pair of road
wheels and wrecked the tank's diesel engine. In a moment the crew began to bail
out, "escaping" into an environment alive with shell fragments.

Mackall ordered his driver to move again. By the time they
were in their next firing position, the Russians were less than five hundred
meters away. They fired two more shots, killing an infantry carrier and
knocking the tread off a tank.

"Buffalo, this is Six, begin moving to Bravo
Line-execute."

As platoon leader, Mackall was the last to leave. He saw
both of his companion tanks rolling down the open reverse slope of the hill.
The infantry was moving also, into their armored carriers, or just running.
"Friendly" artillery blanketed the ridgeline with high explosives and
smoke to mask their withdrawal. On command, the tank leaped forward,
accelerating to thirty miles per hour and racing to the next defense line
before the Russians could occupy the ridge they were leaving behind. Artillery
fire was all over them, exploding a pair of German personnel carriers.

"Zulu, Zulu, Zulu!"

"Get me a vehicle!" Alekseyev ordered.

"I cannot permit this. I cannot let a general-"

"Get me a damned vehicle! I must observe this,"
Alekseyev repeated.

A minute later, he and Sergetov joined the colonel in a BMP
armored command vehicle that raced to the position the NATO troops had just
vacated. They found a hole that had sheltered two men-until a rocket had landed
a meter away.

"My God, we've lost twenty tanks here!" Sergetov
said, looking back.

"Down!" The colonel pushed both men into the
bloody hole. A storm of NATO shells landed on the ridge.

"There's a Gatling gun!'' the gunner said. A Russian
antiaircraft gun carrier came over the ridge. A moment later a HEAT round
exploded it like a plastic toy. His next target was a Russian tank coming down
the hill they'd just left.

"Heads up, friendly air coming in!" Mackall
cringed, hoping the pilot could tell the sheep from the goats.

Alekseyev watched the twin-engine fighter swoop straight
down the valley. Its nose disappeared in a mass of flame as the pilot fired his
antitank cannon. Four tanks exploded before his eyes as the Thunderbolt appeared
to stagger in midair, then turned west, a missile chasing after him. The SA-7
fell short.

"Me Devil's Cross?" he asked. The colonel nodded
in reply, and Alekseyev realized where the name had come from. From an angle,
the American fighter did look like the stylized Russian Orthodox crucifix.

"I just called up the reserve regiment. We may have
them on the run," the colonel said.

This, Sergetov thought incredulously to himself, is a
successful attack?

Mackall watched a pair of antitank missiles reach out into
the Russian lines. One miss, one kill. More smoke came in from both sides as
the NATO troops fell back another five hundred meters. The village they were
defending was now in sight. The sergeant had counted a total of five kills to
his tank. He hadn't been hit yet, but that wouldn't last. The friendly
artillery was really in the fight now. The Russian infantry was down to half
the strength he'd first seen, and their tracked vehicles were laying back,
trying to engage the NATO positions with their own missiles. Things looked to
be going reasonably well when the third regiment appeared.

Fifty tanks came over the hill in front of him. An A-10
swept across the line and killed a pair, then was blotted out of the sky by a
SAM. The burning wreckage fell three hundred yards in front of him.

"Target tank, one o'clock. Shoot!" The Abrams
rocked backward with yet another shot. "Hit."

"Warning, warning," called the troop commander.
"Enemy choppers approaching from the north."

Ten Mi-24 Hinds arrived late, but they made up for it by
killing a pair of tanks in less than a minute. German Phantom jets then
appeared, engaging, them with air-to-air missiles and cannon in a wild melee
that suddenly included surface-to-air missiles also. The sky was crisscrossed
with smoke trails, and suddenly there were no aircraft in view.

"It's bogging down," Alekseyev said. He'd just
learned one important lesson: attack helicopters cannot hope to survive in the
face of enemy fighters. Just when he thought the Mi-24s would make a decisive
difference, they'd been forced away by the appearance of the German fighters.
Artillery support was slacking off. The NATO gunners were counterbatterying the
Soviet guns expertly, helped by ground-attack fighters. He had to get more
front-line air support.

"The hell it is!" the colonel answered. He radioed
new orders to the battalions on his left flank.

"Looks like a command vehicle at ten o'clock, on the
ridgeline, can you reach it?"

"Long shot, I-"

Whang! A shot glanced off the turret's face.

"Tank, three o'clock, close in-"

The gunner turned his yoke controls and nothing happened.
Immediately he reached for the manual traverse. Mackall engaged the target with
his machine gun, bouncing bullets off the advancing T-80 that had come out of
nowhere. The gunner cranked frantically at the handle as another round crashed
into their armor. The driver aided him, turning the vehicle and praying that
they could return the fire.

The computer was out, damaged by the shock of the first hit.
The T-80 was less than a thousand meters away when the gunner settled on it. He
fired a HEAT round, and it missed. The loader slammed another home in the
breech. The gunner worked his controls and fired again. Hit.

"There's more behind that one," the gunner warned.

"Buffalo Six, this is three-one, bad guys coming in
from our flank. We need help here," Mackall called; then to the driver:
"Left track and back up fast!"

The driver needed no encouragement. He cringed, looking out
his tiny viewing prisms, and rocked the throttle handle all the way back. The
tank raced backward and left as the gunner tried to lock onto another
target-but the automatic stabilization was also out. They had to sit still to
fire accurately, and it was death to sit still.

Another Thunderbolt came in low, dropping cluster munitions
on the Russian formation. Two more Soviet tanks were stopped, but the fighter
went away trailing smoke. Artillery fire joined in to stop the Soviet maneuver.

"For Christ's sake, stop so I can shoot one of the
fuckers!" the gunner screamed. The tank stopped at once. He fired, hitting
a T-72 on the tread. "Reload!"

A second tank joined Mackall's, a hundred meters to his
left. It was intact and fired off three quick rounds for two hits. Then a
Soviet helicopter reappeared and exploded the troop commander's tank with a
missile. A shoulder-fired Stinger missile then killed the chopper as the German
infantry redeployed. Mackall watched a pair of HOT antitank missiles go left
and right of his turret, reaching for the advancing Soviets. Both hit.

"Antenna tank, dead ahead."

"I see him. Sabot!" the gunner cranked the turret
back to the right. He elevated his gun to battle sights and fired.

"Captain Alexandrov!" the division commander
shouted into his microphone. The battalion commander's transmission had stopped
in midword. The colonel was using his radio too much. Ten miles away, a German
battery of 155mm mobile guns tracked in on the radio signals and fired twenty
quick rounds.

Alekseyev heard the incoming and jumped into a German-dug
foxhole, dragging Sergetov with him. Five seconds later the area was blanketed
by smoke and noise.

The General stuck his head up to see the colonel still
standing, still giving radio orders. Behind him the command vehicle was
burning, the radios with it. Five men were dead, another half-dozen screaming
with the pain of their injuries. Alekseyev looked with annoyance at a bloody
streak on the back of his hand.

Mackall killed one more tank, but it was the Germans who
stopped the attack, using the last of their HOT missiles to do so. The
remaining Russian commander lost his nerve when half the tanks in the battalion
were hit. The survivors turned on their smoke generators and retreated back
around the hill to the south. Artillery chased after them. The land battle was
over for the moment.

"Mackall, what's happening down your way?'' the troop
executive officer inquired.

"Where's Six?"

"To your left." Mackall looked and saw the troop
commander's burning tank. So that's who it was

"Just us, sir. What's left?"

"I count four."

My God, the sergeant thought.

"Get me a Regiment from the tank division and I can do
it. They have nothing left!" the colonel insisted. His face was bloody
from a superficial wound.

"I will do this. How soon can you continue the
attack?" Alekseyev asked.

"Two hours. I need that long to regroup my
forces."

"Very well. I must return to headquarters. The enemy
opposition was tougher than you expected, Comrade Colonel. Otherwise your
forces performed well. Tell your intelligence section to work harder. Gather up
your prisoners and interrogate them rigorously!'' Alekseyev moved off with
Sergetov in his wake.

"Worse than I expected," the captain observed once
they were inside their vehicle.

"They must have had nearly a Regiment facing us."
Alekseyev shrugged. "We can't make that kind of mistake very often and
expect to succeed. We advanced four kilometers in two hours, but the cost was
murderous. And those bastards in the Air Force! I'll have something to say to
our Frontal Aviation generals when we get back!"

"That makes you troop XO," the lieutenant said. It
turned out there were five surviving tanks. One had both radios broken.
"You did good, real good."

"How'd the Germans make out?" Mackall asked his
new boss.

"Fifty-percent losses, and Ivan kicked us back four
klicks. We can't expect to survive much more of this. We may have some
reinforcements in an hour. I think I convinced Regiment that Ivan really wants
this place. We'll be getting help. Same for the Germans. They promised another
battalion by nightfall, maybe a second one by dawn. Take your track down for
refuel and reload. Our friends may be back soon."

"That's one little and two big attacks for this
village. They ain't got it yet, sir. "

"One other thing. I talked to Regiment about you. The
colonel says you're an officer now."

Mackall's tank spent ten minutes getting to the rearm point.
Fueling took ten minutes while the exhausted crewmen loaded a new collection of
shells. The sergeant was surprised that he had to head back to the front five
rounds short.

"You've been hit, Pasha." The younger man shook
his head.

"I scratched my hand getting out of the helicopter.
I'll let it bleed awhile to punish myself for clumsiness." Alekseyev sat
opposite his commander and downed a full liter canteen of water. He was
embarrassed by his slight wound and decided to lie about it.

"The attack?"

"Opposition was ferocious. We'd been told to expect two
infantry battalions, plus tanks. I estimate the actual enemy strength as a
damaged regiment, and they had well-prepared positions. Even so, we almost
broke through. The colonel in command had a good plan, and his men pushed as
hard as anyone could expect. We forced them back to within sight of the
objective. I want to release a regiment of tanks from the OMG to the next
attack."

"We are not permitted to do this."

"What?" Alekseyev was stunned.

"The Operational Maneuver Groups are to remain intact
until the breakthrough is achieved. Orders from Moscow."

"One more regiment will do it. The objective is in
sight! We've chewed up one motor rifle division to get this far, and lost half
the strength of another. We can win this battle and get the first major rupture
in NATO lines-but we have to act now!"

"You're certain?"

"Yes, but we must move fast. The Germans must realize
how close this battle has become. They'll try to reinforce also. The lead
regiment from 30th Guards Tank Division is one hour from the front. If we can
get them moving within thirty minutes, they'll be part of the next attack. In
fact, we should move the whole division up. This opportunity will not last
long."

"Very well. I'll call STAVKA for permission."

Alekseyev leaned back and closed his eyes. The Soviet
command structure: to deviate from the Plan, even a Theater commander had to
get permission! It took over an hour while the staff geniuses in Moscow
examined the maps. The lead regiment of 30th Guards was released and ordered to
join the motor-rifle division in the next attack. But they were late, and the
attack was delayed ninety minutes.

Second Lieutenant Terry Mackall-he still wore his stripes
and was too tired to care about his change in rank-wondered how seriously
Command was taking this little tank battle. Two battalions of German regulars
arrived in tracked vehicles, relieving the exhausted Landwehr men, who moved
back to prepare defensive positions in and around the village to their rear. A
company of Leopard tanks and two platoons of M-1s reinforced the position, with
a German colonel in overall command . He arrived by helicopter and surveyed all
the defensive positions. A tough-looking little bastard, Mackall thought, with
some bandages on his face and a tight unsmiling mouth. Mackall remembered that
if Ivan broke through here, he just might be able to flank the German and
British forces that had stopped the Russians' deepest penetration at the
suburbs of Hannover. That made the battle important to the Germans.

The German Leopards took the frontal positions, relieving
the Americans. It was a full troop now, back to fourteen vehicles. The troop
commander split the force into two parts, with Mackall commanding the southern
group. They found the last line of dug shelters, just southeast of the village.
Mackall arrayed his newly assigned command with care, checking each position on
foot and conferring with each tank commander. The Germans were thorough enough.
Any position that did not already have natural shrubbery in place had had it
transplanted in. Nearly all of the civilians who lived here had been evacuated,
but a handful of people were unwilling to desert the homes they'd built. One of
them brought some of the tankers hot food. Mackall's crew didn't have time to
eat it. The gunner repaired two loose connectors and reset the balky
fire-control computer. The loader and driver worked on a loose tread. Artillery
was falling around them before they finished.

Alekseyev wanted to be there. He had a telephone link with
the division, and listened in on the division command circuit. The
colonel-Alekseyev wanted to make him a general if the attack
succeeded-complained that they had been forced to wait too long. He'd asked for
and gotten a reconnaissance mission over enemy lines. One of the aircraft had
vanished. The other's pilot reported movement, but could not provide a strength
estimate, so busy had he been dodging surface-to-air missiles. The colonel
feared there had been an increase in enemy strength, but without hard evidence
could not justify either a further delay or further reinforcements.

Mackall also watched from a distance. The last row of hills
was a mile away, across what had been a farm but was now covered mostly with
small trees, as though the soil had been exhausted. His forces were organized
in two three-tank platoons. As commander, his job was to lie back and direct
them by radio.

Twenty minutes after the radio reported a strong Russian
advance, he began to see movement. German personnel carriers began streaming
down the hill, toward the village. Some Soviet helicopters appeared to the
north, but this time a Roland battery hidden in the village engaged them,
exploding three before they retreated out of sight. Next came the German
Leopard tanks. Mackall counted and came up three short. NATO artillery pounded
the hilltops, and Soviet guns dropped shells in the fields around the American
tanks. Then the Russians appeared.

"Buffalo, all units hold fire. Repeat, everyone hold
fire," the troop commander said over the radio.

Mackall saw that the retreating Germans were passing through
the village. So, that's what that little Kraut bastard has planned, he thought.
Beautiful . . .

"We have them on the run!'' the colonel told Alekseyev
over the command circuit. On the map table in front of the General, counters
were moved and plotting officers made marks with grease pencils. They penciled
in a red gap in the German lines.

The leading Soviet tanks were now five hundred meters from
the village, racing down the two-kilometer gap between B-Troop's tanks. The
German colonel gave his order to the American troop commander.

"Buffalo, this is Six-take 'em!" Twelve tanks
fired at once and hit nine targets.

"Woody, look for antennas," Mackall ordered his
gunner. He used his viewing prisms to keep an eye on his subordinates as the
gunner traversed right and searched the rear Soviet ranks.

"There's one! Load a HEAT round! Target tank. Range
twenty-six hundred-" The tank lurched sideways. The gunner watched the
tracer on the shell arc through the air on its two-mile path . . .
"Hit!"

The second volley from the M-1s killed eight tanks, then
others began to explode from antitank missiles launched out of the village. The
Russians had defiladed tanks on their flanks, and in front of them was a
village bristling with antitank missiles: the German colonel had set a moving
ambush, and the pursuing Russians had fallen into it. Already the Leopards were
sweeping around left and right from behind the village to catch the Russians in
the open. The air-control officer brought his fighter-bombers in on the Soviet
artillery positions yet again. Soviet fighters engaged them, but while doing
that they could not interfere with the land battle, and now a squadron of
German Gazelle missile-armed choppers added their fire into the killing ground.
The Soviet tanks fired off smoke and desperately tried to engage their enemies,
but the Americans were dug in deep, and the German missileers in the village
skillfully changed firing points after every shot.

Mackall shifted one platoon right and the other left. His
own gunner located and killed a second command tank, then the Germans enveloped
the Russian formation from north and south. Still outnumbered, the Germans
nevertheless caught the Russians off balance, raking the tank column with their
big 120mm gun tubes. The Soviet commander ordered his helicopters back in to
blast open an escape route. They surprised and killed three German tanks before
missiles began to drop them from the sky yet again. Suddenly it became too
much. As Mackall watched, the Soviet force wheeled and retreated toward the
hills, with the Germans in pursuit. The counterattack was pressed to the limit,
and Mackall knew that nobody did that as well as the Krauts. By the time he had
orders to move, the initial defense position was back in friendly hands. The
battle had lasted barely over an hour. Two Soviet motor-rifle divisions had now
been decimated on the road to Bieben.

The crewmen opened their hatches to let fresh air into the
stiffing turret. Fifteen empty cases rattled about on the floor. The
fire-control computer was out again, but Woody had killed another four tanks,
two of them belonging to Soviet officers. The troop commander came over to him
in a jeep.

"Three tanks damaged," Mackall reported.
"Have to drag them clear for repairs." His face split into a wide
grin: "They ain't never gonna take this town away from us!"

"Those Bundeswehr regulars made the difference."
The lieutenant nodded. "Okay, start getting your people reloaded."

"Oh, yeah. Last time I came back five rounds
short."

"They're thinning out the ammo issue. It's not getting across
to us as quick as we thought."

Mackall thought that one over and didn't like what he came
up with. "Have somebody tell those Navy pukes that we can stop these
bastards if they get their shit together!"

USS PHARRIS

Morris had never seen Hampton Roads so crowded. At least
sixty merchantmen were swinging at anchor, with a beefed-up escort force
preparing to take them to sea. Saratoga was in also, her mainmast gone and a
replacement being fabricated on the quay while repairs were under way for less
visible damage from her near-miss. Numerous aircraft circled overhead, and
several ships had their search radars on lest a Soviet submarine sneak close
inshore and launch cruise missiles into the mass of shipping.

Pharris was tied to the fueling pier, taking on fuel oil for
her boilers and jet fuel for her helicopter. The single ASROC she'd expended
had already been replaced, as had the six chaff rockets. Aside from that, the
only thing that needed to be taken aboard was food. Ed Morris handed his patrol
report to a messenger who would deliver it to his squadron commander. He would
have gone himself, but there was no time. They were scheduled to sail in
another twelve hours. This was another twenty-knot convoy, bound for the French
ports of LeHavre and Brest with heavy equipment and munitions.

Morris had been given the fleet intelligence report. If
anything, matters had gotten worse. Twenty NATO submarines were now staked out
in the G-I-UK gap, trying to make up for the loss of the SOSUS line. They
reported killing a sizable number of Soviet submarines, but they also reported
that some had gotten through, and for each known leaker, Morris was sure that
there were four or five unknowns. The first convoy had gotten virtually a free
ride. Those few Soviet submarines in the Atlantic at the time had been spread
thin, and were forced to race noisily to their convoy targets. No longer. About
sixty were thought to be in the Atlantic now, at least half of them
nuclear-powered. Morris thought over the numbers, what the Soviet inventory
was, how many kills NATO claimed, and wondered if sixty was an optimistic
assessment.

Then there were the Backfires. The convoy would be taking a
southerly routing, adding two full days to the crossing time but forcing the
Soviet bombers to stretch to the limit of their fuel. Also, thirty minutes
before each satellite pass, the convoy would reverse course to a westerly
heading in the hope that the Soviets would then vector their bombers and
submarines to the wrong point. A pair of carrier battle groups was at sea and
would offer support if possible. Clearly they wanted to spring a trap on the
Backfires. The carrier groups would be steaming an evasive path, trying to
avoid satellite detection entirely. Morris knew this was possible, an exercise in
geometry, but it placed serious limits on the carriers' freedom of action-and
having the carrier groups at sea would take up some of the antisubmarine patrol
aircraft that the convoys depended on. A compromise, but then all life, and
certainly any war operation, was a collection of compromises. Morris lit an
unfiltered cigarette. He'd broken the habit years before, but halfway through
the outbound leg of his first war cruise he'd found himself at the ship's store
purchasing a carton of tax-free "at sea" smokes. The added hazard to
his health, he judged, was no more than incidental. Already nine destroyers and
frigates had been sunk, two with all hands.

ICELAND

Edwards had learned to hate the rust-colored contour lines
on his maps. Each one announced a change of twenty meters. He tried to work it
out in his head, but got no further than sixty-five-point-six feet for every
one of the Goddamned red-brown lines. Sometimes the lines were spread apart by
as much as an eighth of an inch. Other times they were packed together tightly
enough that the lieutenant half expected to find a sheer wall. He remembered
the one visit he'd had to Washington, D.C., and the time he and his father had
scornfully walked past the tourists lined up to wait for an elevator ride to the
top of the Washington Monument, preferring to walk the five hundred feet up the
square-spiral staircase to the observation deck. They'd arrived at the top
tired but proud. He was now making that same climb about every ninety minutes,
except this time there were no smooth, even steps, and no elevator awaited them
at the top for a more relaxing trip down . . . and no taxi to the hotel.

They climbed ten contour lines-two hundred meters, or six
hundred fifty-six feet-three hours after breaking camp; crossing, the map said,
from the Skorradalshreppur second-order administrative division to the
Lundarreykjadashreppur second-order administrative division. There was no green
highway sign to announce this, the Icelanders being bright enough to know that
anyone who traveled out here lived here and needed no directions. They were
rewarded with two kilometers of fairly level terrain as they walked between a
pair of marshes. It was littered with rock and ash from what seemed to be an
extinct volcano about four miles away.

"Take a break," Edwards said. He sat down next to
a three-foot rock so that he'd have something to lean against, and was
surprised when Vigdis came over. She sat down three feet away, facing him.

"How are you today?" he asked. There was life in
her eyes now, Mike saw. Perhaps the demons that had awakened her the previous
day were now gone? No, he thought, they'd never be completely gone-but you had
to be alive to have nightmares, and they would probably fade in time. With time
you could recover from anything, except murder.

"I have not thanked you for my life."

"We could not stand by and let them kill you," he
said, wondering if it was a lie. If the Russians had simply killed all three
people in the house, would he have attacked them or would he have waited and
simply looted the house after they'd left? It was a time for the truth.

"I didn't do it for you, not only for you."

"I do not understand."

Edwards took his wallet from a back pocket and opened it to
a five-year-old photograph. "That's Sandy, Sandra Miller. We grew up on
the same block, all the way through school. Maybe we would have gotten married
someday," he said quietly. And maybe not, he admitted to himself. People
change. "I went to the Air Force Academy, she went to the University of
Connecticut in Hartford. October of her second year, she disappeared. She was
raped and murdered. They found her a week later in a ditch. The guy who did
it-they never proved he killed Sandy, but he raped two other girls at the
school-well, he's in a mental hospital now. They said he was crazy, wasn't
really responsible. So someday the docs'll say he's cured, and they'll let him
out, and Sandy'll still be dead." Edwards looked down at the rocks.

"I couldn't do anything about that. I'm not a cop, I
was two thousand miles away. But not this time." His voice showed no
emotion at all. "This time was different."

"You love Sandy?" Vigdis asked.

How to answer that one? Mike wondered. It sure did seem like
that, five years ago, didn't it? But would it have worked out? You haven't
exactly been celibate these last few years, have you? But it hasn't been the
same, either, has it? He looked at the photograph taken three days before Sandy
had been killed. It had arrived in his box at Colorado Springs after her death,
though he hadn't known it at the time. Her dark, shoulder length hair, the tilt
of the head, the impish smile that went with an infectious laugh . . . all
gone.

"Yes." There was emotion in his voice now.

"You do for her then, yes?"

"Yes," Edwards lied. I did it for me.

"I do not know your name."

"Mike, Michael. Edwards."

"You do this for me, Michael. Thank you for my
life." There were the first beginnings of a smile. She placed her hand on
his. It was soft and warm.

27 - Casualties

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

"At First we thought that they simply drove off the
cliff road. We found this in the vehicle." The major of field police held
up the top of a broken bottle of vodka. "But the medical corpsman who
collected their personal effects found this."

The major pulled the rubberized sheet off the one body that
had been thrown clear when the vehicle hit the rocks. The stab wound in the
chest was unmistakable.

"And you said that the Icelanders were as peaceful as
sheep, Comrade General," the KGB colonel observed sardonically.

The major continued, "It is difficult to reconstruct
exactly what happened. There was a farm a short distance away whose house was
burned to the ground. We found two bodies in the wreckage. Both had been
shot."

"Who were they?" General Andreyev asked.

"Impossible to identify the bodies. The only way we
knew they were shot was the bullet hole in the sternum, so that was likely done
at very close range. I had one of our surgeons look at them. A man and a woman,
probably in their middle years. According to a local government official, the
farm was occupied by a married couple with one daughter, age"-the major
checked his notes-"twenty. The daughter has not been found."

"What of the patrol?"

"They were southbound on the coast road when they
disappeared-"

"No one spotted the fires?" the KGB colonel asked
sharply.

"There was heavy rain that night. Both the burning
vehicle and the farmhouse were below the horizon for the neighboring
observation patrols. As you know, the road conditions here have upset our
patrol schedules, and the mountains interfere with radio performance. So when
the patrol was late getting in, no particular note was made of it. You can't
see the vehicle from the road, and as a result they were not spotted until the
helicopter flew over it."

"The other bodies, how did they die?" the General
wanted to know.

"When the vehicle burned, the soldiers' hand grenades
cooked off, with the obvious results. Except for the sergeant here, there is no
telling how they died. So far as we can tell, no weapons were taken. All the
rifles were there, but some items are unaccounted for: a map case and some
other minor things. Possibly they were blown clear of the vehicle by the
explosions and fell into the sea, but I doubt this."

"Conclusions?"

"Comrade General, there is not a great deal to go on,
but I surmise that the patrol visited the farmhouse, 'liberated' this bottle of
vodka, probably shot and killed the two people who lived there, and burned the
house. The daughter is missing. We are searching the area for her body. At some
time after this happened, the patrol was surprised and killed by an armed party
which then tried to make their deaths look like a vehicle accident. We should
assume that there is at least one band of resistance fighters at large."

"I disagree," the KGB colonel announced. "Not
all the enemy troops have been accounted for. I think that your 'resistance
fighters' are probably NATO personnel who escaped when we took Keflavik. They
ambushed our troops, then murdered the farm people in the hope of stirring the
local population against us."

General Andreyev shared a furtive look with his major of
field police. It had been a KGB lieutenant commanding the patrol. The chekisti
had insisted that some of their people accompany the roving patrols. Just what
he needed, the General thought. Bad enough that his crack paratroopers were
consigned to garrison duty-always destructive to unit morale and discipline-but
now they were jailers, too, and in some cases commanded by jailers. So the
arrogant young KGB officer-he'd never met a humble one-had thought to have
himself some fun. Where was the daughter? The answer to this mystery certainly
lay with her. But the mystery wasn't the important thing, was it?

"I think we should interrogate the local inhabitants to
see what they know," the KGB officer announced.

"There are no 'local inhabitants,' Comrade," the
major answered. "Look at your map. This is an isolated farm. The nearest
neighbor is seven kilometers away."

"But-"

"Who killed these unfortunates, and why, is
unimportant. We have armed enemies out there," Andreyev said. "This
is a military matter, not something for our colleagues in the KGB. I'll have a
helicopter search the area around the farm. If we find this resistance group,
or whatever it is, we will deal with it as with any band of armed enemies. You
may interrogate any prisoners we manage to capture, Comrade Colonel. Also, for
the moment any KGB officer who accompanies our security patrols will be an
observer, not a commander. We cannot risk your men in combat situations for
which they have not been fully trained. So. Let me talk to my operations
officer to see how we will handle the search. Comrades, you did well to bring
this to our attention. Dismissed." The chekist wanted to stay, but KGB or
not, he was only a colonel, and the General was exercising his legitimate
prerogatives as commander on the scene.

An hour later, a Mi-24 attack helicopter lifted off to check
the area around the burned farm.

STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND

"Again?" Toland asked.

"Not a bank holiday, Commander," the group captain
replied. "Two regiments of Backfires departed their bases twenty minutes
ago. If we want to catch their tankers, we must move smartly."

Within minutes, two EA-6B Prowlers, designed to find and jam
enemy radar and radio signals, were climbing to altitude on a northwest
heading. Known with backhanded affection as the Queer, the EA-6B's most
striking characteristic was its canopies, inlaid with real gold to protect sensitive
onboard instruments against electromagnetic radiation. As the planes climbed,
their pilots and electronics officers were already working in their gilt cages.

Two hours later they spotted their prey, radioed back the
signal bearings-and four Tomcats rolled down the runway of Stornoway.

NORWEGIAN SEA

Cruising at an altitude of thirty-six thousand feet the
Tomcats flew racetrack-shaped patterns north and south of the predicted course
for the Soviet tankers. Their powerful search/missile-guidance radars were shut
down. Instead, they swept the skies with a built-in TV camera that could
identify aircraft as far as forty miles away. Conditions were ideal, a clear
sky with only a few high cirrus clouds; the fighters left no contrails that
might warn another aircraft of their presence. The pilots curved their fighters
around the sky, their eyes shifting out to check the horizon, then in to check
engine instruments, a cycle repeated every ten seconds.

"Well, lookie here . . ." the squadron commander
said to his weapons operator. The flight officer in the Tomcat's back seat
centered the TV camera on the aircraft.

"Looks like a Badger to me."

"I don't suppose he's alone. Let's wait."

"Roge."

The bomber was over forty miles off. Soon two more appeared,
along with something smaller.

"That's a fighter. So, they have fighter escorts this
far out, eh? I count a total of . . . six targets." The weapons operator
tightened up his shoulder straps, then activated his missile controls.
"All weapons armed and ready. Fighters first?"

"Fighters first, light 'em up," the pilot agreed.
He toggled up his radio. "Two, this is Lead, we have four tankers and a
pair of fighters on a course of about zero-eight-five, forty miles west of my
position. We are engaging now. Come on in. Over."

"Roger that. On the way, Lead. Out." Two brought
his interceptor into a tight turn and advanced his throttles to the stops.

The leader's radar activated. They now had two fighters and
four tankers identified. The first two Phoenixes would be targeted on the
fighters.

"Shoot!"

The two missiles dropped clear of their shackle points and
ignited, leading the Tomcat to the targets.

The Russian tankers had detected the fighter's AWG-9 radar
and were already trying to evade. Their escorting fighters went to full power
and activated their own missile-guidance radars, only to find that they were
still outside missile range to the attacking fighters. Both switched on their
jamming pods and began to jink their aircraft up and down as they closed in
hope of launching their own missiles. They couldn't run away, there wasn't
enough fuel for that, and their mission was to keep the fighters off the
tankers.

The Phoenix missiles burned through the air at Mach 5,
closing the distance to their targets in just under a minute. One Soviet pilot
never saw the missile, and was blotted from the sky in a ball of red and black.
The other did, and threw his stick over, a second before the missile exploded.
It nearly missed, but fragments tore into the fighter's port wing. The pilot struggled
to regain control as he fell from the sky.

Behind the fighters, the tankers split up, two heading
north, the other pair south. The lead Tomcat took the northern pair and killed
both with his remaining two Phoenixes. His wingman racing up from the north
fired two missiles, hitting with one, and missing with the other, as the
missile was confused by the Badger's jamming gear. The Tomcat continued to
close, and fired another missile. By this time he was close enough to track the
bird visually. The AIM-54 missile ran straight and true, exploding only ten
feet from the Badger's tail. Hot fragments ripped into the converted bomber and
detonated the remaining fumes in its refueling tanks. The Soviet bomber
disappeared in a thundering orange flash.

The fighters swept their radars around the sky, hoping to
find targets for their remaining missiles. Six more Badgers were a hundred
miles off, but they had already been warned by the leading tankers and were
heading north. The Tomcats didn't have enough fuel to pursue. They turned for
home and landed at Stomoway an hour later with nearly dry tanks.

"Five confirmed kills and a damage," the squadron
commander told Toland. "It worked."

"This time." Toland was pleased nevertheless. The
U.S. Navy had just completed its first offensive mission. Now for the next one.
Information was just in on the Backfire raid. They'd hit a convoy off the
Azores, and a pair of Tomcats was waiting two hundred miles south of Iceland to
meet them on the return leg.

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

"Our losses have been murderous," said the General
of Soviet Frontal Aviation.

"I will tell our motor-rifle troops just how serious
your losses have been," Alekseyev replied coldly.

"We have lost nearly double our projections."

"So have we! At least our ground troops are fighting. I
watched an attack. You sent in four attack fighters. Four!"

"I know of this attack. There was a full regiment
assigned, more than twenty, plus your own attack helicopters. The NATO fighters
are engaging us ten kilometers behind the front. My pilots must fight for their
lives simply to get where your tanks are-and then all too often they are
engaged by our own surface-to-air missiles!"

"Explain," ordered Alekseyev's superior.

"Comrade General, the NATO radar surveillance aircraft
are not easy targets-they are too well protected. With their airborne radar,
they can vector their fighters against ours to launch their missile attacks
from beyond visual range. When our pilots learn that they are being attacked,
they must evade, no? Do your tankers sit still to give their enemies an easy
shot? This often means that they must drop their bombs to maneuver. Finally,
when they do manage to reach the battle zone they are frequently shot at by
friendly missile units who don't take the time to distinguish between friend
and foe." It was an old story, and not merely a Soviet problem.

"You are telling us that NATO has command of the
air," Alekseyev said.

"No, they do not. Neither side does. Our surface-to-air
missiles deny them the ability to control the air over the battle line, and
their fighters helped by their surface-to-air missiles, and ours!-deny it to
us. The sky over the battlefield belongs to no one." Except the dead, the
Air Force General thought to himself.

Alekseyev thought of what he had seen at Bieben, and
wondered how correct he was.

"We must do better," the Theater Commander said.
"The next massed attack we launch will have proper air support if it means
stripping fighters from every unit on the front."

"We are trying to get more aircraft forward by using
deceptive maneuvering. Yesterday we tried to feint NATO's fighters to the wrong
place. It nearly worked, but we made a mistake. That mistake has been
identified."

"We attack south of Hannover at 0600 tomorrow. I want
two hundred aircraft at the front line supporting my divisions."

"You'll have them," the Air Force General agreed.
Alekseyev watched the flyer leave.

"So, Pasha?"

"That's a start-if the two hundred fighters show
up."

"We have our helicopters, too."

"I watched what happens to helicopters in a missile
environment. Just when I thought they'd blast a hole through the German lines,
a combination of SAMs and fighters nearly annihilated them. They have to expose
themselves too greatly when they fire their missiles. The courage of the pilots
is remarkable, but courage alone is not enough. We have underestimated NATO
firepower-no, more properly we have overestimated our ability to neutralize
it."

"We've been attacking prepared positions since this war
began. Once we break into the open-"

"Yes. A mobile campaign will reduce our losses and give
us a much more even contest. We have to break through." Alekseyev looked
down at the map. Just after dawn tomorrow, an army-four motor-rifle divisions,
supported by a division of tanks-would hurl itself into the NATO lines.
"And here seems to be the place. I want to be forward again."

"As you wish, Pasha. But be careful. By the way, the
doctor tells me the cut on your hand was from a shell fragment. You are
entitled to a decoration."

"For this?" Alekseyev looked at his bandaged hand.
"I've cut myself worse than this shaving. No medal for this, it would be
an insult to our troops.

ICELAND

They were climbing down a rocky slope when the helicopter
appeared two miles west of them. It was low, about three hundred feet over the
ridge line, and moving slowly toward them. The Marines immediately fell to the
ground and crawled to places where they might hide in shadows. Edwards took a
few steps to Vigdis and pulled her down also. She was wearing a white patterned
sweater that was all too easy to spot. The lieutenant stripped off his field
jacket and draped it around her, holding her head down as he wrapped the hood
over her blond hair.

"Don't move at all. They're looking for us."
Edwards kept his own head up briefly to see where his men were. Smith waved for
him to get down. Edwards did so, keeping his eyes open so that he could look
sideways at the chopper. It was another Hind. He could see rocket pods hanging
from stubby wings on either side of the airframe. Both the doors to the
passenger compartment were open, revealing a squad of infantrymen, weapons at
the ready, looking down. "Oh, shit."

The noise from its turboshaft engines increased as the Hind
came closer, and the massive five-bladed main rotor beat at the air, stirring
up the volcanic dust that coated everything on the plateau they had just left.
Edwards's hand tightened on the M-16's pistol grip, and he thumbed off the
safety. The helicopter was coming almost sideways, its rocket pods pointed at
the flatlands behind the Marines. Edwards could make out the machine guns in
the Hind's nose, some kind of rotary gun like the American minigun that spat
out four thousand rounds per minute. They wouldn't have a chance in hell
against that.

"Turn, you son of a bitch," Mike said under his
breath.

"What is it doing?" Vigdis asked.

"Just relax. Don't move at all." Oh, God, don't
let them see us now .

"There! Look there at one o'clock," the gunner
said from the front seat of the helicopter.

"So this mission isn't a waste after all," the
pilot replied. "Go ahead."

The gunner centered Ins sights and armed the machine gun,
setting his selector for a five-shot burst. His target was agreeably still as
he depressed the trigger.

"Got him!"

Edwards jumped at the sound. Vigdis didn't move at all. The
lieutenant moved his rifle slightly, bringing it to bear on the chopper-which
moved south, dropping below the ridgeline. He saw three heads come up. What had
they shot at? The engine sounds changed as the helicopter landed, not far away.

The gunner had hit the buck with three bullets, with little
damage to the edible tissue. There was just enough in the eighty-pound animal
to feed the squad and the helicopter crew. The paratroop sergeant slit the
deer's throat with his combat knife, then set to remove the viscera. The local
deer were nothing like the animals his father hunted in Siberia, but for the
first time in three weeks he'd have some fresh meat. That was sufficient to
make this boring mission worthwhile. The carcass was loaded into the Hind. Two
minutes later it circled up to cruise altitude and flew back to Keflavik.

They watched it depart, the stuttering rotor sound
diminishing on the breeze.

"What was that all about?" Edwards asked his
sergeant.

"Beats the hell out of me, skipper. I think we better
boogie on outa here. They were sure as hell looking for something, and I'll
betcha it's us. Let's keep to places with some kind of cover."

"You got it, Jim. Lead off." Edwards walked back
to Vigdis.

Is safe now?"

They've gone. Why don't you keep that jacket on. It makes
you harder to spot."

It was two sizes too large for Edwards, and looked like a
tent on Vigdis's diminutive frame. She held her arms out straight in an effort
to get her hands out of the sleeves, and for the first time since he met her,
Vigdis Agustdottir smiled.

USS PHARRIS

"All ahead one-third," the executive officer
ordered.

"All ahead one-third, aye," the quartermaster of
the watch responded, moving the annunciator handle up from the Ahead Full
setting. A moment later the inside pointer changed also. "Engine room
answers all ahead one-third."

"Very well."

Pharris slowed, coming off a twenty-five-knot sprint to
commence another drift maneuver, and allowing her towed-array sonar to listen
for hostile submarines. Morris was in his bridge chair, going over messages
from shore. He rubbed his eyes and lit up another Pall Mall.

"Bridge," called the urgent voice of a lookout.
"Periscope feather on the port bow! Halfway to the horizon, port
bow!" Morris snatched his binoculars from the holder and had them to his
eyes in an instant. He didn't see anything.

"Battle stations!" ordered the XO. The alarm gong
went off a second later and weary men ran again to their posts. Morris looped
his binoculars around his neck and ran down the ladder to his battle station in
CIC.

The sonar loosed a dozen ranging pings to port as Morris
took his position in CIC. Nothing. The helo lifted off as the frigate
maneuvered north, allowing her towed-array sonar to track on the possible
contact.

"Passive sonar contact, evaluate as possible submarine
bearing zero-one-three," announced the towed-array operator. "Steam
noises, sounds like a possible nuke."

"I got nothing there," said the active-sonar
operator.

Morris and his ASW officer examined the water-conditions
board. There was a layer at two hundred feet. The passive sonar was below it,
and could well be hearing a submarine that the active pings could not reach.
The lookout might have seen anything from a spouting whale this was the mating
season for humpbacks-to a streak of foam . . . or the feathery wake left by a
periscope. If it was a submarine, he had plenty of time to duck under the
layer. The target was too close to be bottom bounced and too far for the sonar
to blast directly through the layer.

"Less than five miles," ASW said. "More than
two. If this is a sub, we're up against a good one."

"Great. Get the helo on him right now!" Morris
examined the plot. The submarine could have heard his frigate as it sprinted at
twenty-five knots. Now, at reduced speed, and with Prairie/Masker operating,
Pharris would be very hard to detect . . . so the sub's fire-control solution
had probably just gone out the window. But Morris didn't have one either, and
the submarine was perilously close. An urgent contact report was radioed to the
screen commander twenty miles away.

The Sea Sprite dropped a pattern of sonobuoys. Minutes
passed.

"I got a weak signal on number six and a medium on
number four," the sonobuoy petty officer said. Morris watched the plot.
That made the contact less than three miles off.

"Drop some pingers," he ordered. Behind him the
ship's weapons officer ordered the arming of the ASROC and torpedo launchers.
Three miles off, the helicopter turned and swept across the target area,
dropping three CASS buoys this time, which sent out active, nondirectional
pings.

"Contact, a strong contact on buoy nine. Classify as
possible submarine"

"I got him, bearing zero-one-five-this one's a sub,
classify as positive submarine contact," said the towed-array man.
"He just increased power. Some cavitation sounds. Single-screw submarine,
maybe a Victor-class, bearing changing rapidly left-to-right."

The active sonar still didn't have him despite continuous
maximum power pings down the correct line of bearing. The submarine was
definitely under the layer.

Morris wanted to maneuver but decided against it. A radical
turn would cause his towed-array sonar to curve, rendering it useless for
several minutes. Then he would have to depend on sonobuoys alone, and Morris
trusted his towed sonar more than the buoys.

"Bearing to contact is now zero-one-five and steady . .
. noise level is down somewhat." The operator pointed at his screen.
Morris was surprised. The contact bearing had been changing rapidly and was now
steadied down?

The helicopter made yet another pass. A new sonobuoy
registered the contact, but the MAD gear didn't confirm the presence of a
submarine and the contact was fading. The noise level continued to drop. Morris
watched the relative position of the contact pass aft. What the hell was this
character doing?

"Periscope, starboard bow!" the talker reported.

"Wrong place, sir . . .unless we're looking at a
noisemaker," the operator said.

The ASW officer had the active sonar change bearing and the
results were immediate.

"Contact bearing three-four-five, range fifteen hundred
yards!" A bright pip glowed on the sonar scope.

"All ahead flank!" Morris yelled. Somehow the
submarine had evaded the towed sonar, then popped up atop the layer and run up
his periscope That could only mean one thing. "Right full rudder."

"Hydrophone effects-torpedoes inbound, bearing
three-five-one!"

Instantly the weapons officer ordered the launch of an
antisubmarine torpedo down the same bearing in the hope that it would disturb
the attacking submarine. If the Russian's torpedoes were wire-guided, he'd have
to cut the wires free to maneuver the sub clear of the American return shot.

Morris raced up the ladder to the bridge. Somehow the submarine
had broken contact and maneuvered into firing position. The frigate changed
course and speed in an attempt to ruin the submarine's fire-control solution.

"I see one!" the XO said, pointing over the bow.
The Soviet torpedo left a visible white trail on the surface. Morris noted it,
something he had not expected. The frigate turned rapidly.

"Bridge, I show two torpedoes, bearing constant
three-five-zero and decreasing range," the tactical action officer said
rapidly. "Both are pinging at us. The Nixie is operating."

Morris lifted a phone. "Report the situation to the
escort commander."

"Done, skipper. Two more helos are heading this
way."

Pharris was now doing twenty knots and accelerating, turning
her stem to the torpedoes. Her helicopter was now aft of the beam, frantically
making runs with its magnetic anomaly detector, trying to locate the Soviet
sub.

The torpedo's wake crossed past the frigate's bow as
Morris's ship kept her helm over. There was an explosion aft. White water
leaped a hundred feet into the air as the first Russian "fish"
collided with the nixie torpedo decoy. But they had only one nixie deployed.
There was another torpedo out there.

"Left full rudder!'' Morris told the quartermaster.
"Combat, what about the contact?" The frigate was now doing
twenty-five knots.

"Not sure, sir. The sonobuoys have our torp but nothing
else."

"We're gonna take a hit," the XO said. He pointed
to a white trail on the water, less than two hundred yards away. It must have
missed the frigate on its first try, then turned for another. Homing torpedoes
kept looking until they ran out of fuel.

There was nothing Morris could do. The torpedo was
approaching on his port bow. If he turned right, it would only give the fish a
larger target. Below him the ASROC launcher swung left toward the probable
location of the submarine, but without an order to fire, all the operator could
do was train it out. The white wake kept getting closer. Morris leaned over the
rail, staring at it with mute rage as it extended like a finger toward his bow.
It couldn't possibly miss now.

"That's not real smart, Cap'n." Bosun Clarke's
hand grabbed Morris's shoulder and yanked him down to the deck. He was just
grabbing for the executive officer when it hit.

The impact lifted Morris a foot off the steel deck. He
didn't hear the explosion, but an instant after he had bounced off the steel a
second time, he was deluged with a sheet of white water that washed him against
a stanchion. His first thought was that he'd been thrown overboard. He rose to
see his executive officer-headless, slumped against the pilothouse door. The
bridge wing was torn apart, the stout metal shielding ripped by fragments. The
pilothouse windows were gone. What he saw next was worse.

The torpedo had struck the frigate just aft of the
bow-mounted sonar. Already the bow had collapsed, the keel sundered by the
explosion. The foc's'l was awash, and the horrible groaning of metal told him
that the bow was being ripped off his ship. Morris staggered into the bridge
and yanked the annunciator handle to All Stop, failing to notice that the
engineers had already stopped engines. The ship's momentum pushed her forward.
As Morris watched, the bow twisted to starboard, ten degrees off true, and the
forward gunmount became awash, its crew trying to head aft. Below the mount
were other men. Morris knew that they were dead, hoped that they had died
instantly, and were not drowning, trapped in a sinking steel cage. His men. How
many had their battle stations forward of the ASROC launcher?

Then the bow tore away. A hundred feet of the ship left the
remainder to the accompaniment of screeching metal. It turned as he watched,
colliding with the afterpart of the ship as it rotated in the water like a
small berg. There was movement at an exposed watertight door. He saw a man try
to get free, and succeed, the figure jumping into the water and swimming away
from the wallowing bow.

The bridge crew was alive, all cut by flying glass but at
their posts. Chief Clarke took a quick look at the pilothouse, then ran below
to assist with damage control. The damage-control parties were already racing
forward with fire hoses and welding gear, and at damage-control central the men
examined the trouble board to see how severe the flooding was. Morris lifted a
sound-powered phone and twisted the dial to this compartment.

"Damage-control report!"

"Flooding aft to frame thirty-six, but I think she'll
float-for a little while anyway. No fires. Waiting for reports now."

Morris switched settings on the phone. "Combat, radio
the screen commander that we've taken a hit and need assistance."

"Done, sir. Gallery's heading out this way. Looks like
the sub got away. They're still searching for her. We have some shock damage
here. All the radars are down. Bow sonar is out. ASROC is out. The tail is
still working, though, and the Mark-32 mounts still work. Wait-screen commander's
sending us a tug, sir."

"Okay, you have the conn. I'm going below to look at
the damage." You have the conn, Morris thought. How do you conn a ship
that ain't moving? A minute later he was at a bulkhead, watching men trying to
shore it up with lumber.

"This one's fairly solid, sir, the next one forward's
leaking like a damn sieve, no way we'll patch it all. When the bow let go, it
must have twisted everything loose." The officer grabbed a seaman by the
shoulder. "Go to the after D/C locker and get more four-by-fours!"

"Will this one hold?"

"I don't know. Clarke is checking the bottom out now.
We'll have to weld in some patches and stiffeners. Give me about ten minutes
and I'll tell you if she'll float or not."

Clarke appeared. He was breathing heavily. "The
bulkhead's sprung at the tank tops, and there's a small crack, too. Leaking
pretty good. The pumps are on, and just about keeping even. I think we can
shore it up, but we have to hustle."

The damage-control officer led the welders below at once. Two
men appeared with a portable pump. Morris ordered them below.

"How many men missing?" Morris asked Chief Clarke.
He was holding his arm strangely.

"All the guys made it out of the five-inch mount, but I
haven't seen anybody from belowdecks. Shit, I think I broke something
myself." Clarke looked at his right arm and shook his head angrily.
"I don't think many guys made it outa the bow, sir. The watertight doors
are twisted some, they gotta be jammed tight."

"Get that arm looked at," Morris ordered.

"Oh, fuck the arm, skipper! You need me." The man
was right. Morris went back topside with Clarke behind him.

On reaching the bridge, Morris dialed up engineering. The
noise on the phone answered his first question.

The engineer spoke over the hiss of escaping steam.
"Shock damage, Captain. We got some ruptured steam pipes on the number one
boiler. I think number two will still work, but I've popped the safeties on
both just in case. The diesel generators are on line. I got some hurt men here.
I'm sending them out. I-okay, okay. We just did a check of number two boiler. A
few minor leaks, but we can fix 'em quick. Otherwise everything looks pretty
tight. I can have it back on line in fifteen minutes."

"We need it." Morris hung up.

Pharris lay dead in the water. With the safety valves
opened, steam vented onto the massive stack structure, giving off a dreadful
rasping sound that seemed like the ship's own cry of pain. The frigate's sleek
clipper bow had been replaced by a flat face of torn metal and hanging wires. The
water around the ship was foul with oil from ruptured fuel tanks. For the first
time Morris noticed that the ship was down by the stern; when he stood
straight, the ship was misaligned. He knew he had to wait for another
damage-control report. As with an accident victim, the prognosis depended on
the work of surgeons, and they could not be rushed or disturbed. He lifted the
phone to CIC.

"Combat, Bridge. What's the status of that submarine
contact?"

"Gallery's helo dropped on it, but the torp ran dry
without hitting anything. Looks like he ran northeast, but we haven't had
anything for about five minutes. There's an Orion in the area now."

"Tell them to check inside of us. This character isn't
going to run away unless he has to. He might be running in, not out. Tell the
screen commander."

"Aye, Cap'n."

He hadn't hung the phone up when it buzzed.

"Captain speaking."

"She'll float, sir," the damage-control officer
said at once. "We're patching the bulkhead now. It won't be tight, but the
pumps can handle the leakage. Unless something else goes bad on us, we'll get
her home. They sending the tug out to us?"

"Yes."

"If we get a tow, sir, it better be sternfirst. I don't
want to think about trying to run this one into a seaway."

"Right." Morris looked at Clarke. "Get a gang
of men aft. We'll be taking the tow at the stem, rig it up. Have them launch
the whaleboat to look for survivors. I saw at least one man in the water. And
get a sling on that arm."

"You got it, Cap'n." Clarke moved aft.

Morris went to CIC and found a working radio.

"X-Ray Alfa, this is Pharris," Morris called to
the screen commander.

"State your condition."

"We took one hit forward, the bow is gone all the way
to the ASROC launcher. We cannot maneuver. I can keep her afloat unless we hit
some bad weather. Both boilers currently down, but we should have power back in
less than ten minutes. We have casualties, but I don't know how many or how bad
yet.

"Commodore, we got hit by a nuke boat, probably a
Victor. Unless I miss my guess, he's headed your way."

"We lost him, but he was heading out," the
Commodore said.

"Start looking inside, sir," Morris urged.
"This fellow got to knifefighting range and pulled a beautiful number on
us. This one isn't going to run away for long, he's too damned good for
that."

The Commodore thought that one over briefly. "Okay,
I'll keep that in mind. Gallery's en route to you. What other assistance do you
need?"

"You need Gallery more than we do. Just send us the
tug," Morris answered. He knew that the submarine wouldn't be coming back
to finish the kill. He'd accomplished that part of his mission. Next, he'd try
to kill some merchants.

"Roger that. Let me know if you need anything else.
Good luck, Ed."

"Thank you, sir. Out."

Morris ordered his helo to drop a double ring of sonobuoys
around his ship just in case. Then the Sea Sprite found three men in the water,
one of them dead. The whaleboat recovered them, allowing the helo to rejoin the
convoy. It was assigned to Gallery, which took Pharris's station as the convoy
angled south.

Below, welders worked their gear in waist-deep saltwater as
they struggled to seal off the breaks in the frigate's watertight bulkheads.
The task lasted nine hours, then the pumps drained the water from the flooded
compartments.

Before they had finished, the fleet tug Papago pulled
alongside the frigate's square stem. Chief Clarke supervised as a stout towing
wire was passed across and secured. An hour later, the tug was pulling the
frigate on an easterly course at four knots, backwards to protect the damaged
bow. Morris ordered his towed-array sonar to be strung over the bow, trailing
it out behind to give them some small defense capability. Several extra
lookouts were posted to watch for periscopes. It would be a slow, dangerous
trip back home.

28 - Breakthroughs

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

"Be careful, Pasha."

"As always, Comrade General." Alekseyev smiled.
"Come, Captain."

Sergetov fell in behind his superior. Unlike during their
previous frontline outing, both men wore protective body armor. The General
carried only a sidearm to go along with his map case, but the captain was now
officially a bodyguard in addition to a staff officer and had a small Czech
submachine gun slung over his shoulder. He was a different man today, the
captain saw. On Alekseyev's first trip to the front, he'd been tentative,
almost hesitant in manner-it hadn't occurred to the younger man that, as senior
as Alekseyev was, he had never seen combat before and had approached this
gravest of contests with the same sort of apprehension as a new private. No
longer. He had smelled the smoke. Now he knew how things worked or didn't work.
The change was remarkable. His father was right, Sergetov thought, he was a man
to be reckoned with. They were joined in their helicopter by an Air Force
colonel. The Mi-24 lifted off in darkness, its fighter escort overhead.

LAMMERSDORF, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

Not many people appreciated the importance of the
videocassette recorder. A useful convenience for the home, to be sure, but not
until a captain in the Royal Dutch Air Force had demonstrated a bright idea two
years before had its battlefield utility been proven in secret exercises first
in Germany, then in the Western United States.

NATO radar surveillance aircraft kept their customary
positions high over the Rhein. The E-3A Sentry aircraft, better known as AWACS,
and the smaller, lesser-known TR-1, flew their missions in boring circles or
straight lines far behind the fighting front. They had similar but different
functions. The AWACS was mainly concerned with air traffic. The TR-1, an
upgraded version of the venerable U-2, looked for vehicles on the ground.
Initially the TR-1 had been something of a failure. Because it tracked too many
targets, many of them immobile radar reflectors set everywhere by the Soviets,
the NATO commanders had been deluged with information that was too disordered
to use. Then came the VCR. All the data relayed from the aircraft was recorded
on videotape anyway since it was a convenient medium for data storage, but the
VCRs built into the NATO system possessed only a few operating features. The
Dutch captain thought to bring his personal machine into his office, and
demonstrated how by using fast forward and fast reverse, the radar data could
be used to show not only where things were going, but also where they had come
from Computer support made the task easier by eliminating items that moved no
more than once every two hours-thus erasing the Russian radar lures-and there
it was, a brand-new intelligence tool.

With several copies made of each tape, a staff of over a
hundred intelligence and traffic-control experts examined the data round the
clock. Some engaged in straight tactical intelligence. Others looked for
patterns. A large number of trucks moving at night to and from front-fine units
could only mean shuttle runs to fuel and ammunition dumps. A number of vehicles
breaking away from a divisional convoy and deploying in line parallel to the
front meant artillery preparing for an attack. The real trick, they had
learned, was to get the data to the forward commanders quickly enough so they could
make use of it.

At Lammersdorf, a Belgian lieutenant was just finishing up a
tape that was six hours old, and his report was sent by land line to the
forward NATO commanders. At least three divisions had been moved north and
south on Autobahn-7, he reported. The Soviets would attack at Bad Salzdetfurth
in strength, sooner than expected. Immediately, reserve units from the Belgian,
German, and American armies were rushed forward, and allied air units alerted
for a major land action. Fighting in this sector had been vicious enough
already. The German forces covering the area south of Hannover were at less
than 50-percent strength, and the battle that had not yet begun was already a
race, as both sides tried to get reserves to the point of attack before the
other.

HOLLE, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

"Thirty minutes," Alekseyev told Sergetov. Four
motor-rifle divisions were on line, covering a front of less than twenty
kilometers. Behind them a tank division waited to exploit the first breach in
German lines. The objective was the town of Alfeld on the Leine River. The town
commanded two roads being used by NATO to shuttle units and supplies north and
south, and its capture would open a breach in the NATO lines, allowing the
Soviet operational/maneuver groups to burst into NATO's rear.

"Comrade General, how are things progressing in your
opinion?" the captain asked quietly.

"Ask me in a few hours," the General answered. The
river valley to his rear was yet another wasteland of men and arms. They were
only thirty kilometers from the border-and the Red Army's tanks had been
expected to reach Holle in only two days. Alekseyev frowned, wondering what
staff genius had come up with that timetable. Again the human factor had been
overlooked. The morale and fighting spirit of the Germans was like nothing he
had ever seen. He remembered his father's stories of the battles across the
Ukraine and Poland, but he had never quite believed them. He believed them now.
The Germans contested every lump of dirt in their country like wolves defending
their cubs, retreating only when they were forced to, counterattacking at every
opportunity, draining the blood from the advancing Russian units as they
brought every weapon they had to bear.

Soviet doctrine had predicted heavy losses. The battle of
movement could be achieved only by costly frontal assault which first had to
blast a hole in the front lines-but the NATO armies were denying that hole to
the Soviets. Their sophisticated weapons, firing from safe, prepared positions,
were ripping through each attack wave. Their aircraft attacks in the Soviet
rear sapped the strength of units before they could be committed to decisive
battle and played hob with artillery support despite the most careful deceptive
measures.

The Red Army was moving forward, Alekseyev reminded himself,
and NATO was paying its own price. Their reserves were also being thinned out.
The German forces were not using their mobility as Alekseyev would have, too
often tying themselves to geographic locations instead of fighting the Soviet
forces on the move. Of course, the General thought, they didn't have very much
terrain to trade for time. He checked his watch.

A sheet of flame rose from the forests below him as Russian
artillery began its preparatory bombardment. Next came the multiple-rocket
launchers, and the morning sky was alight with streaks of fire. Alekseyev
turned his binoculars downrange. In a few seconds he saw the orange-white
explosions of the rounds as they impacted on NATO lines. He was too far from
the fighting front to see any detail, but an area that had to be many
kilometers across, lit up like the neon signs so popular in the West. There was
a roar overhead, and the General saw the leading elements of the ground-attack
fighters racing to the front.

"Thank you, Comrade General," Alekseyev breathed.
He counted at least thirty Sukhoi and MiG fighter-bombers, all hugging the
ground as they headed toward the battle line. His face crinkled into a
determined smile as he walked into the command bunker.

"The lead elements are moving now," a colonel
announced. On a table made of rough planks laid across sawhorses, grease pencil
marks were made on the tactical maps. Red arrows began their march toward a
series of blue lines. The plotters were all lieutenants, and each wore a
telephone headset linked to a specific regimental headquarters. The officers
connected to reserve units stood away from the table, puffing on their
cigarettes as they watched the march of the arrows. Behind them the commander
of 8th Guards Army stood quietly, watching his plan of attack unfold.

"Meeting moderate resistance. Enemy artillery and tank
fire is being encountered," a lieutenant said.

Explosions rocked the command bunker. Two kilometers away, a
flight of German Phantoms had just torn into a battalion of mobile guns.

"Enemy fighters overhead," the air defense officer
said belatedly. A few eyes looked apprehensively up at the log ceiling of the
bunker. Alekseyev's didn't join them. A NATO smart-bomb would kill them all in
a blink. Much as he enjoyed his post as deputy commander of the theater, he
wished himself back to the days when he had commanded a fighting division. Here
he was only an observer, and he felt the need to have the reins in his own two
hands.

"Artillery reports heavy counterbattery fire and air
attacks. Our missiles are engaging enemy aircraft in the 57th Motor-Rifle
Division's rear area," the air defense officer went on. "Heavy air
activity over the front."

"Our fighters are engaging NATO aircraft," the
Frontal Aviation officer reported. He looked up angrily. "Friendly SAMs
are shooting down our fighters!"

"Air Defense Officer!" Alekseyev shouted.
"Tell your units to identify their targets!"

"We have fifty aircraft over the front. We can handle
the NATO fighters alone!" the aviator insisted.

"Tell all SAM batteries to hold fire on all targets
above one thousand meters," Alekseyev ordered. He had discussed this with
his Frontal Aviation commander the night before. The MiG pilots were to stay
high after making their own attack runs, leaving the missile and gun batteries
free to engage only those NATO aircraft that were an immediate threat to ground
units. Why were his own planes getting hit?

Thirty thousand feet over the Rhein, two NATO E-3A radar
aircraft fought for their fives. A determined Soviet attack was under way, two
regiments of MiG-23 interceptors rocketing through the sky toward them. The
on-board controllers were calling for help. This both distracted them from
countering the attack, and stripped fighters from other missions. Heedless of
their own safety, the Russians came west at over a thousand miles per hour with
heavy jamming support. American F-15 Eagles and French Mirage jets converged on
the threat, filling the sky with missiles. It was not enough. When the MiGs got
to within sixty miles, the AWACS aircraft shut down their radars and dove for
the ground to evade the attack. The NATO fighters over Bad Salzdetfurth were on
their own. For the first time the Soviets had achieved air superiority over a
major battlefield.

"Hundred-forty-third Guards Rifle Regiment reports they
have broken through German lines," a lieutenant said. He didn't look up,
but extended the arrow for which he was responsible. "Enemy units
retreating in disarray."

"Hundred-forty-fifth Guards checking in," reported
the plotting officer next to him. "The first line of German resistance has
collapsed. Proceeding south along the axis of the rail line . . . enemy units
are on the run. They are not regrouping, not attempting to turn."

The general commanding 8th Guards Army gave Alekseyev a
triumphant look. "Get that tank division moving!"

The two understrength German brigades covering this sector
had suffered too much, been called upon to stop too many attacks. Their men
spent, their weapons depleted, they had no choice but to run from the enemy,
hoping to form a new line in the woods behind Highway 243. At Hackenstedt, four
kilometers away, 20th Guards Tank Division started moving down the road. Its
three hundred T-80 main battle tanks, supported by several hundred more
infantry assault carriers, spread left and right of the secondary road and
formed its attack formation in columns of regiments. The 20th Tanks was the
operation/maneuver group for 8th Guards Army. Since the war had begun, the
Soviet Army had been trying to break one of these powerful units into the NATO
rear. It was now possible.

"Well done, Comrade General," Alekseyev said. The
plotting table showed a general breakthrough. Three of the four attacking
motor-rifle divisions had broken through the German lines.

The MiGs succeeded in killing one of the AWACS aircraft and
three Eagle fighters, at the price of nineteen of their own, in a furious air
battle that lasted fifteen minutes. The surviving AWACS was back at altitude
now, eighty miles behind the Rhein, and its radar operators were working to
reestablish control of the air battle over central Germany as the MiGs ran for
home through a cloud of NATO surface-to-air missiles. At murderous cost they
had accomplished a mission for which they had not even been briefed.

But this was only the beginning. Now that the initial attack
had succeeded, the most difficult part of the battle was under way. The
generals and colonels commanding the attack had to move their units forward
rapidly, careful to keep the formations intact as they leapfrogged their
artillery southwest to provide continuous support for the advancing regiments.
The tank division had the highest priority. It had to hit the next set of
German lines only minutes behind the motor-rifle troops, in order to reach
Alfeld before nightfall. Units of the field police established preplanned
traffic-control points, and directed units down roads whose marker signs had
been removed by the Germans-of course. The process was not as easy as might
have been expected. Units were not intact. Some commanders were dead, vehicles
had broken down, and damaged roads slowed traffic well below normal rates of
advance.

For their part the German troops were trying to reorganize.
Rear guard units lingered behind every turn in the road, pausing to loose their
antitank missiles at the hard-charging Soviet advance guard, which took a
particularly heavy toll of unit commanders. Allied aircraft were reorganizing
also, and low-level attack fighters began to engage the Soviet units in the
open.

Behind the sundered battle line a German tank brigade rolled
into Alfeld, with a Belgian motorized regiment ten minutes behind. The Germans
proceeded northeast on the main road, watched by citizens who had just been
ordered to evacuate their homes.

FASLANE, SCOTLAND

"No luck, eh?" asked Todd Simms, commander of USS
Boston.

"None," McCafferty confirmed. Even the trip into
Faslane had been unlucky. The guard ship for the safe-transit corridor, HMS
Osiris, had gotten into attack position without their having detected her. Had
that Brit diesel sub been a Russian, McCafferty could very well be dead now.
"We had our big chance against that amphibious group. Things were going
perfect, y'know? The Russians had their sonobuoy lines out, and we beat them
clean, just about had our targets lined up for the missile attack-I figured
we'd hit with our missiles first, then go in with torpedoes-"

"Sounds good to me," Simms agreed.

"And somebody else launches his own torpedo attack.
Screwed everything up. We lofted three Harpoons, but a helo saw us do it, and,
bingo! we had the bastards all over us." McCafferty pulled open the door
to the Officers Club. "I need a drink!"

"Hell, yes!" Simms laughed. "Everything looks
better after a few beers. Hey, that sort of thing happens. Luck changes,
Danny." Simms leaned over the bar. "Two strong ones."

"As you say, Commander." A white-coated steward
drew two mugs of warm, dark beer. Simms picked up the bill and led his friend
to a corner booth. There was some sort of small party going on at the far end
of the room.

"Danny, for crying out loud, let up on yourself. Not
your fault that Ivan didn't send you any targets, is it?"

McCafferty took a long pull on his mug. Two miles away
Chicago was reprovisioning. They'd be in port for two days. Boston and another
688-class sub were tied to the same quay, with another pair due in later today.

They were to be outfitted for a special mission, but they
didn't yet know what it was. In the meantime, the officers and crewmen were
using their modicum of free time to breathe fresh air and unwind. "You're
right, Todd, right as ever."

"Good. Have some pretzels. Looks like quite a shindig
over there. How about we wander over?" Simms lifted his beer and walked to
the end of the room.

They found a gathering of submarine officers, which was not
a surprise, but the center of attention was. He was a Norwegian captain, a
blond man of about thirty who clearly hadn't been sober for several hours. As
soon as he drained one jar of beer, a Royal Navy commander handed him another.

"I must find the man who save us!" the Norwegian
insisted loudly and drunkenly.

"What gives?" Simms asked. Introductions were
exchanged. The Royal Navy officer was captain of HMS Oberon.

"This is the chappie who blasted Kirov all the way back
to Murmansk," he said. "He tells the story about every ten minutes.
About time for him to begin again."

"Son of a bitch," McCafferty said. This was the
guy who had sunk his target! Sure enough, the Norwegian began speaking again.

"We make our approach slowly. They come right"-he
belched-"to us, and we creep very slow. I put periscope up, and there he
is! Four thousand meters, twenty knots, he will pass within five hundred meters
starboard." The beer mug swept toward the floor. "Down periscope!
Arne-where are you, Arne? Oh, is drunk at table. Arne is weapons officer. He
set to fire four torpedoes. Type thirty-seven, American torpedoes." He
gestured at the two American officers who had just joined the crowd.

Four Mark-37s! McCafferty winced at the thought. That could
ruin your whole day.

"Kirov is very close now. Up periscope! Course same,
speed same, distance now two thousand meters-I shoot! One! Two! Three! Four!
Reload and dive deep."

"You're the guy who ruined my approach!"
McCafferty shouted.

The Norwegian almost appeared sober for a moment. "Who
are you?"

"Dan McCafferty, USS Chicago.

"You were there?"

"Yes."

"You shoot missiles?"

"Yes."

"Hero!" The Norwegian submarine commander ran to
McCafferty, almost knocking him down as he wrapped the American in a crushing
bear hug. "You save my men! You save my ship!"

"What the hell is this?" Simms asked.

"Oh, introductions," said a Royal Navy captain.
"Captain Bjorn Johannsen of His Norwegian Majesty's submarine Kobben.
Captain Daniel McCafferty of USS Chicago."

"After we shoot Kirov, they come around us like wolves.
Kirov blow up-"

"Four fish? I believe it," Simms agreed.

"Russians come to us with cruiser, two
destroyers," Johannsen continued, now quite sober. "We, ah, evade, go
deep, but they find us and fire their RBU rockets-many, many rockets. Most far,
some close. We reload and I shoot at cruiser."

"You hit her?"

"One hit, hurt but not sink. This take, I am not sure,
ten minutes, fifteen. It was very busy time, yes?"

"Me, too. We came in fast, flipped on the radar. There
were three ships where we thought Kirov was."

"Kirov was sunk-blow up! What you see was cruiser and
two destroyers. Then you shoot missiles, yes?" Johannsen's eyes sparkled.

"Three Harpoons. A Helix saw the launch and came after
us. We evaded, never did know if the missiles hit anything."

"Hit? Hah! Let me tell you." Johannsen gestured.
"We dead, battery down. We have damage now, cannot run. We already evade
four torpedoes, but they have us now. Sonar have us. Destroyer fire RBU at us.
First three miss, but they have us. Then-Boom! Boom! Boom! Many more. Destroyer
blow up. Other hit, but not sink, I think.

"We escape." Johannsen hugged McCafferty again,
and both spilled their beer on the floor. The American had never seen a
Norwegian display this much emotion, even around his wife. "My crew alive
because of you, Chicago! I buy you drink. I buy all your men drink."

"You are sure we killed that tin can?"

"You not kill," Johannsen said. "My ship
dead, my men dead, I dead. You kill." A destroyer wasn't exactly as good
as sinking a nuclear-powered battle cruiser, McCafferty told himself, but it
was a whole lot better than nothing, too. And a piece of another, he reminded
himself. And who knows, maybe that one sank on the way home.

"Not too shabby, Dan," Simms observed.

"Some people," said the skipper of HMS Oberon,
"have all the bloody luck!"

"You know, Todd," said the commanding officer of
USS Chicago, "this is pretty good beer."

USS PHARRIS

There were only two bodies to bury. Another fourteen men
were missing and presumed dead, but for all that, Morris counted himself
fortunate. Twenty sailors were injured to one extent or another. Clarke's
broken forearm, a number of broken ankles from the shock of the torpedo impact,
and a half-dozen bad scaldings from ruptured steam pipes. That didn't count
minor cuts from flying glass.

Morris read through the ceremony in the manual, his voice
emotionless as he went through the words about the sure and certain hope of how
the sea will one day give up her dead . . . On command the seamen tilted up the
mess tables. The bodies wrapped in plastic bags and weighted with steel slid
out from under the flags, dropping straight into the water. It was ten thousand
feet deep here, a long last trip for his executive officer and a third-class
gunner's mate from Detroit. The rifle salute followed, but not taps. There was
no one aboard who could play a trumpet, and the tape recorder was broken.
Morris closed the book.

"Secure and carry on."

The flags were folded properly and taken to the sail locker.
The mess tables were carried below and the stanchions were replaced to support
the lifelines. And USS Pharris was still only half a ship, fit only to be
broken up for scrap, Morris knew.

The tug Papago was pulling her backwards at just more than
four knots. Three days to shore. They were heading toward Boston, the closest
port, rather than a naval base. The reason was clear enough. Repairs would take
over a year and the Navy didn't want to clutter up one of its own repair
facilities with something that would take that long. Only those ships that
could be repaired for useful war service would get rapid attention.

Even his continued command of Pharris was a joke. The tug
had a reserve crew, many of them salvage experts in civilian life. Three of
them were aboard to keep an eye on the towing cable and "advise"
Morris on the things he had to do. Their pieces of advice were really orders,
but polite ones.

There were plenty of things to keep his crew busy. The
forward bulkheads required constant watching and attention. Repairs were under
way to the engine plant. Only one boiler was working, providing steam to turn
the turbogenerators and provide electrical power. The second boiler needed at
least another day of work. His main air-search radar, they said, would be
working in four hours. The satellite antenna was just back on line also. By the
time they reached port-if they reached port-everything aboard that his crew
could fix would be fixed. That didn't really matter, but a busy crew, the Navy
has always said, is a happy crew. In practical terms it meant that the crewmen,
unlike their captain, did not have time to brood on what mistakes had been
made, the lives that had been lost because of them, and who had made them.

Morris went to the Combat Information Center. The tactical
crew was rerunning the tape and paper record of the encounter with the Victor,
trying to find what had happened.

"I don't know." The sonar operator shrugged.
"Maybe it was two subs, not just one. I mean, here he is, right? This
bright trail here-then a couple minutes later the active sonar picked him up
over here."

"Only one sub," Morris said. "Getting from
here to there is about a four-minute run at twenty-five knots."

"But we didn't hear him, sir, an' it don't show on the
screen. Besides, he was heading the other way when we lost him." The
sonarman rewound the tape to run it a again.

"Yeah." Morris went back to the bridge, playing it
over again in his mind. He had the entire sequence memorized now. He walked out
on the bridge wing. The spray shields were still perforated, and there was a
faint bloodstain where the XO had died. Someone would be painting over that
today. Chief Clarke had all kinds of work gangs going. Morris fit a cigarette
and stared at the horizon.

REYDARVATH, ICELAND

The helicopter was the last warning they needed. Edwards and
his party were heading northeast. They passed through an area of many small
lakes, crossed a gravel road after waiting an hour to see what the traffic
there was like-none-and began to traverse a series of marshes. By this time
Edwards was thoroughly confused by the terrain. The mixture of bare rock,
grassy meadows, lava fields, and now a freshwater marsh made him wonder if
Iceland might not be the place where God had put everything that had been left
over after the world was built. Evidently He'd made just the right amount of
trees, though, because there were none here, and their best cover was the
knee-high grass that sprouted from the water. It must be hardy grass, Edwards
thought, since this marsh had been frozen not too long ago. It was still cold,
and within minutes of entering the marshes everyone's legs ached with it. They
endured the misery. The alternative was to travel on bare and slightly elevated
ground, not something to be contemplated with enemy helicopters about.

Vigdis surprised them with her endurance. She kept up with
the Marines without faltering or complaining. A true country girl, Edwards
thought, she was still benefiting from a childhood of chasing the family sheep
around--or whatever it was you did with sheep---and climbing these Goddamned
hills.

"Okay, people, take ten," Edwards called.
Immediately everyone looked for a dry spot to collapse. Mainly they found
rocks. Rocks in a marsh! Edwards thought. Garcia kept watch with the purloined
Russian binoculars. Smith lit up a cigarette. Edwards turned around to see
Vigdis sitting down next to him.

"How do you feel?"

"Very tired," she said with a slight smile.
"But not so tired as you."

"Is that so!" Edwards laughed. "Maybe we
should step up the pace."

"Where we go?"

"We're going to Hvammsfjordur. They didn't say why. I
figure another four or five days. We want to stay clear of all the roads we
can."

"To protect me, yes?" Edwards shook his head.

"To protect all of us. We don't want to fight anybody.
There's too many Russians around to play soldier games."

"So, I don't hurt-ah, stop you from important
things?" Vigdis asked.

"Not at all. We're all happy to have you with us. Who
wouldn't like a walk in the country with a beautiful girl?" Edwards asked
gallantly. Was that a smart thing to say?

She gave him a strange look. "You think I pretty,
after-after-"

"Vigdis, if you were hit by a truck-yes, you are very
beautiful. No man could change that. What happened to you was not your fault.
What ever changes it made are inside, not outside. And I know somebody must
like you."

"My baby, you mean? Mistake. He find another girl. This
is not important, all my friends have babies." She shrugged it off.

That stupid son of a bitch, Edwards thought. He remembered
that bastardy carried no stigma on Iceland. Since no one had a surname most of
the Icelanders had given names followed by patronyrnics-you couldn't even tell
the difference between the legitimate and illegitimate. Besides which, the
Icelanders didn't seem to give a damn one way or the other. Young unmarried
girls had babies, took proper care of them, and that was that. But who would
walk away from this girl?

"Well, speaking for myself. Vigdis, I've never met a girl
prettier than you."

"Truly?"

Her hair looked like hell, tangled and filthy, Edwards
admitted to himself. Her face and clothing were covered with dust and mud. A
hot shower could change that in a few minutes, revealing the lovely thing that
she was. But beauty comes from within, and he was only beginning to appreciate
the person inside. He ran his hand along her cheek.

"Any man who says different is an idiot." He
turned to see Sergeant Smith coming over.

"Time to move, 'less you want our legs to stiffen up,
Lieutenant."

"Okay. I want to make another eight or ten miles.
There's farms and roads on the far side of this mountain we're walking around.
We'll want to eyeball that area before we try to cross it. I'll call in from
there, too."

"You got it, skipper. Rodgers! Take the point and bend
it a little west."

BODENBURG, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

The ride forward had not been an easy one. Eighth Guards
Army moved its forward command post as close behind the leading troops as
possible. Its commander, like Alekseyev, believed in having his eyes and ears
as close to the front as possible. The trip took forty minutes in armored troop
carriers-it was far too dangerous to use helicopters-during which Alekseyev had
observed a pair of savage air attacks on Russian columns.

German and Belgian reinforcements had joined the action, and
intercepts of radio messages indicated that American and British units were
also en route. Alekseyev had called up more Russian units as well.

What had begun as a relatively simple push by one mechanized
army was now growing into a major engagement. He took this to be a good sign.
NATO would not be reinforcing if they did not regard the situation as
dangerous. The Soviet task was to achieve the desired result before reinforcements
came into play.

The general commanding 20th Guards Tank Division was in the
command post. They'd set it up in a secondary school. A new building, it had
lots of space, and until an underground bunker could be prepared, it would have
to do. The pace of the advance had slowed, as much because of traffic control
difficulties as from the Germans.

"Straight down this road to Sack," 8th Guards Army
told the tanker. "My motor-rifle troops should have it clear by the time
you get there."

"Four more kilometers to Alfeld. Yes, just make sure
you can support us when we jump across the river." The General set his
helmet atop his head and moved out the door. It was going to work, Alekseyev
thought. This general had done a magnificent job of delivering his unit to the
front in nearly perfect order.

The next thing he heard was an explosion. Windows shattered,
pieces of ceiling dropped around him. The Devil's Cross had returned yet again.

Alekseyev raced outside to see a dozen burning armored
vehicles. As he watched, the crew bailed out of a brand-new T-80 tank. An
instant later the vehicle brewed up: a fire swept through the ammunition racks
inside and a pillar of flame rose toward the sky as from a small volcano.

"The general is dead-the General is dead!" a sergeant
shouted. He pointed to a BMD infantry carrier from which no one had escaped
alive.

Alekseyev found the commander of the 8th Guards Army cursing
beside him. "The assistant commander of that tank division is a new
colonel."

Pavel Leonidovich reached a quick and convenient decision.
"No, Comrade General. What about me?"

Startled, the commander stared at him, then remembered
Alekseyev's reputation as a tank commander, and his father's. He made a quick
decision of his own. "Twentieth Tanks is yours. You know the
mission."

Another infantry assault carrier rolled up. Alekseyev and
Sergetov boarded it, and the driver sped off toward the divisional command
post. It took half an hour before they stopped. Alekseyev saw rows of tanks
parked inside the treeline. Allied artillery was falling close by, but he
ignored it. His regimental commanders were grouped together. The General
quickly gave orders for objective and timing. It spoke well of the General not
dead an hour that everyone here knew his mission. The division was finely
organized, with every part of the assault plan already firmed up. Alekseyev saw
at once that he had a good battle staff. He set them to work as his unit
commanders rejoined their regiments.

His first battle headquarters was fittingly in the shade of
a tall tree. His father could have wished for no better. Alekseyev smiled. He
found his divisional intelligence officer. "What's the situation?"

"A battalion of German tanks is counterattacking on
this road leading east from Sack. They should be contained, and in any case our
vehicles are moving southwest behind them. The lead motor-rifle troops are just
inside the town, and report only minor resistance. Our leading elements are now
moving and should be there within the hour."

"Air Defense Officer?"

"SAMs and mobile antiaircraft guns are just behind the
leading echelons. We also have friendly air cover. Two regiments of MiG-21s are
on call for air defense, but we haven't had any ground-attack fighters assigned
yet. They took a beating this morning-but so did the other side. We killed
twelve NATO aircraft before noon."

Alekseyev nodded, dividing that number by three, as he had
learned.

"Excuse me, Comrade General. I am Colonel Popov, your
divisional political officer."

"Fine, Comrade Colonel. My Party dues are paid to the
end of the year, and with luck I will live to pay them again. If you have
something important to say, be quick!" If there was anything Alekseyev
didn't need now, it was a zampolitl

"After we capture Alfeld-"

"If we capture Alfeld I will let you have the keys to
the city. For the present, let me do my job. Dismissed!" Probably wanted
permission to shoot suspected fascists. As a four-star general, Alekseyev could
not ignore political officers, but at least he could ignore those under the rank
of general. He walked over to the tactical maps. On one side as before,
lieutenants showed the advance of his-his!-units. On the other, intelligence
officers were assembling what data they had on enemy opposition. He grabbed the
shoulder of his operations officer.

"I want that lead regiment right behind the motor-rifle
troops. If they need some help, give it to them. I want this breakthrough and I
want it today. What artillery do we have set up?"

"Two battalions of heavy guns are ready now."

"Good. If those infantry have targets for them, find
out, and let's start hitting them now. This is not a time for finesse. NATO
knows we're here, and our worst enemy is time. Time works for them, not for
us." The operations officer and artillery commander got together, and two
minutes later his 152mm guns were delivering fire to the front. He'd have to
have a medal awarded to the dead commander of 20th Tanks, Alekseyev decided;
the man deserved a reward of some kind for the training he saw evident in this
staff.

"Enemy air attack in progress," a plotting officer
said.

"Enemy tanks emerging from woods east of Sack, estimate
battalion strength. Heavy artillery fire supporting the Germans."

He had to trust his colonels now, Alekseyev knew. The time
at which a general could observe the entire battle and control it was long
past. His staff officers made their little marks on the map. The Germans should
have waited, the General thought, they should have let the division spearhead
go through, then attack the division supply column. That was foolish, the first
time he had seen a German commander make a tactical error. Probably a junior
officer who had relieved a dead or wounded superior, or perhaps a man whose
home was nearby. Whatever the reason, it was a mistake and Alekseyev was
profiting by it. His leading two tank regiments took losses, but they smashed
the German counterattack in ten furious minutes.

"Two kilometers-leading elements now two kilometers
from Sack. Opposition from artillery only. Friendly units are in sight.
Infantry troops in Sack report minor resistance only. The town is nearly clear.
Forward scouts report the road to Alfeld is open!"

"Bypass Sack," Alekseyev ordered. "The objective
is Alfeld on the Leine."

ALFELD, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

It was a scratch team. American mechanized infantrymen and
the lead tank squadron of an advancing British brigade reinforced the remains
of Germans and Belgians who had been crushed by five Soviet divisions that day.
There was little time. Combat engineers worked furiously with their armored
bulldozers to scrape shelters for the tanks while infantrymen dug holes for
their antitank weapons. A cloud of dust on the horizon was all the warning they
needed. A division of tanks was reported heading their way, and the civilians
had not entirely evacuated the town behind them. Twenty miles behind them, a
squadron of ground-attack aircraft circled, waiting for the call-down signal.

"Enemy in sight!" a lookout on a church steeple
radioed. In seconds artillery fire lashed at the leading Soviet columns.
Antitank-missile crew popped the covers off their targeting scopes and loaded
the first weapons of what promised to be a long afternoon. The Challenger tanks
of 3rd Royal Tank Regiment settled into their holes, hatches shut tight as the
gunners zeroed their sights on distant targets. Things were too confused and
there had not been enough time to establish a firm chain of command here. An
American was first to fire. The TOW-2 missile sped downrange its control wires
trailing out behind like a spider's web as it reached four kilometers to a T-80
tank.

"Advanced elements are now under fire from enemy
missile teams," reported a plotting officer.

"Flatten them!" Alekseyev ordered his artillery
commander. Within a minute the division's multiple-rocket launchers were
filling the sky with trails of fire. Tube artillery fire added to the carnage
at the battle line Then NATO artillery joined the fray in earnest.

"Lead regiment is taking losses."

Alekseyev watched the map in silence. There was no room for
deceptive maneuver here, nor was there time. His men had to race through the
enemy lines as quickly as possible in order to seize the bridges on the Leine.
That meant that his leading tank crews would suffer heavily. The breakthrough
would have its own heavy price, but the price had to be paid.

Twelve Belgian F-16 fighters swept in low over the front at
five hundred knots, dropping tons of cluster munitions on the lead Soviet
regiment, killing nearly thirty tanks and a score of infantry carriers less
than a kilometer from the allied lines. A swarm of missiles rose into the sky
after them, and the single-engine fighters turned west, skimming over the
ground in their attempt to evade. Three were smashed to the ground, and fell
among the NATO troops, adding to the carnage already created by Soviet fire.
The commander of the British tanks saw that he lacked the firepower to stop the
Soviet attack. There just wasn't enough. It was time to leave while his
battalion was still able to fight. He alerted his companies to be ready to pull
out and tried to get the word to neighboring units. But the troops around
Alfeld came from four different armies, with separate languages and radio settings.
There hadn't been time to establish exactly who was in overall command. The
Germans didn't want to leave. The town had not yet been fully evacuated, and
the German troops would not desert their positions until their countrymen were
safely across the river. The Americans and Belgians began to move when the
British colonel told them to, but not the Germans, and the result was chaos
within the NATO lines.

"Forward observers report enemy units moving back on
the right, repeat, enemy units appear to be disengaging on the northern side of
the town."

"Move the second regiment north, loop around and head
for the bridges, fast as they can. Disregard losses and charge for those damned
bridges! Operations Officer, keep pressure on all enemy units. We want to trap
them on this side and finish them if we can," Alekseyev ordered.
"Sergetov, come with me. I have to go forward."

The attack had ripped the heart out of his lead regiment,
Alekseyev knew, but it had been worth the cost. The NATO forces would have to
move their units through a smashed town to get to the bridges, and having the
allied units on the north side disengage first was a godsend. Now with a fresh
regiment he'd be able to run over them and, if he were very lucky, get the
bridges intact. This he'd have to supervise himself. Alekseyev and Sergetov
boarded a tracked vehicle, which motored southeast to catch the maneuvering
regiment. Behind them his operations officer began to give new orders over the
divisional radio net.

Five kilometers on the far side of the river, a battery of
German 155mm guns was waiting for this opportunity. They had remained silent,
waiting for their radio-intercept experts to pin down the divisional
headquarters. Quickly the gunners punched the target data into their firecontrol
computers while others loaded high-explosive shells. Every gun in the battery
trained out on an identical azimuth. The ground shook when they began rapid
fire.

A hundred shells fell in and around the divisional
headquarters in less than two minutes. Half the battle staff was killed
outright, most of the others wounded.

Alekseyev looked at his radio headset. His third close brush
with death. That was my fault. I should have checked the siting of the radio
transmitter I must not make that mistake again . . . Damn! Damn! Damn!

Alfeld's streets were clogged with civilian vehicles. The
Americans in their Bradley tracked vehicles avoided the town entirely, hurrying
down the right bank of the Leine and crossing to the other side in good order.
There, they took positions on the hills overlooking Leine, and set up to cover
the crossing of the other allied troops. The Belgians were next. Only a third
of their tanks had survived, and these covered the southern flank on the far
side of the river, hoping to stop the Russians before they were able to cross.
German Swatspolizei had held back civilian traffic and allowed the armored
units to pass, but this changed when Soviet artillery began bursting in the air
close to the river. The Russians had hoped it would impede traffic, and it did.
Civilians who had been late to follow orders to leave their homes now paid for
their error. The artillery did scant damage to fighting vehicles but thoroughly
wrecked civilian cars and trucks. In minutes, the streets of Alfeld were jammed
with disabled and burning cars. People left them, braving the fire to run for
the bridges, and the tanks trying to make their way to the river found their
way blocked. Their only escape was over the bodies of innocent civilians, and
even when ordered to proceed, the drivers shrank from it. Gunners rotated their
turrets to face over the rear and began to engage the Russian tanks now
entering the town. Smoke from burning buildings wafted across everyone's field
of view. Cannon fired at targets glimpsed for a moment, rounds went wild, and
the streets of Alfeld turned into a slaughterhouse of soldiers and
noncombatants.

"There they are!" Sergetov pointed. Three highway
bridges spanned the Leine. Alekseyev started to give orders, but they weren't
necessary. The regimental commander already had his radio microphone keyed, and
directed a battalion of tanks with infantry support to proceed up the west
bank, following the same route, still relatively open, that the Americans had
used.

The American fighting vehicles on the far side of the river
opened fire with missiles and their light cannon, killing a half-dozen tanks,
and the remainder of the regiment engaged them with direct fire while Alekseyev
personally called down artillery on the hilltops.

In Alfeld the battle had come to a bloody standstill. The
German and British tanks took up positions at intersections largely hidden from
view by wrecked cars and trucks, and backed toward the river slowly as they
fought to give the civilians time. The Russian infantry tried to engage them
with missiles, but too often debris lying in the streets tore the flight
control wires, causing the missiles to fall out of control and explode
harmlessly. Russian and allied artillery fire churned the town to rubble.

Alekseyev watched his troops advancing toward the first
bridge.

South of him, the commander of the lead regiment swore at
his losses. More than half his tanks and assault vehicles had been destroyed.
Victory was within his grasp, and now his troops had been stopped again by
impassable streets and murderous fire. He saw the NATO tanks pulling slowly
back, and, enraged that they were escaping, called in for artillery.

Alekseyev was surprised when the artillery fire shifted from
the center of the town to the riverfront. He was shocked when he realized that
it was not tube artillery fire, but rockets. As he watched, explosions appeared
at random over the riverfront. Then rounds began exploding in the river in
rapid succession. The rate of fire increased as more and more launchers were trained
on the target, and it was already too late for him to stop them. The farthest
bridge went first. Three rockets landed at once, and it came apart. Alekseyev
watched in horror as over a hundred civilians fell into the churning water. His
horror was not for the loss of life-he needed that bridge! Two more rockets
landed on the center bridge. It did not collapse, but the damage it took was
serious enough to prevent tanks from using it. The fools! Who was responsible
for this? He turned to Sergetov.

"Call up the engineers. Get bridging units and assault
boats to the front. They have absolute priority. Next, I want every
surface-to-air missile and antiair gun battery you can find. Anyone who gets in
their way will be shot. Make sure the traffic-control officers know this.
Go!"

The Soviet tanks and infantry had reached the only surviving
bridge. Three infantry vehicles raced to the far side and were taken under fire
by the Belgians and Americans as they raced to cover. A tank followed. The T-80
rumbled across, got to the far side and exploded from an impacting missile.
Another followed, then a third. Both reached the west bank. Then a British
Chieftain emerged from behind a building and followed the Soviet tanks across.
Alekseyev watched in amazement as it ran right between the two Soviet vehicles,
neither of which saw it. An American missile ran just behind it and plowed into
the ground, raising a cloud of dirt and dust. Two more Chieftains emerged at
the bridgehead. One exploded from a point-blank shot by a T-80, the other fired
back, killing the Russian tank a second later. Alekseyev remembered a tale from
his boyhood of a brave peasant on a bridge as the British tank engaged and
killed two more Soviet tanks before succumbing to a barrage of direct fire. Five
more Soviet vehicles raced across the bridge.

The General lifted his headset and dialed up 8th Guards Army
Headquarters. "This is Alekseyev. I have a company of troops across the
Leine. I need support. We have broken through. Repeat: we have broken through
the German front! I want air support and helicopters to engage NATO units north
and south of Bridge 439. 1 need two regiments of infantry to assist with the
river crossing. Get me support and I might have my division across by
midnight."

"You'll get everything I have. My bridging units are on
the way."

Alekseyev leaned against the side of his BMP. He unbuckled
his canteen and took a long drink as he watched his infantry climb the hills
under fire. Two complete companies were across now. Allied fire was now
attempting to destroy the remaining bridge. He had to get at least a full
battalion across if he wanted to hold this bridgehead for more than a few
hours. "I'll get the bastard," he promised himself, "who fired
on my bridges."

"Boats and bridges are en route, Comrade General,"
Sergetov reported. "They have first priority, and the sector
traffic-control officers have been informed. Two SAM batteries are starting
this way, and I found three mobile AA guns three kilometers off. They said they
can be here in fifteen minutes."

"Good." Alekseyev trained his binoculars on the
far bank.

"Comrade General, our infantry carriers are amphibious.
Why don't we swim them across?"

"Look at the riverbank, Vanya." The General handed
his glasses over. As far as he could see, the far side was all set with stone
and concrete to prevent erosion. It would be difficult if not impossible for
the tracked vehicles to climb that. Damn the Germans for that! "Besides, I
wouldn't want to try that in anything less than regimental strength. That
bridge is all we have, and it can't last very long. With the best of luck we
won't have any assault bridges in place for several hours. The troops on the
far side are on their own for at least that long. We'll run as many troops and vehicles
across the bridge as we can, then reinforce with infantry assault boats as soon
as they arrive. The book calls for this sort of crossing to be made in assault
boats, under cover of darkness or smoke. I don't want to wait for night, and I
need the guns to fire live shells, not harmless ones. We must break the rules,
Vanya. Fortunately the book allows for that also. You have performed well, Ivan
Mikhailovich. You are now a major. Don't thank me-you've earned it."

STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND

"We didn't miss 'em by much. If we'd seen them five
minutes sooner, we could have taken a few out. As it was-" The Tomcat
pilot shrugged.

Toland nodded. The fighters had orders to remain outside
Soviet radar coverage.

"You know, it's a funny thing. There were three of them
flying a nice tight formation. I had them on my TV system from fifty miles
away. No way in hell they could tell we were there. If we had better range, we
could follow them all the way home. Like that game the Germans played on us
once upon a time-send a bird right behind a returning raid and drop a few bombs
right after they landed."

"We'd never get anything through their IFF,"
Toland replied.

"True, but we'd know their arrival time at their bases
to within, oh, ten minutes. That's gotta be useful to somebody."

Commander Toland set his cup down. "Yeah, you're
right." He decided he'd put that idea on the printer to Commander, Eastern
Atlantic.

LAMMERSDORF, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

There was no mistaking it. NATO lines had been decisively
broken south of Hannover. Two brigades were taken from the perilously thin NATO
ground reserve and sent toward Alfeld. Unless this hole was plugged, Hannover
would be lost, and with it all of Germany east of the Weser.

29 - Remedies

ALFELD, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

As predicted, the bridge lasted less than an hour. In that
time Alekseyev had gotten a full battalion of mechanized infantry across, and
though the NATO troops launched a pair of vicious counterattacks on his
bridgehead, the tanks he'd placed on the east bank had been able to break them
up with direct fire. Now NATO had caught its breath, and was assembling
artillery. Heavy guns pounded his bridgehead and the tanks on the Soviet side
of the river, and to make matters worse, the assault boats had been held up by
incredible traffic snarls on the road between Sack and Alfeld. German heavy
guns were littering the road and surrounding land with artillery-deployed
mines, each powerful enough to knock the tread off a tank or the wheel off a
truck. Sappers swept the roads continuously, using heavy machine guns to
detonate the mines, but every one took time, and not all were seen before they
exploded under a heavily loaded vehicle. The loss of the individual trucks and
tanks was bad enough; worse still were the traffic tieups that resulted from
each disabled vehicle.

Alekseyev's headquarters were in a camera shop overlooking
the river. The plate-glass window had long since been blown away, and his boots
crackled with every step. He surveyed the far bank through his binoculars and
anguished for his men as they tried to fight back at the men and tanks on the
hills above them. A few kilometers away, every mobile gun in 8th Guards Army
was racing forward to provide fire support for his tank division, and he and
Sergetov set them to counterbattery the NATO guns.

"Enemy aircraft!" a lieutenant shouted.

Alekseyev craned his neck and saw a dot to the south, which
grew rapidly into a German F-104 fighter. Yellow tracer lines reached out from
his AA guns and blotted it from the sky before it could release, but instantly
another appeared, this one firing its own cannon at the gun vehicle and
exploding it. Alekseyev swore as the single-engine fighter bored in, dropped
two bombs on the far side of the river, and streaked away. The bombs fell
slowly, retarded by small parachutes, then, twenty meters over the ground,
appeared to fill the air with fog-Alekseyev dove to the floor of the shop as
the cloud of explosive vapor detonated from the fuel-air-explosive bombs. The
shock wave was fearful, and above his head a display case shattered, dropping
broken glass all over him.

"What the hell was that?" Sergetov yelled,
deafened by the blast, then, looking up, "You're hit, Comrade
General!"

Alekseyev ran his hand over his face. It came away red. His
eyes stung, and he poured the contents of his canteen over his face to clear
them of the blood. Major Sergetov slapped a bandage on his general's forehead
with only one hand, Alekseyev noticed.

"What happened to you?"

"I fell on some of this damned glass! Stay still,
Comrade General, you're bleeding like a slaughtered cow." A lieutenant
general showed up. Alekseyev recognized him as Viktor Beregovoy, 8th Guards
Army's second in command.

"Comrade General, you have orders to return to
headquarters. I am here to relieve you."

"The hell you say!" Alekseyev bellowed.

"The orders come from Commander-in-Chief West, Comrade.
I am a general of tank troops. I can carry on here. If you will permit me to
say so, you have performed brilliantly. But you are needed elsewhere."

"Not until I'm finished!"

"Comrade General, if you want this crossing to succeed,
we need more support here. Who can better arrange that support, you or I?"
Beregovoy asked reasonably.

Alekseyev let out a long angry breath. The man was right-but
for the first time Pavel Leonidovich Alekseyev had led-really led-men in
combat, and he had done well. Alekseyev knew it-he had done well!

"There is no time to argue. You have your task and I
have mine," the man said.

"You know the situation?"

"Fully. There is a vehicle in the back to return you to
headquarters."

Alekseyev held the bandage to his head-Sergetov hadn't tied
it properly-and walked out the back of the shop. Where the door had once been,
he found a gaping hole. A BMD infantry carrier was there, its motor running.
Alekseyev got in and found a medical orderly who clucked over the General and
went immediately to work. As the carrier pulled off, Alekseyev listened to the
noise of combat diminish. It was the saddest sound he had ever heard.

LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, VIRGINIA

There was nothing like a Distinguished Flying Cross to make
a person happy about flying, and she wondered if she might be the first female
Air Force pilot to have one. If not, Major Nakamura decided, what the hell? She
had a gun-camera videotape of all three of her Badgers, and a Navy pilot she'd
met in Brittany before catching a flight Stateside had called her one damned
fine pilot, for an Air Force puke. After which she had reminded him that if the
dumbass Navy pilots had listened to her, maybe their air base wouldn't be in a
body and fender shop. Game, set, and match, she grinned, to Major Amelia
Nakamura, USAF.

All the F-l5s that could be ferried across the Atlantic had
been ferried, and now she had another job. Only four of the 48th Fighter
Interceptor Squadron's Eagles were still at Langley. The rest were scattered up
and down the East Coast, including the two pilots who were qualified for the
ASAT antisatellite missiles. As soon as she'd heard that, she had made a phone
call and informed Space Command that she was the Eagle driver who had worked
out the ASAT flight profile, and why take a combat pilot off the line when she
could handle the mission very well, thank you.

She checked to make sure the ugly missile was properly
attached to the airframe. It had been taken out of secure storage and
reexamined by a team of experts. Buns shook her head. There had only been one
real test of the system before a moratorium had been slapped on the project. A
successful test, to be sure, but only one. She hoped it would work. The Navy
really needed help from the Air Force pukes. Besides, that A-6 driver was cute.

The major finished her walkaround, taking her time-her
target wasn't over the Indian Ocean yet-then strapped herself into her Eagle,
ran her eyes and hands over the gauges and handles, adjusted the seat, and
finally input the numbers painted on the wall of the aircraft shelter into the
aircraft's inertial navigation system so that the fighter would know where it
was. Finished, she began to fire up her engines. Her flight helmet protected
her from the shriek of the two Pratt and Whitney engines. The needles on her
engine gauges rotated into proper position. Below her, the crew chief gave the
aircraft a careful examination, then waved to her to taxi the aircraft into the
open. Six people were out there, standing behind the red warning line to
protect their ears from the noise. Always nice to have an audience, she
thought, ignoring them.

"Eagle One-Zero-Four ready to taxi," she told the
tower.

"One-Zero-Four, roger. You are cleared to taxi,"
the tower controller replied. "Wind is
two-five-three at twelve knots."

"Roger that, One-Zero-Four is rolling."

Buns brought her canopy down. The crew chief snapped to
attention and gave the major a perfect salute. Nakamura answered it with
panache, advanced her throttles slightly, and the Eagle fighter moved off to
the runway like a crippled stork. A minute later, she was in the air, a silky
smooth feeling of pure power enveloping her as she pointed her Eagle at the
sky.

Kosmos 1801 was just completing its southbound leg, bending
around the Straits of Magellan to head north over the Atlantic. The orbital
pass would take it two hundred miles off the American coast. At the
ground-control station, technicians prepared to switch on the powerful
sea-surveillance radar. They were sure an American carrier battle group was at
sea, but had been unable to locate it. Three regiments of Backfires were waiting
for information that would allow them to repeat the feat accomplished on the
second day of the war.

Nakamura eased her fighter under the tanker's tail, and the
boom operator expertly shoved the refueling probe into the back of her fighter.
Ten thousand pounds of fuel transferred into her tanks in only a few minutes,
and as she disengaged, a small cloud of kerosene vapor escaped into the sky.

"Gulliver, this is One-Zero-Four, over," she
called over the radio.

"One-Zero-Four, this is Gulliver," replied a
colonel in the passenger compartment of a LearJet cruising at forty thousand
feet.

"All tanked and ready to go. All on-board systems show
green. Orbiting at Point Sierra. Ready to initiate intercept climb. Standing
by."

"Roger that, One-Zero-Four."

Major Nakamura kept her Eagle in a small turning circle. She
didn't want to waste a drop of fuel when she started her climb. She shifted
ever so slightly in her seat, which for her was a violent show of emotion when
flying, and concentrated on her aircraft. As her eyes traced over her cockpit
instruments, she told herself to control her breathing.

Space Command's radars picked up the Soviet satellite as it
passed the bulge of South America. Computers compared its course and speed with
known data, matched them with the position of Nakamura's fighter, and a
computer spat out its commands, which were relayed to the LearJet.

"One-Zero-Four, come to heading two-four-five."

"Turning now." The major brought her fighter into
a tight turn. "Holding on two-four-five."

"Stand by . . . stand by-initiate!"

"Roger." Buns pushed her throttles to the stops
and punched up the afterburners. The Eagle leaped forward like a spurred horse,
accelerating through Mach 1 in seconds. Next she eased back on the stick,
bringing her Eagle into a forty-five-degree climb, still accelerating into a
darkening sky. She didn't look out. Her eyes were locked on her cockpit gauges:
the fighter had to maintain a specific flight profile for the next two minutes.
As the Eagle rocketed into the sky, the altimeter needle whirled around its
clockface. Fifty thousand feet, sixty thousand feet, seventy, eighty, ninety
thousand feet. Stars were visible now in the nearly black sky, but Nakamura
didn't notice.

"Come on, baby, find the son of a bitch she thought
aloud.

Beneath the aircraft the ASAT missile's tracking head came
on, searching the sky for the infrared heat signature of the Soviet satellite.
A light blinked on Buns's instrument panel.

"My weapon is tracking! Repeat, my weapon is tracking.
Auto launch sequence equipment is activated. Altitude ninety-four thousand feet
seven hundred-breakaway, breakaway!" She felt her aircraft lurch as the
heavy missile dropped free and immediately brought her throttles back to low
power and brought the stick back to loop the fighter. She checked her fuel
state. The afterburning climb had nearly emptied her tanks, but she had enough
to make Langley without tanking again. She had already turned for home when she
realized that she hadn't seen the missile. It didn't matter anyway. Nakamura
turned west, letting the Eagle settle into a shallow dive that would terminate
on the Virginia Coast.

Aboard the LearJet, a tracker camera followed the missile
upward. The solid-fuel rocket motor burned for thirty seconds, then the warhead
separated. The Miniature Homing Vehicle, an infrared heat sensor embedded in
its flat face, had long since acquired its target. The Soviet satellite's
on-board nuclear reactor radiated waste heat out into space, and the resulting
infrared signature rivaled the sun. As its microchip brain computed the
intercept course, the MHV made a tiny course alteration and the distance
between warhead and satellite dropped at a precipitous rate. The satellite was
northbound at eighteen thousand miles per hour, the MHV southbound at over ten
thousand, yet another hi-tech kamikaze. Then-

"Jesus!" said the senior officer on the LearJet as
he blinked his eyes and turned away from the TV screen. Several hundred pounds
of steel and ceramic had just turned to vapor. "That's a kill, say again
that's a kill!"

The TV picture was downlinked to Space Command, where a
radar picture backed it up. The massive satellite was now an expanding cloud of
orbiting rubble. "Target is negated," said a calmer voice.

LENINSK, KAZAKH S.S.R.

The loss of signal from the Kosmos 1801 satellite was
recorded scant seconds after it was obliterated from the sky. It was no
surprise to the Russian space experts, since 1801 has used up its maneuvering
thrusters several days before, and had been an easy target. Another F-1M rocket
booster was sitting on a launch pad of the Baikonur Kosmodrome Complex. An
abbreviated launch sequence countdown would be under way inside of two
hours-but from now on the ability of the Soviet Navy to locate convoys and
fighting fleets would be in jeopardy.

LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, VIRGINIA

"Well?" Buns asked as she jumped down from her
fighter.

"Kill. We have it on tape," another major said.
"It worked."

"How soon do you think they'll launch a
replacement?" One more kill and I'll be an ace!

"We think they have one on the pad now. Twelve to
twenty-four hours. No telling how many spares they have ready."

Nakamura nodded. The Air Force had a total of six remaining
ASAT rockets. Maybe enough, maybe not-one successful mission did not make it a
reliable weapon. She walked over to the squadron headquarters for coffee and
donuts.

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

"Goddammit, Pasha!" CINC-West swore. "I don't
have a four-star deputy so that he can run around playing divisional commander.
Look at you! You might have got your head cut off!"

"We needed a breakthrough. The tank commander was
killed and his deputy was too young. I have given us the breakthrough."

"Where is Captain Sergetov?"

"Major Sergetov," Alekseyev corrected. "He
performed well as my aide. His hand got carved up and he's having it attended
to. So. What reinforcements do we have moving to the 8th Guards Army?"

Both generals moved over to a large map. "These two
tank divisions are already en route-ten to twelve hours. How firm is your
bridgehead?"

"Could be better," Alekseyev admitted. "There
were three bridges there, but some madman started dropping rockets into the
town and wrecked two of them. That left one. We managed to get a mechanized
battalion across, along with some tanks, before the Germans were able to
destroy it. They have plenty of artillery support, and when I left, we had
boats and bridging equipment coming in. The man who relieved me will be trying
to reinforce as soon as he can arrange a crossing in force."

"Opposition?"

"Thin, but the terrain is on their side. I'd estimate
one regiment or so, the remains of other NATO units. Some tanks, but mainly
mechanized infantry. They also have plenty of artillery support. When I left it
was a very even match. We have more firepower, but most of it's trapped on our
side of the Leine. It's a race to see who can reinforce quickest."

"After you left, NATO threw aircraft in. Our people are
trying to hold them back, but NATO seems to be ahead in the air."

"We can't wait for night. Those bastards own the night
sky."

"Go now?"

Alekseyev nodded, thinking of what casualties he was
bringing down on "his" division. "As soon as we can assemble the
boats. Expand the bridgehead to two kilometers, then get the bridges across.
What's NATO bringing in?"

"Radio intercepts have identified two brigades en
route. One British and one Belgian."

"They'll send more than that. They must know what we
can do if we exploit this. We have 1st Guards Tank Army in reserve . . ."

"Commit half of our reserves here?"

"I can't think of a better place." Alekseyev
gestured at the map. The drive toward Hannover had been stopped within sight of
the city. The northern army groups had gotten into the outskirts of Hamburg, at
the cost of gutting 3rd Shock Army's tank formations. "With luck, we can
break all of the 1st into the enemy rear. That will get us to the Weser at
least-maybe the Rhein."

"A large gamble, Pasha," CINC-West breathed. But
the odds here were better than anything else on the map. If the NATO forces
were stretched as thinly as his intelligence staff said, they had to crumble
someplace. Perhaps this was it? "Very well. Start posting the
orders."

FASLANE, SCOTLAND

"What about their ASW forces?" asked the captain
of USS Pittsburgh.

"Considerable. We estimate that Ivan has two major
antisubmarine warfare groups, one centered on Kiev, the other on a Kresta
cruiser. There are also four smaller groups, each composed of a Krivak-class
frigate and four to six patrol frigates of the Grisha and Mirka type. Add to
that a large collection of ASW aircraft and finally twenty or so submarines,
half nuclear, half conventional," answered the briefing officer.

"Why don't we let them keep the Barents Sea?"
muttered Todd Simms of USS Boston.

There's an idea, Dan McCafferty agreed silently.

"Seven days to get there?" Pittsburgh asked.

"Yes, that gives us a good deal of freedom on how to
enter the area. Captain Little?"

The captain of HMS Torbay took the podium. McCafferty
wondered if the Brits had any need for NFL-style noseguards in their team
sports. Under six feet, but very broad across the shoulders, his head topped by
a shock of sandy, unruly hair, James Little certainly looked like one. When be
spoke, it was with toughly won assurance.

"We've been running a campaign we call Keypunch. The
objective of Keypunch is to evaluate what ASW defenses Ivan has operating in
the Barents Sea-and also, of course, to lop off the odd Sov who gets in our
way." He smiled. Torbay had four kills. "Ivan's set a barrier from
Bear Island to the coast of Norway. The immediate area around Bear Island is a
solid minefield. Ivan's been laying the things since he took the island by
parachute assault two weeks ago. South of this area, so far as we can
determine, the barrier is composed of some small minefields and Tango-class
diesel subs as a front line, backed by the mobile ASW groups and
Victor-III-class nuclear submarines. Their aim appears to be not so much
prosecute-to-kill as prosecute-to-drive-off. Every time one of our submarines
has made an attack on this barrier line, there has been a vigorous response.

"Inside the Barents, things are pretty much the same.
These small hunter-killer groups can be bloody dangerous. I personally had an
encounter with a Krivak and four Grishas. Inshore, they have helicopters and
fixed-wing aircraft in direct support, and it was a most unpleasant experience.
We also found several new minefields. The Soviets appear to be sowing them
almost at random in water as deep as one hundred fathoms. Finally they seem to
have set a number of traps. One of them cost us Trafalgar. They set a small
minefield and placed a noisemaker within it that sounds exactly like a Tango
schnorkeling her diesels. As near as we can make out, Trafalgar moved in to
collect the Tango and ran right into a mine. Something to keep in mind,
gentlemen." Little paused to let that bit of hard-won intelligence sink
in.

"Right. What we intend you chaps to do is head
north-northwest towards the edge of the Greenland Icepack, then east along the
edge of the pack to the Svyatana Anna Trough. Five days from today three of our
submarines will raise pure bloody hell on the barrier, supported by our own ASW
aircraft and some fighters if that can be arranged. That ought to get Ivan's
attention and draw his mobile forces west. You should then be able to proceed
south to your objective. It's a roundabout route, of course, but it enables you
to use your towed sonars for the maximum period of time, and you should be able
to run at relatively high speed at the edge of the icepack without being
detected."

McCafferty thought that one over. The edge of the icepack
was a noisy place, with billions of tons of ice in constant movement.

"The route has been scouted, by HMS Sceptre and Superb.
They encountered minor patrolling only. Two Tangos were found in that area. Our
chaps had orders not to engage." That told the Americans how important
this mission was. "They will be waiting for you, so do be careful about
engaging something in your path."

"How do we get out?" Todd Simms wondered.

"As quickly as you can. By that time we should have at
least one more submarine to assist you. They'll stay roughly twelve hours ahead
of your estimate speed of advance, eliminating any opposition they find. Once
you reach the icepack, you're on your own. Our chaps will be there only as long
as it takes to reach the pack. After that they have other duties to perform. We
expect that Ivan's ASW groups will come after you-no surprise there, is it?
We'll try to maintain pressure south of Bear Island to tie down as many as we
can, but speed will be your best defense in this case."

The skipper of USS Boston nodded. He could run faster than
the Russians could hunt.

"Further questions?" asked Commander, Submarines,
Eastern Atlantic. "Good luck, then. We'll give you all the support we
can."

McCafferty leafed through his briefing papers to check for
the firing orders, then tucked the ops orders into his back pocket. Operation
Doolittle. He and Simms left together. Their submarines were at the same quay.
It was a short, quiet drive. They arrived to see Tomahawk missiles being
loaded, in Chicago's case into the twelve vertical tubes installed forward of
the pressure hull in the submarine's bow. Boston was an older boat and had had
to offload some of her torpedoes to make room for them. No submarine captain is
ever happy offloading torpedoes.

"Don't worry, I'll back you up," McCafferty said.

"You do that. Looks like they're almost finished. Be
nice to have one more beer, wouldn't it?" Simms chuckled.

"See you when we get back." Simms and McCafferty
shook hands. A minute later both were below, seeing to the final arrangements
for going back to sea.

USS PHARRIS

The Sikorsky Sea King helicopter was a tight fit on the
frigate's helo deck, but for casualties the rules were always bent. The ten
worst cases, all scald/burns and broken limbs, were loaded aboard after the
helo was refueled, and Morris watched it lift off for the beach. The captain of
what was left of USS Pharris put his cap back on and lit another cigarette. He
still didn't know what had gone wrong with that Victor-class. Somehow the
Russian skipper had teleported himself from one place to another.

"We killed three o' the bastards, sir," Chief
Clarke appeared at Morris's side. "Maybe this one just got lucky."

"Reading minds, Chief?"

"Beg pardon, sir. You wanted me to report on some
things. The pumps have just about dried things out. I'd say we're leaking ten
gallons an hour at the crack on the lower starboard corner, hardly worth
talking about. The bulkhead's holding, and we got people keeping an eye on it.
Same story with the tow cable. Those tugboat guys know their stuff. The
engineer reports both boilers are fully repaired, number two still on line. The
Prairie Masker is operating. The Sea Sparrow is working again in case we need
that, but the radars're still down."

Morris nodded. "Thank you, Chief. How are the
men?"

"Busy. Kinda quiet. Mad."

That's one advantage they have over me, Morris thought.
They're busy.

"If you'll pardon me saying so, skipper, you look awful
tired," Clarke said. The bosun was worried about his captain, but had
already said more than he was supposed to.

"We'll all get a good rest soon enough."

SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA

"We show one bird lifting off," the watch officer
told North American Aerospace Defense Command. "Coming out of Baikonur
Kosmodrome on a heading of one-five-five, indicating a probable orbital
inclination of sixty-five degrees. Signature characteristics say it's either an
SS-11 ICBM or an F-1-type space booster."

"Only one?"

"Correct, one bird only."

A lot of U.S. Air Force officers had suddenly become very
tense. The missile was on a heading that would take it directly over the
central United States in forty to fifty minutes. The rocket in question could
be many things. The Russian SS-9 missile, like many American counterparts, was
obsolete and had been adapted as a satellite booster rocket. Unlike its American
counterparts, it had been originally designed as a
fractional-orbital-bombardment system: FOBS, a missile that could put a
25-megaton nuclear warhead into a flight path mimicking that of a harmless
satellite.

"Booster-engine cutoff-okay, we show separation and
second-stage ignition," the colonel said on the phone. The Russians would
freak if they knew how good our cameras are, he thought. "Flight path
continues as before."

Already NORAD had flashed a warning to Washington. If this
was a nuclear strike, National Command Authority was ready to react. So many
current scenarios began with a large warhead exploded at orbital height over
the target country, causing massive electromagnetic damage to communications
systems. The SS-9 FOBS system was tailor-made for that sort of thing.

"Second-stage cutoff . . . and there's third-stage
ignition. Do you copy our position fix, NORAD?"

"That's a roger," acknowledged the general under
Cheyenne Mountain. The signal from the early-warning satellite was linked into
NORAD headquarters, and a watch crew of thirty was holding its breath, watching
the image of the space booster move across the map projection. Dear God, don't
let it be a nuke . . .

Ground-based radar in Australia now tracked the vehicle,
showing the climbing third stage and the spent second stage falling into the
Indian Ocean. Their information also was linked by satellite to Sunnyvale and
Cheyenne Mountain.

"That looks like shroud release," the man in
Sunnyvale said. The radar picture showed four new objects fluttering away from
the third stage. Probably the protective aluminum shroud needed for atmospheric
flight, but unnecessary weight for a space vehicle. People began to breathe
more regularly. A reentry vehicle needed such a shroud, but a satellite did not.
After five tense minutes, this was the first piece of good news. The FOBS
didn't do that.

An Air Force RC-135 aircraft was already lifting off the
ground at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, its engines firewalled as the flight
crew raced the converted 707 airliner to altitude. The roof of what otherwise
would be a passenger compartment held a large telescope/camera assembly used to
inspect Soviet space vehicle,. In the back, technicians activated the
sophisticated tracking systems used to lock the camera in on its distant
target.

"Burnout", they announced at Sunnyvale. "The
vehicle has achieved orbital velocity. Initial numbers look like an apogee of
one hundred fifty-six miles and a perigee of one hundred forty-eight."
They'd have to refine those numbers, but NORAD and Washington needed something
right now.

"Your evaluation?" NORAD asked Sunnyvale.

"Everything is consistent with a
radar-ocean-reconnaissance-satellite launch. The only change is the orbital
insertion path was southerly instead of northerly." Which made perfectly
good sense, as everyone knew. Any kind of rocket launched over the pole
entailed dangers that no one wanted to contemplate.

Thirty minutes later they were sure. The crewmen on the
RC-l35 got good pictures of the new Soviet satellite. Before it had completed
its first revolution, it was classified as a RORSAT. The new
radar-ocean-surveillance satellite would be a problem for the Navy, but not
something to end the world. The people in Sunnyvale and Cheyenne Mountain
maintained their vigil.

ICELAND

They followed a footpath around the mountain. Vigdis told
them it was a favorite place for tourists to visit. A small glacier on the northern
side of the mountain fed a half-dozen streams, which led in turn to a sizable
valley full of small farms. They had a fine vantage point. Almost everything in
sight was below them, including several roads that were kept under constant
scrutiny. Edwards debated the advantages of cutting straight across the valley
toward their objective or staying on the rough ground to the east.

"I wonder what kinda radio station that is," Smith
said. There was a tower of some sort eight miles west of them.

Mike looked at Vigdis and got a shrug. She didn't listen to
the radio.

"Not easy to tell from this far," Edwards
observed. "But probably they have some Russians." He unfolded his big
map. This part of the island showed lots of roads, but the information had to
be taken with a grain of salt. Only two of the roads had decent surfaces. The
rest were called "seasonal" on the map-meaning exactly what? Edwards
wondered. Of these, some were well maintained, others were not. The map didn't
say which was which. All of the Soviet troops they'd seen on the ground were
driving jeep-type vehicles, not the tracked infantry-carriers they'd observed
on the invasion day. A good driver in a four-by-four could go almost anywhere,
however. How good were the Soviets at driving jeeps over broken ground . . . so
many things to worry about, Edwards thought.

Edwards tracked his field glasses over the area to his west.
He saw a twin-prop airliner lift off from a small airfield. You forgot about
that, didn't you? The Russians are using those puddle-jumpers to ferry troops
around . . .

"Sarge, what do you think?" Might as well get a
professional decision.

Smith grimaced. The choice was between physical danger and
physical exhaustion. Some choice, he thought. That's supposed to be why we have
officers.

"I'd at least have some patrols down there, Lieutenant.
Lots of roads, figure some checkpoints so they can keep an eye on the local
folks. Let's say that radio's a navigation beacon. It'll be guarded. Regular
radio station'll be guarded, too. All these farms-what kinda farms, Miss
Vigdis?"

"Sheep, some milk cows, potatoes," she answered.

"So when the Russkies are off duty, there'll be some
wandering around to get some fresh food instead of their canned crap. We would,
too. I don't much like it, Lieutenant."

Edwards nodded agreement. "Okay, we head east. Just
about out of food."

"There's always fish."

FASLANE, SCOTLAND

Chicago led the procession. A Royal Navy fleet tug had
helped her away from the quay, and the American sub was heading out the channel
at six knots. They were taking advantage of a "window" in Soviet
satellite coverage. It would be at least six hours before another Russian
reconnaissance satellite came overhead. Behind McCafferty came Boston,
Pittsburgh, Providence, Key West, and Groton, at two-mile intervals.

"What's the sounding?" McCafferty asked over the
intercom.

"Five hundred seventy feet."

Time. McCafferty ordered the lookouts below. The only ships
in sight were aft. Boston was clearly visible, her black sail and twin diving
planes gliding over the water like the angel of death. That was apt enough, he
thought. The captain of USS Chicago made a final check of the control station
atop the sail, then dropped down the ladder, pulling the hatch closed behind
him. Another twenty-five feet and he was in the attack center, where he closed
another hatch, turning the locking wheel as far as it would go.

"Straight board shut," the executive officer
reported, going through the official litany that signified that the submarine
was rigged for dive. Submariners evolved check fists long before aviators
discovered them. McCafferty checked the status boards himself-and so,
furtively, did several others of the attack center crew. Everything was as it
should be.

"Dive. Make your depth two hundred feet," McCafferty
ordered.

The submarine filled with the sound of rushing air and
water, and the sleek black hull began her descent.

McCafferty reviewed the chart in his head. Seventy-four
hours to the icepack, and turn east. Forty-three hours to Svyatana and turn
south. Then came the really hard part.

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

The Battle of Alfeld was turning into a living thing that
ate men and tanks like a wolf eats rabbits. Alekseyev chafed at being two
hundred kilometers distant from the tank division he now regarded as his own.
He could not complain about his relief-which only made things worse. The new
commander had staged a successful forced river crossing, putting another two
regiments of mechanized infantry on the far bank, and now three ribbon bridges
were being built across the Leine-or at least a spirited attempt was under way
to build them, despite murderous artillery fire from NATO units.

"We have created a 'meeting engagement' Pasha,"
CINC-West said, staring down at the map.

Alekseyev nodded agreement. What had begun as a limited
attack was fast becoming the focal point of the whole fighting front. Two more
Soviet tank divisions were now near the battle area, racing to the Leine. Three
NATO brigades were known to be heading the same way, along with artillery. Both
sides were pulling tactical fighters from other sectors, one to smash the
bridgehead, the other to support it. The terrain at the front didn't give the
SAM crews enough time to discriminate friend from foe. The Russians had many
more surface-to-air missiles, and so a freefire zone had been established at
Alfeld. Anything that flew was automatically a target for the Russian missiles,
while Soviet aircraft kept clear, working instead to locate and kill NATO
artillery and reinforcements. That ran contrary to pre-war doctrine-another
gamble, but a favorable one, Alekseyev judged, given his experiences at the
front. That was an important lesson not stressed enough in pre-war training:
senior commanders had to see what was happening with their own eyes. How did we
ever forget that? Pasha wondered.

He fingered the bandage on his forehead. Alekseyev was
suffering from a murderous headache, and a doctor had used twelve stitches to
close the wound. Crude stitches, the doctor had told him-they would leave a
scar. His father had had several such scars, all worn with pride. He'd accepted
the decoration for this one.

"We have the ridge north of the town!" 20th Tanks,
commander called in. "We've pushed the Americans off."

Alekseyev took the phone. "How soon on the
bridges?"

"We ought to have one ready in another half hour. Their
artillery support is slackening off. They blew one bridging unit to hell, but
this one will be completed. I have a battalion of tanks lined up already. The
SAMs are doing well. I can see the wreckage of five aircraft from where I'm
standing. I see-" The General was interrupted by man-made thunder.

Alekseyev could do nothing but stare at the telephone
receiver. His fist tightened in anger around the handset.

"Excuse me. That was close. The final section of bridge
is rolling out now. Those engineers have taken terrible losses, Comrade
General. They deserve particular attention. The major in command of the unit
has been exposed for three hours now. I want the gold star for him."

"Then he'll get it."

"Good, good-the bridge section is off the truck and in
the water. If they give us ten minutes to anchor the far end, I'll get those
dammed tanks across for you. How long on my reinforcements?"

"The lead elements will arrive just after sunset."

"Excellent! I must leave now. I'll be back when we
start rolling tanks."

Alekseyev handed the phone back to a junior officer. It was
like listening to a hockey game on the radio!

"The next objective, Pasha?"

"Northwest to Hameln and beyond. We might be able to
cut off NATO's northern army groups. If they start to disengage their forces
around Hamburg, we go to a general attack and chase them all the way to the
English Channel! I think we have the situation we've been hoping for."

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

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 ships 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 Canal pilots to and
from ships; speed restrictions were broken, regardless of the erosion problems
at the Gaillard Cut. Those ships needing refueling had it done as soon as they
exited the Canal at the Gatun Locks, then formed an antisubmarine barrier
outside Lim¢n 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 Passage at
night.

30 - Approaches

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

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 ships 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 assists."

"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. Assistant gunnery officer, I'd just
made j.g. We got twelve Jap planes, but just after midnight the thirteenth
kamikaze got through on us. Forty-seven men-well." The pilot took the
walkie-talkie from Ins 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 ship 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 shore 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 ship?"

"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 considering 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
harassed 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, cluster 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, held spent his
whole career in what he liked to call "the real Navy," frigates,
destroyers, and cruisers. The small gray ships 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 hell 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 ships 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 SURTASS ships, 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 Ships were
modified tuna clippers that trailed enormous passive 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 ships?"

"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 SURTASS 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 shook 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. Damned 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 damned
Backfires."

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

THE WINDWARD PASSAGE

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 ships 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 passage 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 vassal 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 sonobuoys, 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 ship 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 ship'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 ships 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 ship
ready for action, racing through the acceptance trials and conducting
continuous workups, working his men and ship 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 was
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 ship,
but had withheld it from the kids. It took two minutes to assure 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?

Moms 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 ship.

ICELAND

For the first time Edwards had beaten his sergeant at his
own game. For all his alleged expertise with a fishing rod, Smith had come away
with nothing after an hour's effort, and handed the rod to Mike in disgust. Ten
minutes later, Edwards landed a four-pound trout.

"Ain't that some shit," Smith growled.

The last ten kilometers they'd covered had taken eleven
hours. The one road they'd had to cross, they learned, was a busy one. Every
few minutes a vehicle headed north or south. The Russians were using this
gravel strip as their principal means of overland travel to Iceland's northern
coast. Edwards and his party had spent six hours hiding in the rocks of yet
another lava field, watching and waiting for a safe time to cross. Twice they'd
seen Mi-24 helicopters patrolling the area, but neither had come close. They'd
seen no foot patrols either, and Edwards had concluded that Iceland was too big
for the Soviet force to control. At that point he'd taken out his Russian map
and set to analyzing the symbols. The Soviet troops were concentrated in an arc
extending north and south of the Reykjavik peninsula. He'd radioed that into
Scotland, spending ten minutes describing the Russian symbology.

Road traffic had dropped off at dusk, allowing them to cross
the road on the run. They'd found themselves without food in another area of
lakes and streams. Enough was enough, Edwards had decided. They had to rest
again and began fishing to get themselves some food. The next leg of their
journey would keep them well clear of inhabited areas.

His rifle and other gear lay next to a rock, covered with
his camouflage jacket. Vigdis was with him. She'd hardly left his side all day.
Smith and the Marines had found places to relax while their lieutenant did most
of the work.

The local bug population was out in force today. His sweater
kept most of them off his skin, but his face attracted their share. He tried to
ignore them. Quite a few bugs had found their way to the surface of the stream,
and the trout were going after them. Every time he saw a ripple, he cast the
feathery lure toward it. The rod bent again.

"Got another one!" he hooted. Smith's head came
up, shook angrily, and went back down in the bushes fifty yards away.

Edwards had never done this sort of fishing. All his
experience were in his father's boat, but the principles were pretty much the
same. He let the trout pull against the line, but not too much, just enough to
wear him out as Edwards worked the rod up and down, drawing the fish upstream
and into the rocks. Suddenly he tripped over a rock and fell into the shallow
water, managing, however, to keep his rod-tip high. Struggling to his feet, he
stepped back, his fatigue pants black and wet against his legs.

"This is a big one." He turned to see Vigdis
laughing. She watched him work the fish in and began moving toward it. A minute
later she grabbed the leader and pulled the trout clear of the water.

"Three kilos, this one." She held it up.

At age ten Mike had caught a hundred-pound albacore, but
this brown trout looked a lot bigger. He reeled in the line as Vigdis walked
toward him. Ten pounds of fish in twenty minutes, he thought. We might just be
able to live off the land yet.

The helicopter appeared without warning. There was a
westerly wind-it had probably been patrolling the road to the east-and the
aircraft was less than a mile away before they heard the stuttering sound of
its five-bladed rotor headed right toward them. "Everyone freeze!"
Smith yelled. The Marines were in good cover, but Mike and Vigdis were in the
open.

"Oh, God," Edwards breathed. He finished reeling
his line in. "Take the fish off the hook. Relax."

She looked at him as the helicopter approached, afraid to
turn around toward the incoming chopper. Her hands shook as she worked the hook
free of the wriggling trout.

"It's going to be all right, Vigdis." He wrapped
his arm about her waist and walked slowly away from the stream. Her arm pulled
his body close against hers. It came as a greater shock than the Russian
chopper. She was stronger than he'd expected, and her arm was a heated path
around his back and chest.

The chopper was less than five hundred yards off, bearing
directly at them, nose down, the multibarreled gun trained directly at them.

He'd never make it, Edwards saw. His rifle was fifty feet
away under his camouflage jacket. If he moved fast enough to get there, they'd
know why. His legs were weak beneath him as he watched death approach.

Slowly, carefully, Vigdis moved the hand in which she held
the fish. She used two fingers to grab Mike's hand at her waist, moving it up
and around until it rested on her left breast. Then she held the fish high
above her head. Mike dropped his rod and stooped to get the other trout. Vigdis
followed his movements and managed to keep his left hand in place. Mike held up
his fish as the Mi-24 attack helicopter hovered fifty yards away. Its rotor
tossed up a circle of spray from the surrounding marsh.

"Go away," Mike rasped through his grinning teeth.

"My father loves to fish," the senior lieutenant
said, manipulating the flight controls to Hover.

"Shit on the fish," the gunner snapped back.
"I want to catch one of those. Look where that young bastard has his
hand!"

They probably don't even know what's going on, he thought.
Or if they know, they have sense enough not to do anything about it Nice to see
that some people are untouched by the madness that's sweeping the world . . .
The pilot looked down at his fuel gauges.

"They look harmless enough. We're down to thirty
minutes fuel. Time to return."

The chopper settled at the tail, and for a terrible moment
Edwards thought it might be landing. Then it pivoted in midair and moved to the
southwest. One of the soldiers riding in the back waved at them. Vidgis waved
back. They stood there as it flew off. Their hands came down, and her left arm
held his tight against her. Edwards had not realized that Vigdis didn't wear a
bra. He was afraid to move his hand, afraid to appear to make an advance. Why
had she done that? To help fool the Russians-to reassure him, or herself? That
it had in fact worked seemed unimportant. The Marines were still concealed.
They stood there quite alone, and his left hand seemed to burn as his mind
stumbled over what he ought to do.

Vigdis acted for him. His hand slid away as she turned to
him and buried her head against his shoulder. Here I am holding the prettiest
girl I ever met in one hand, Edwards thought, and a Goddamned fish in the
other. That was easily solved. Edwards dropped the fish, wrapped both arms
around her, and held on tight.

"Are you all right?"

She looked up at his face. "I think yes."

There was only one word for what he felt toward the girl in
his arms. Edwards knew this wasn't the time, and wasn't the place, but the look
and the word remained. He kissed her gently on the cheek. The smile that
answered him counted more than all the passionate encounters of his life.

"Excuse me, folks," Sergeant Smith said from a few
feet away.

"Yeah." Edwards disengaged himself. "Let's
get moving before they decide to come back."

USS CHICAGO

Things were going well. American P-3C Orions and British
Nimrods were scouting the route to the icepack. The submarines had been forced
to detour east around one suspected Russian submarine, but that was all. Ivan
was sending most of his boats south, it seemed, confident that the Norwegian
Sea was under his control. Another six hours to the pack.

Chicago was drifting now, finished with her turn at the head
of the "freight train" procession of submarines. Her sonar gear
searched the black water for the telltale noise of a Russian submarine. They
heard nothing but the distant growling of the icepack.

The tracking team plotted the position of the other American
submarines. McCafferty was glad to see they had trouble doing so, even with
America's best sonar equipment. If they had trouble, so would the Russians. His
crew looked to be in good shape. Three days on the beach had counted for a lot.
The beer supplied by the Norwegian skipper, plus word on what their Harpoon had
done in Chicago's one real engagement, had counted for even more. He'd already
briefed the crew on their current mission. The information was accepted
quietly, with a couple of jokes about going back home-to the Barents Sea.

"That was Boston, skipper," the XO said. "Now
we're the caboose."

McCafferty walked back to examine the chart. Everything
looked okay, but he checked everything carefully. With so many submarines
running the same course track, the risk of collision was real. A quartermaster
ran down the list of the sister subs that had passed Chicago. The skipper was
satisfied.

"All ahead two-thirds," he ordered. The helmsman
acknowledged the order and twisted the annunciator dial.

"Engine room answers all ahead two-thirds."

"Very well. Left ten degrees rudder. Come to new course
three-four-eight."

Chicago accelerated to fifteen knots, taking her station at
the end of the column as the freight train raced to the Arctic.

31 - Demons

VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA

"Left full rudder!" Morris screamed, pointing at
the torpedo's wake.

"Right full rudder, aye!" the helmsman replied,
spinning the wheel right, then left, then centering it.

Morris stood on the port bridge wing. The sea was flat calm,
and the torpedo's wake was clearly visible, following every turn and maneuver
the frigate made. He even tried reversing, and that didn't work-the torpedo
appeared to go sideways. It stopped dead in the water and rose to the surface
where he could see it. It was white, with what seemed to be a red star on the
nose . . . and it had eyes, like all homing torpedoes. He ordered flank speed,
but the torpedo stayed with him on the surface now, skimming along like a
flying fish, clearly visible to all who could see-but only Morris saw it.

It closed ever so slowly as the frigate maneuvered. Fifty
feet, thirty, ten . . .

"Where did my daddy go?" the little girl asked.
"I want my daddy!"

"What's the problem, skipper?" the exec asked.
This was very strange, because he didn't have a head.

Sweat poured from Morris's face as he bolted upright in his
bed, his heart racing, The digital clock on the headboard said 4:54. Ed got up
and walked shakily into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. The
second time tonight, he thought. Twice more during the tow back to Boston the
nightmare had come, robbing him of the few hours of rest he allowed himself.
Morris wondered if he had screamed in his sleep.

You did everything you could have done. It's not your fault,
he told the face in the mirror.

But you were the captain, it replied.

Morris had gotten through five homes when he'd had to stop.
It was one thing to talk to wives and parents. They understood. Their sons and
husbands were sailors, and had taken a sailor's risk. But the four-year-old daughter
of Gunner's Mate Second Class Jeff Evans had not understood why her daddy would
never come home again. A second-class petty officer didn't make much, Morris
knew. Evans must have worked like a madman on that little house to make it as
neat as it was. A good man with his hands, he remembered, a good gunner's mate.
Every wall was newly painted. Much of the interior woodwork had been replaced.
They'd been in the house only seven months, and Morris wondered how the petty
officer had found the time to get all that work done. He had to have done it
himself No way he could have afforded contractors. Ginny's room had been a
testimony to her father's love. Dolls from all over the world had stood on
hand-made shelves. As soon as he'd seen Ginny's room, Morris had had to leave.
He'd felt himself on the verge of breaking down, and some absurd code of
conduct wouldn't allow him to do that in front of strangers. So he'd left and
driven home, with the rest of the list tucked back in his wallet. Certainly the
fatigue that had enveloped him would allow him a night's sleep...

But now he stood in front of the mirror, looking at a man
with hollow eyes who wished his wife were there.

Morris went out to the kitchen of his one-story house and
went mindlessly through the process of making coffee. The morning paper was on
the doorstep, and he found himself reading stories about the war that he knew
to be inaccurate or out of date. Things were happening much too fast for
reporters to keep up. There was an eyewitness account from an unnamed destroyer
about a missile that had leaked through her missile defenses. An
"analysis" piece explained how surface warships were obsolete in the
face of determined missile attacks and asked where the fleet's vaunted carriers
were. That, he thought, was a pretty good question.

Morris finished his coffee and returned to the bathroom for
a shower. If he had to be awake, he thought, he might as well be at work. He
had one set of undress whites in the closet. He donned them a few minutes

later and walked out to his car. It was already first light
when he drove to the Norfolk Navy Base.

Forty minutes later he was in one of several operations
rooms, where the positions of convoys and suspected submarine locations were
plotted. On the far wall the threat board listed estimated Russian assets and
the numbers and types of kills accumulated to date. Another wall showed losses.
If the intel guys were right, he thought, the war at sea had the look of a
draw-but for the Russians a draw was the same as a win.

"Good morning, Commander," COMNAVSURFLANT said.
Another man who had not slept very much. "You look a little better."

Better than what? Morris wondered.

"We have some good news for a change."

NORTH ATLANTIC

The B-52 crews were nervous despite the heavy fighter escort.
Five thousand feet above them, a full squadron of F-14 Tomcats flew top cover,
having just refueled from KC-135 tankers. The other squadron was tanking now
for their part in the mission. The sun was just peeping above the horizon, and
the ocean below them was still dark. It was 0300 local time, when human
reaction times are at their worst.

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

The alarm klaxon jolted the sleeping Russian pilots off
their cots. Their ground crews took fewer than ten seconds to begin preflight
procedures as the airmen climbed the steel ladders into their cockpits and
plugged in their helmet radios to learn what the emergency was.

"Heavy enemy jamming activity to the west," the
regimental commander announced. "Plan Three. Repeat: Plan Three."

In the control trailer, radar operators had just seen their
radar screens turn to a cluttered nightmare of white-noise jamming. An American
raid was coming in probably B-52s, probably in force. Soon the American
aircraft would be so close that the ground-based radars could bum through the
jamming. Until then, the fighters would try to engage as far out as they could
to reduce the number of bombers before they could strike their target.

The Soviet pilots had been well drilled in their time on
Iceland. Within two minutes the first pair of MiG-29s was rolling; in seven all
were in the air. The Soviet plan left a third of the fighters over Keflavik
while the others charged west toward the jamming, their own missile-targeting
radars on, seeking targets. They were ten minutes out when the jamming stopped.
A single MiG got a radar contact off a retreating jamming aircraft and radioed
Keflavik, only to learn from his ground controllers that nothing was on the
scopes out to a range of three hundred kilometers.

A minute later, the jamming began again, this time from the
south and east. More cautiously this time, the MiGs flew south. On orders, they
kept their radar systems shut down until they were a hundred miles offshore,
but when they switched on they found nothing. Whoever was jamming was doing it
from a great distance. The ground controllers reported that three jammers had
been involved in the first incident and four in the second. Quite a lot of
jammers, the regimental commander thought. They're trying to run us around,
trying to make us use up our fuel.

"Come east," he ordered his fight leaders.

The B-52 crews were really nervous now. One of the escorting
Prowlers had picked up the voice radio orders from the MiGs, and another had
caught a flash of their air-intercept radars to the southwest. The fighters
eased south also. They were now one hundred fifty miles from Keflavik, crossing
the Icelandic coast. The mission commander evaluated the situation and ordered
the bombers to turn slightly north.

The B-52s carried no bombs, just the powerful radar jammers
designed to allow other bombers to reach targets within the Soviet Union. Below
them, the second squadron of Tomcats was heading for the deck, the eastern
slopes of the Vatna glacier. With them were four Navy Prowlers for additional
protection against air-to-air missiles in case the MiGs got too close.

"Starting to get some airborne radars, bearing
two-five-eight. Seems to be closing," one Prowler reported. Another copied
the same signal and they triangulated the range to fifty miles. Close enough.
The mission commander was flying a Prowler.

"Amber Moon. Say again, Amber Moon."

The B-52s turned back east and dove, opening their bomb bays
to disgorge tons of aluminum chaff that no radar signal could penetrate. As
soon as they saw that, the American fighters all dropped their external fuel
tanks, and the Prowlers broke off from the bombers to orbit just west of the
chaff. Now came the tricky part. The fighters of both sides were closing at a
combined speed of over one thousand miles per hour.

"Queer check," the mission commander radioed.

"Blackie check," acknowledged the skipper of
VF-41.

"Jolly check," replied the commander of VF-84.
Everyone was in position.

"Execute." The four Prowlers flipped on their
antimissile jamming gear.

The twelve Tomcats of the Jolly Rogers were strung on a line
at thirty thousand feet. On command they activated their missile-guidance
radars.

"American fighters!" shouted a number of Russian
pilots. Their threat receivers instantly told the pilots that fighter-type
radars were locked on their aircraft.

The Soviet fighter commander was not surprised. Surely the
Americans would not risk their heavy bombers again without a proper escort.
He'd ignore these and bore in for the B-52s, as his training dictated. The MiG
radars were heavily jammed, their ranges cut in half and as yet unable to track
any targets at all. He ordered his pilots to be alert for incoming missiles,
confident that they could avoid those that they saw, and had all his aircraft
increase power. Next, he ordered all but two of his reserve force to leave
Keflavik and come east to support him.

The Americans needed only seconds to lock onto targets. Each
Tomcat carried four Sparrows and four Sidewinders. The Sparrows went first.
There were sixteen MiGs in the air. Most had at least two missiles targeted,
but the Sparrows were radar-guided. Each American fighter had to remain pointed
at its target until the missile hit. This ran the risk of closing within range
of Soviet missiles, and the Tomcats were not equipped with protective jammers.

The Americans had taken position up-sun from the Russians.
Just as their radars began to burn through the American jamming, the Sparrows
arrived, the first directly from the sun, exploding its MiG in midair and warning
everyone in its flight. The Soviet aircraft began radical jinks up and down,
some pilots breaking into hard turns as they saw the seven-inch wide missiles
racing in, but four more found their targets, and in moments there were three
hard kills and one severely damaged aircraft that turned to limp for home.

The Jolly Rogers turned as soon as their missiles were spent
and ran northeast with the Soviets in pursuit. The Russian commander was
relieved that the American missiles had performed so poorly, yet still enraged
at the loss of five aircraft. His remaining aircraft bore in on after-burner as
their targeting radars began to defeat the American jamming. The American
fighter escort had had its turn, he knew. Now it was his turn. They ran
northeast, their visored eyes alternating between squints into the sun and
quick looks at their radarscopes to pick out targets. They never looked down.
The lead MiG finally had a target and launched two missiles.

Twenty thousand feet below them, shielded from ground radar by
a pair of mountains, twelve Tomcats of the Black Aces went to afterburner,
their radars shut off as the twin-engined fighters rocketed skyward. Within
ninety seconds the pilots began to hear the growling signal that indicated
their Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles were tracking targets. Seconds later,
sixteen missiles were fired from a range of two miles.

Six Russian pilots never knew what hit them. Of the eleven
MiGs, eight were hit in a matter of seconds. The commander's luck remained
briefly as he jerked his fighter around, causing a Sidewinder to break lock and
fly into the sun, but now what could he do? He saw two Tomcats running south,
away from his remaining fighters. It was too late to organize an attack-his
wingman was gone, and the only friendly aircraft he could see was to his
north-so the colonel reefed his MiG into an eight-g turn and dove at the
American, oblivious to the warning buzz of his threat receiver. Both Sparrows
launched from the second group of Black Aces struck his wing. The MiG came
apart around him.

The Americans had no time to gloat. The mission commander
reported a second group of MiGs heading their way and the American squadrons
regrouped to meet them, forming a solid wall of twenty-four aircraft, their
radars shut down for two minutes as the MiGs raced into the cloud of jamming.
The Russian second-in-command was making a serious error. His fellow pilots
were in danger. He had to go to their rescue. One group of Tomcat volleyed off
its remaining Sparrows; the other fired Sidewinders. A total of thirty-eight
missiles closed in on eight Soviet aircraft who had no clear picture of what
they were running into. Half of them never did, blotted out of the sky by
American air-to-air missiles; three more were damaged.

The Tomcat pilots all wanted to close, but the commander
ordered them off. They were all short of fuel, and Stornoway was seven hundred
miles off. They turned east, ducking through the cloud of aluminum chaff left
by the B-52s. The Americans would claim thirty-seven kills, quite a score since
they had expected a total of only twenty-seven Russian aircraft. In fact, of
twenty-six MiGs, only five undamaged aircraft remained. A stunned air base
commander immediately began rescue operations. Soon the parachute division's
attack helicopters were flying northeast, searching for downed pilots.

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

Thirty kilometers from Alfeld to Hameln, Alekseyev thought.
An hour's drive in a tank. Elements of three divisions were making that drive
now, and since the crossing bad been achieved, they'd advanced a total of only
eighteen kilometers. This time it was the English: the tanks of the Royal Tank
Regiment and 21st Lancers had stopped his leading elements cold halfway to
Hameln and hadn't budged in eighteen hours.

There was real danger here. For a mechanized formation,
safety lay in movement. The Soviets were feeding units into the gap, but NATO
was using its air power to the utmost. The bridges on the Leine were being
destroyed almost as fast as they could be repaired. Engineers had prepared
crossing points on the riverbanks, and the Russians were able to swim their
infantry carriers across now, but the tanks couldn't swim, and every attempt to
run them across underwater-as they were supposedly equipped to do-had been a
failure. Too many units had had to be deployed to protect the breach in NATO's
lines, and too few were able to exploit it. Alekseyev had achieved a perfect
textbook breakthrough only to see that the other side had its own textbook for
containing and smashing it. Western Theater had a total of six reserve class-A
divisions to send into the fighting. After that they would have to start using
class-B units composed of reservists, with older men and equipment. There were
many of them, but they would not-could not-perform as well as the younger
soldiers. The General bridled at the necessity of committing units to battle
that would certainly take higher casualties than normal.

But he had no choice. His political masters wanted it, and
he was only the executor of political policy.

"I have to go back forward," Alekseyev told his
boss.

"Yes, but no closer than five kilometers to the front
line, Pasha. I cannot afford to lose you now."

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

The Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, looked at his own tally
sheet. Nearly all of his reserves were committed to the fighting now, and the
Russians seemed to have an endless supply of men and vehicles moving forward.
His units had no time to reorganize and redeploy. NATO faced the nightmare of
all armies: they could only react to the moves of their opponent, with almost
no chance to launch their own initiatives. So far things were holding
together-but only barely. Southeast of Hameln his map showed a British brigade.
In fact it was nothing more than a reinforced regiment composed of exhausted
men and damaged equipment. Artillery and aircraft were all that allowed him to
prevent a collapse, and even that would not be enough if his units didn't get
much more replacement equipment. More ominously, NATO was now down to two weeks
of ordnance, and the resupply coming from America had been seriously impeded by
attacks on the convoys. What could he tell his men? Reduce munitions
expenditurers-when the only thing stopping the Russians was the profligate use
of every weapon at hand?

His morning intelligence brief was starting. The chief NATO
intelligence officer was a German general who was accompanied by a Dutch major
carrying a videotape cassette, For something this important, the intel officer
knew, SACEUR wanted to see the raw data, not just the analysis. The Dutch
officer set up the machine.

A computer-generated map appeared, then units showed up. The
tape took under two minutes to display five hours of data, repeating it several
times so that the officers could discern patterns.

"General, we estimate that the Soviets are sending six
full divisions towards Alfeld. The movement you see here on the main road from
Braunschweig is the first of them. The others come from their theater reserve,
and these two coming south are reserve formations from their northern army
group."

"So you think that they are making this their main
point of attack?" SACEUR asked.

"Ja." The German General nodded. "The
Schwerpunkt is here."

SACEUR frowned. The rational thing to do would be to
withdraw behind the river Weser to shorten his defensive line and reorganize
his forces. But that would mean abandoning Hannover. The Germans would never
accept that. Their own national strategy of defending each home and field had
cost the Russians dear-and stretched NATO forces to the breaking point.
Politically they would never accept such a strategic withdrawal. West German
units would fight on alone if they had to: he could see it clearly enough in
the eyes of his own intelligence chief. And if somebody invaded New Hampshire,
he admitted to himself, would I withdraw into Pennsylvania?

An hour later, half of the existing NATO reserves were
heading east from Osnabruck to Hameln. The battle for Germany would be won or
lost on the right bank of the Weser.

STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND

The returning Tomcats got little rest. As soon as they
landed, the British and American ground crewmen refueled and rearmed the
fighters. The Russians were raiding the British northern airfields more
carefully now. The American airborne radar aircraft supporting the British
Nimrods and Shackletons were making life hard on the twin-engine Blinder
bombers flying out of Andoya in Norway. Royal Air Force Tornados flew combat
air-patrol missions two hundred miles offshore while the American pilots
rested, a few enterprising crew chiefs painted red stars underneath the
cockpits, and intelligence officers evaluated gunsight videotapes and
recordings of Soviet missile radars.

"Looks like we hurt them," Toland judged. The kill
claims were too high, but with fighter pilots they always were.

"Bet your ass!" replied the commander of the Jolly
Rogers. The Navy commander chewed on a cigar. He claimed personal credit for a
pair of MiGs. "Question is, will they reinforce? It worked once, but they
won't fall for that gag again. You tell me, Toland: can they replace what we
culled out?"

"I don't think so. The MiG-29 is about the only fighter
they can stage out that far. The rest of those are in Germany, and they've
taken a beating there, too. If the Russians decided to cut loose some MiG-31s,
I think they can reach that far, but I don't see them releasing their prime
bomber-interceptor for this kind of mission."

The Jolly Rogers's skipper nodded agreement. "Okay.
Next step then is we put a combat air patrol close to Iceland and start beating
on those Backfire raids for-real."

"They might just come looking for us, too," Toland
warned. "They have to know now what we did, and where we did it
from." The commander of VF-41 looked out the window. One of his Tomcats sat
half a mile away between two piles of sandbags. Four missiles were visible on
the airframe. He fingered the Ace of Spades emblem on his chest and turned
back.

"Good. If they want to fight us on our turf, in our
radar cover, fine."

ALFELD, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

Alekseyev left his helicopter on the outskirts of the town
and climbed into yet another BMP infantry carrier. Two ribbon bridges were
operating. Fragments of at least five others littered the riverbanks, along
with countless burned-out tanks and trucks. The commander of 20th Tanks rode
with them.

"NATO air attacks are murderous," General
Beregovoy said. "I've never seen anything like it. Even with our SAMs they
close in. We get our share, but it's not enough, and things only get worse as
we approach the front."

"What progress have you made today?"

"The main opposition at the moment is English. At least
a brigade of tanks. We've pushed them back two kilometers since dawn."

"There's supposed to be a Belgian force out there
also," Sergetov pointed out.

"They've disappeared. We don't know where they are-and,
yes, that worries me also. I've placed one of the new divisions on our left
flank to guard against counterattack. The other will join 20th Tanks when we
resume the attack this afternoon."

"Strength?" Alekseyev asked.

"The Twentieth is down to ninety working tanks. Maybe
less," the General said. "That number is four hours old. Our infantry
has done better, but the division is now under fifty-percent nominal
strength."

Their vehicle angled down onto the floating ribbon bridge.
Each boxlike segment was bolted to two others, and the vehicle bobbed up and
down like a small boat in the surf as they drove across the Leine. All three
officers controlled their feelings, but none liked being locked inside a steel
box over the water. The BMP infantry assault vehicle was technically
amphibious, but many had sunk without warning and it was rare for anyone to
escape when that happened. They could hear distant artillery fire. Air attacks
at Alfeld happened without warning. It took just over a minute to complete the
crossing.

"In case you're curious, that bridge we just crossed
holds the record for the longest survival." He checked his watch.
"Seven hours."

"What of that major you requested the gold star
for?" Alekseyev asked.

"He was wounded in an air attack. He'll live."

"Give him this. Perhaps it will speed his
recovery." Alekseyev reached into a pocket and came out with a
five-pointed gold star attached to a bloodred ribbon. He handed it to the
General. That major of engineers was now a Hero of the Soviet Union.

USS CHICAGO

All the boats slowed on reaching the icepack. McCafferty
inspected it through his periscope, a thin white line less than two miles away.
There was nothing else visible. Few ships lingered so near the ice, and no
aircraft were visible.

Sonar reported a gratifying amount of noise. The serrated
fringe of the pack was composed of thousands of individual floes, slabs of ice
a few feet thick, ranging in size from a few square feet to several acres.
Every year they came loose with the spring thaw and drifted at random until the
freeze began again. While loose in the brief arctic summer, they drifted at
random, grinding against one another in a process that destroyed some of the
smaller floes, which added to the never-ending groans and pops of the solid ice
that went across the top of the pole all the way to the North Slope of Alaska.

"What's that?" McCafferty adjusted the scope
slightly, turning the handle to the twelve-power setting. He'd glimpsed what
might have been a periscope for the merest instant. It was gone now
and-reappeared: the swordlike dorsal fin of a male killer whale. A puff of
spray marked its breath, condensing to vapor in the polar air, then a few more
whales appeared. What was it they called a family of orcas? A school-no, a pod.
Up here hunting seals, probably. He wondered if the omen was good or bad.
Orcinus orca was the scientific name: Bringer of Death.

"Sonar, do you have anything at one-three-nine?"

"Conn, we have eleven killer whales on that bearing. I
make it three males, six females, and two adolescents. Pretty close in, I
think. Bearing is changing slowly." The sonar chief responded as if
insulted. There were standing orders not to report "biologicals"
unless specifically ordered otherwise.

"Very well." McCafferty had to grin in spite of
himself.

The other submarines of Operation Doolittle were strung out
on a line more than ten miles across. One by one they went deep and headed
under the pack. An hour later the freight train headed east, five miles inside
the nominal edge of the pack. Twelve thousand feet below them was the floor of
the Barents Abyssal Plain.

ICELAND

"Haven't seen a chopper all day," Sergeant Smith
observed.

Conversation, Edwards noted, made a nice distraction from
the fact that they were eating raw fish. He checked his watch. It was time to
call in again. It had gotten so that he could assemble the radio antenna in his
sleep.

"Doghouse, this is Beagle, and things could be a lot better,
over."

"Beagle, we read you. Where are you now?"

"About forty-six kilometers from our objective,"
Edwards replied. He gave them map coordinates. There was one road yet to cross,
and only one more row of hills, according to the map. "Nothing much to report
except we have not seen any choppers today. In fact we haven't seen any
aircraft at all." Edwards looked up. The sky was pretty clear, too.
Usually they spotted fighters once or twice a day as they patrolled overhead.

"Roger that, Beagle. Be advised that the Navy sent some
fighters over and beat them up pretty good around dawn."

"All right! We haven't seen any Russians since the
chopper looked us over." In Scotland his controller shuddered at that.
Edwards went on, "We're down to eating fish we catch, but the fishing's
pretty good."

"How's your lady friend?"

Mike had to smile at that one. "She's not holding us
back, if that's what you mean. Anything else?"

"Negative."

"Okay, we'll be back if we see anything. Out."
Edwards flipped the power switch on the radio pack. "Our friends say the
Navy chewed up some Russian fighters today."

"Bout time," Smith said. He was down to his last
five cigarettes and stared at one now, deciding whether or not to reduce his
supply to four. As Edwards watched, he opened his lighter to poison himself
again.

"We go to Hvammsfjordur?" Vigdis asked.
"Why?"

"Somebody wants to know what's there," Edwards
said. He unfolded the tactical map. It showed the entrance to the bay to be
crammed with rocks. It took him a moment to realize that while the land
elevations were in meters, the depth curves on the map were in fathoms . . .

KEFLAVIK

"How many?"

The fighter regiment commander was lowered gently from the
helicopter, his arm tied across his chest. Ejecting from his disintegrating aircraft,
the colonel had dislocated his shoulder, and then his parachute had landed him
on a mountainside, giving him a sprained ankle plus several facial cuts. It had
taken eleven hours to find him. On the whole, the colonel considered himself
lucky for a fool who had allowed his command to be ambushed by a superior
force.

"Five aircraft are mission capable," he was told.
"Of the damaged ones, we can repair two."

The colonel swore, angered in spite of the morphine that
coursed through his veins. "My men?"

"We've found six, including you. Two are uninjured and
can still fly. The rest are in the hospital."

Another helicopter landed close by. The paratroop general
got out and came over.

"Good to see you alive."

"Thank you, Comrade General. You are continuing the
search?"

"Yes. I have detailed two helicopters to the task. What
happened?"

"The Americans staged a raid with heavy bombers. We
never saw them, but we could tell from the jamming. They had fighters mixed in
with them. The bombers fled when we approached." The Air Force colonel
tried to put the best face on it, and the General did not press him. This was
an exposed post, and such things were expected. The MiGs could hardly have
ignored the American raid. There was no point in punishing this man.

The General had already radioed for more fighters, though he
didn't expect any. The plan said they would not be necessary, but the plan had
also said his division had to hold the island unsupported for only two weeks.
By that time Germany was supposed to be fully defeated, and the land war in
Europe mainly over. He received reports from the front that were mere
embellishments of the news on Radio Moscow. The Red Army was driving on the
Rhein-and they'd been driving on the Rhein since the first day of the damned
war! The names of the cities under daily attack were strangely left out. His
intelligence chief was risking his life by listening in on Western radio
broadcasts-the KGB regarded it as a disloyal act-in order to get an idea of how
the fighting was going. If Western reports were true-he didn't really believe
them either-the campaign in Germany was a bloody mess. Until that was over, he
was vulnerable.

Would NATO try to invade? His operations officer said it was
impossible unless the Americans were able to destroy the long-range bombers
flying out of Kirovsk first, and the whole point of seizing Iceland had been to
prevent the American carriers from moving to a position from which they could
do just that. On paper, then, the General expected only increased air attacks,
and he had surface-to-air missiles to defend against those. But he hadn't become
a divisional commander by merely shuffling papers.

NORTH ATLANTIC

"What the hell happened?" The captain looked up to
see a tube stuck in his arm. The last thing he remembered was being on the
bridge halfway through the afternoon watch. Now the porthole on the starboard
side of his stateroom was covered. Darkened ship: it was night outside.

"You passed out, Captain," the chief hospital
corpsman said. "Don't-"

The captain tried to rise. His head made it about eighteen
inches off the pillow when his strength gave way.

"You have to rest. You got internal bleeding, skipper.
You threw up blood last night. I think it's a perforated ulcer. You scared the
hell outa me last night. Why didn't you come see me?" The chief held up a
bottle of Maalox tablets. People gotta be so damned smart about everything.
"Your blood pressure's down twenty points and you durned near went into
shock on me. This ain't no bellyache you got, Captain. You might have to have
surgery. There's a helo on the way out now to medevac you to the beach."

"I can't leave the ship,

"Doc's orders, Captain. If you die on me I lose my
perfect record. I'm sorry, sir, but unless you get real medical attention real
quick, you could be in real trouble. You're heading for the beach."

32 - New Names, New Faces

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

"Good morning, Ed." Commander, Naval Surface
Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet was seated behind a desk covered with dispatches
that seemed to be organized into piles. Morning-half an hour after midnight.
Morris hadn't left Norfolk since arriving at dawn on the previous day. If he
went home, he'd have to sleep again ...

"Morning, sir. What can I do for you?" Morris
didn't want to sit down.

"You want to go back out?" COMNAVSURFLANT asked
bluntly.

"Who with?"

"Reuben James's skipper came down with a bleeding
ulcer. They flew him in this morning. She arrives in another hour with the
'phibs from PACFLT. I'm assigning her to convoy duty. We have a big one
assembling in New York harbor. Eighty ships, all big, all fast, loaded with
heavy equipment for Germany. It sails in four days with a heavy U.S./ U.K.
escort, plus carrier support. Reuben James will be in port long enough to
refuel and reprovision. She sails for New York this evening in company with HMS
Battleaxe. If you're up to it, I want you to take her."

The Vice Admiral eyed Morris closely. "She's yours if
you want her. You up to it?"

"My personal gear's still aboard Pharris." Morris
temporized. Did he really want to go back out?

"Packed up and on the way down, Ed."

There were plenty of men who could do it, Morris thought.
The operations staff he'd been working with since he arrived in Norfolk was
full of people who'd leap at this. Go back to sea and put it on the line
again-or drive back every night to an empty home and nightmares?

"If you want me, I'll take her."

FOLZIEHAUSEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

The northern horizon flashed with artillery fire that
backlit the trees. The sky was never free of the thunder. The drive to the
divisional command post was a mere fifteen kilometers from Alfeld. Three
vicious air attacks and twenty separate artillery barrages had converted the
morning drive into a nightmare lasting into dusk and beyond.

The forward headquarters of 20th Tanks was now the command
post for the entire drive toward Hameln. Lieutenant General Beregovoy, who had
relieved Alekseyev, now wore the hats of commander 20th Tanks and operational
maneuver group commander The OMG concept had been one of the most precious
Soviet pre-war ideas. The "daring thrust" would open a corridor into
the enemy's rear, and the operational-maneuver group would exploit it, racing
into the corridor to seize important economic or political targets. Alekseyev
stood with his back against an armored vehicle, looking north at the flashing
outline of a forest. Another thing that hasn't gone according to plan, he
thought. As if we expected NATO to cooperate with our plans!

There was a yellow flash overhead. Alekseyev blinked his
eyes clear and watched the fireball turn to a comet that fell to the earth,
landing several kilometers away. Ours or theirs? he wondered. Another promising
young life snuffed out by a missile. Now we kill our young men with robots. Who
said mankind was not using his technology to worthwhile ends?

He had prepared his whole life for this. Four years in
officer school. The difficult initiation as a junior officer, promotion to
command a company. Three more years at Frunze Military Academy in Moscow after
he'd been recognized as a rising star. Then command of a battalion. Back to
Moscow to the Voroshilov Academy of the General Staff. Top man in his class.
Command of a regiment, then a division. All for this?

A field hospital was in the trees five hundred meters away,
and the wind carried the shrieks of the wounded to the command post. Not like
that in the movies he'd watched as a child-and still watched. The wounded were
supposed to suffer in quiet, determined dignity, puffing on cigarettes proffered
by the kindly, hardworking medics, waiting their turn for the courageous,
hardworking surgeons and the pretty, dedicated nurses. A fucking lie, all of it
a monstrous fucking lie, he told himself The profession for which he had
prepared his life was organized murder. He sent boys with pimples on their
faces into a landscape rained on with steel and watered with blood. The burns
were the worst. The tank crews who escaped from their brewed-up vehicles with
their clothes alight-they never stopped screaming. Those killed by shock or the
pistol of a merciful officer were only replaced by more. The lucky ones who
reached the casualty-clearing stations found medics too busy to offer
cigarettes, and doctors who were dropping from fatigue.

His brilliant tactical success at Alfeld had led nowhere
yet, and he wondered in his soul if it ever would, if he had cast young lives
away for nothing more than words in books written by men who did their best to
forget the horrors they had inflicted and endured.

Second thoughts now, Pasha? he asked himself. And what of
those four colonels you had shot? Rather late to discover a conscience, isn't
it? But now it wasn't a map-table game or an exercise at Shpola, nor a handful
of routine training accidents. It was one thing for a company commander to see
all this after following orders from above. It was another for the man who gave
the orders to view his handiwork.

"There is nothing so terrible as a battle won-except a
battle lost." Alekseyev remembered the quote from Wellington's commentary
on Waterloo, one of the two million books in the Frunze library. Certainly not
something written by a Russian general. Why had he ever been allowed to read
that? If soldiers read more of those remarks and less of glory, then what would
they do when their political masters ordered them to march? Now there, the
General told himself, there is a radical idea . . . He urinated against a tree
and walked back towards the command post.

He found Beregovoy leaning over the map. A good man, and an
effective soldier, Alekseyev knew, what did he think of all this?

"Comrade, that Belgian brigade just reappeared. It's
attacking our left flank. They caught two regiments moving into new positions.
We have a problem here."

Alekseyev strode to Beregovoy's side and surveyed the
available units. NATO still was not cooperating. The attack had come at the
junction of two divisions, one worn out, the other fresh but unblooded. A
lieutenant moved some counters. The Soviet regiments were pulling back.

"Keep the reserve regiment in place," Alekseyev
ordered. "Have this one move northwest. We'll try to catch the Belgians'
flank as they approach this road junction." Professionalism dies hard in
the soldier.

ICELAND

"Well, there it is." Edwards handed his binoculars
to Sergeant Smith. Hvammsfjordur was still miles away. Their first sight of it
came from the top of a two-thousand-foot hill. A sparkling river below them fed
into the fjord, more than ten miles away. Everyone kept low, afraid to be
skylined with the low sun behind them. Edwards broke out his radio.

"Doghouse, this is Beagle. The objective is in
sight." This was a particularly dumb thing to say, Edwards knew.
Hvammsfjordur was almost thirty miles long, about ten miles across at its
widest point.

The man in Scotland was impressed. Edwards's party had
covered fifteen kilometers in the past ten hours.

"What kind of shape are you in?"

"If you want us to go any farther, fella, this radio
might malfunction."

"Roger, copy that." The major tried not to laugh.
"Where exactly are you?"

"About five miles east of Hill 578. Now that we're
here, maybe you might tell us why," Edwards suggested.

"If you see any, repeat any Russian activity, we want
to know about it immediately. One guy taking a leak against a rock, we want to
know about it. Do you copy that?"

"Roger. You want the size in inches. No Russkies in
view yet. Some ruins to our left, and a farm a ways downriver from us. Nothing
moving at either place. Any particular location you want us?"

"We're working on that. Sit tight for the moment. Find
a nice place to hide and stay put. What's your food situation?"

"We have enough fish to last out the day, and I can see
a lake where we might get some more. Remember when you said you'd have some
pizzas sent out, Doghouse? Right now I'd kill for one. Pepperoni and
onions."

"Fish is good for you. Beagle, your signal strength is
down. You want to start thinking about conserving your batteries. Anything else
to report?"

"Negative. We'll be back if we see anything. Out."
Edwards slapped his hand down on the power switch. "People, we are
home!"

"That's nice, skipper." Smith laughed.
"Where's home?"

"Budhardalur is other side that mountain," Vigdis
offered. "My Uncle Helgi live there."

We could probably get a decent meal there, Edwards told
himself. Maybe some lamb, a few beers or something stronger, and a bed . . . a
real, soft bed with sheets and the down quilts they use here. A bath, hot water
to shave. Toothpaste. Edwards could smell every part of himself They tried to
wash in the streams when they could, but mostly they couldn't. I smell like a
goat, Edwards thought. Whatever a goat smells like. But we didn't walk this far
to do something as stupid as that.

"Sarge, let's secure this place."

"You got it, skipper. Rodgers, sack out. Garcia, you
and me have the first watch. Four hours. You take that little knoll over there.
I'll head over to the right." Smith stood and looked down at Edwards.
"Good idea that we all get some rest while we can, skipper."

"Sounds great to me. You see anything important, give
me a kick." Smith nodded and moved about a hundred yards.

Rodgers was already half asleep, his head resting on his
folded jacket. The private's rifle was cradled on his chest.

"We stay here?" Vigdis asked.

"I'd sure like to go see your uncle, but there might be
Russians in that town. How do you feel?"

"Tired."

"Tired as us?" he asked with a grin.

"Yes, tired as you," she admitted. Vigdis lay back
next to Edwards. She was filthy. Her woolen sweater was torn in several places,
and her boots scuffed beyond repair. "What will happen to us now?"

"I don't know. They wanted us here for a reason,
though."

"But they don't tell you reason!" she objected.

Now there's an intelligent observation, Edwards thought.

"They tell you and you not tell us?" Vigdis asked.

"No, you know as much as I do."

"Michael, why all this happen? Why do the Russians come
here?"

"I don't know."

"But you are officer. You must know." Vigdis
propped herself up on her elbows. She seemed genuinely astonished. Edwards
smiled. He couldn't blame her for being confused. Iceland's only armed force
was its police. A real-to-life Peaceable Kingdom, the country had no military
to speak of A few small armed ships for fishery protection and the police were
all the country had ever needed to maintain security. This war had ruined their
perfect record. For a thousand years, without an army or a navy, Iceland had
never been attacked. It had only happened now because they were in the way. He
wondered if that would have happened if NATO hadn't built its base at Keflavik.
Of course not! You idiot, you've seen what wonderful folks the Russians are!
NATO base or not, Iceland was in their way. But why the hell had all this
happened?

"Vigdis, I'm a meteorologist-a weatherman, I predict
the weather for the Air Force." That only made her more confused.

"Not soldier? Not, ah, Marine soldier?"

Mike shook his head. "I'm an officer in the U.S. Air
Force, yes, but I am not really a soldier like the sergeant. I have a different
job."

"But you save my life. You are soldier."

"Yeah, I suppose I am-by accident."

"When this all over, what will you do?" Her eyes
held a great deal of interest now.

"One thing at a time." He was thinking in terms of
hours, not days or weeks. If we do survive, then what? Put that one aside.
First comes survival You think about "after the war," and there won't
be any. "I'm too tired to think about that. Let's get some sleep."

She fought it. He knew that she wanted to know things he
hadn't consciously considered, but she was more fatigued than she'd admitted,
and ten minutes later she was asleep. She snored. Mike hadn't noticed before.
This was no china doll. She had strengths and weaknesses, good points and bad.
She had the face of an angel, but she'd gotten herself pregnant-so what!
Edwards thought. She's braver than she's beautiful. She saved my life when that
chopper came in on us. A man could do far worse.

Edwards commanded himself to lie down and sleep. He couldn't
think about this. First he had to survive.

SCOTLAND

"If the area checks out?" the major asked. He had
never really expected Edwards and his party to make it this far, not with eight
thousand Russian troops on the island. Every time he thought about those five
people trekking over bare, rocky ground and Soviet helicopters circling
overhead, his skin crawled.

"Around midnight, I think," the man from Special
Operations Executive said. You could see the smile crinkling the skin around
his eyepatch. "You chaps had better decorate this young man. I've been in
his boots myself You cannot imagine how difficult it is to do what these people
have done. And having a bloody Hind helicopter sit right on top of them! I've
always said it's the quiet little bastards that you have to watch out
for."

"In any case, it's time we got some professionals in to
back them up," pronounced the captain of Royal Marines.

"Make sure they take in some food," suggested the
USAF major.

LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, VIRGINIA

"So, what's the problem?" Nakamura asked.

"There are irregularities in some of the rocket motor
casings," the engineer explained.

"'Irregularities, meaning they go boom?"

"Possibly," the engineer admitted.

"Super," said Major Nakamura. "I'm supposed
to carry that monster seventeen miles straight the hell up and then find out
who goes into orbit, me or it!"

"When this sort of rocket explodes, it doesn't do much.
It just breaks into a couple of pieces that burn out by themselves."

"I imagine from seventeen miles off it doesn't look
like much-what about when the sucker ignites twenty feet from my F-15?" A
long way to skydive, Buns thought.

"I'm sorry, Major. This rocket motor is nearly ten
years old. Nobody checked our spec sheet on proper storage after it was mated
with the ASAT warhead. We've checked it out with X rays and ultrasound. I think
it's okay, but I might be wrong," the man from Lockheed said. Of the six
remaining ASAT missiles, three had been decertified by the man for cracks in
the solid-fuel propellant. The other three were question marks. "You want
the truth or you want a song and dance?"

"You gotta fly it, Major," the deputy commander of
Tactical Air Command said. "It's your decision."

"Can we rig it so the bird doesn't ignite until I'm
clear?"

"How long will you need?" the engineer asked. Buns
thought about her speed and maneuverability at that altitude.

"Say ten or fifteen seconds."

"I'll have to make a small change in the programming
software, but that shouldn't be much of a problem. We'll have to make sure that
the missile will retain enough forward velocity to keep its launch attitude,
though. You sure that's enough time?"

"No. We'll have to check that out on the simulator,
too. How long we got?"

"Minimum two days, maximum six days. Depends on the
Navy," replied the General.

"Great."

STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND

"Here's some good news," Toland announced.
"An Air Force F-15 Eagle fighter was flying over a fast convoy north of
the Azores. Two Bears came looking for the ships and the Eagle got 'em both.
That makes three in the past four days. The Backfire raid appears to have
aborted."

"What's their position?" the group captain asked.

Toland ran his hand along the chart, checking latitude and
longitude against the numbers on the dispatch form. "Looks like right
about here, and that datum is twenty minutes old."

"That puts them over Iceland in just under two
hours."

"What about tankers?" the Navy fighter commander
asked.

"Not on such short notice."

"We can stretch that far with two fighters, using
another two for buddy stores, but it only gives them about twenty minutes on
station, under five on burner, and a ten-minute reserve when they get back
here." The fighter boss whistled. "Close. Too close. We have to wave
off on this."

A phone rang. The British base commander grabbed.

"Group Captain Mallory. Yes . . . very well,
scramble." He hung up. Klaxons went off at the ready shack half a mile
away. Fighter pilots raced to their aircraft. "Ivan's settled the argument
in any case, Commander. Your radar aircraft report heavy jamming activity
inbound from the north."

The commander raced out the door and jumped into a jeep.

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

The drive from SACLANT headquarters took ten minutes. The
Marines at the main gate were checking everyone and everything carefully, even
a Chevy with a three-star flag. They drove to the waterfront amid an unending
flurry of activity. Trains rolled down the tracks set in the streets, repair
shops and testing facilities worked around the clock. Even the McDonald's on
the road immediately outside was working a twenty-four-hour day, feeding
hamburgers and fries to the men who took a few minutes for nourishment. For
sailors spending a day or so on land it was an important, if seemingly trivial,
touchstone. The car turned right as it reached the docks, past the submarine
piers to the ones that held destroyers.

"She's brand new, only a month in commission, just
about long enough to calibrate the electronics, and they must have shaved some
time on that," the Admiral said. "Captain Wilkens did continuous
workups on the transit from San Diego, but nothing with helicopters yet. PACFLT
kept hers, and I can't give you a regular helo complement either. All we have
left is one Seahawk-F variant, a prototype helo they were evaluating down at
Jacksonville."

"The one with the dipping sonar?" Ed Morris asked.
"I can live with that. How about a driver who knows how to use it?"

"It's covered. Lieutenant Commander O'Malley. We pulled
him out of a training billet at Jax."

"I've heard the name. He was doing systems
qualifications on Moosbrugger when I was tactical action officer on John
Rodgers. Yeah, he knows the job."

"Have to drop you off here. I'll be back in an hour,
after I have a look at what's left of the Kidd."

Reuben James. Her raked clipper bow marked with hull number
57 hung over the dock like a guillotine blade. His weariness momentarily
forgotten, Morris stepped out of the Chevy to examine his new command with all
the quiet enthusiasm of a man with his newborn child.

He'd seen FFG-7-class frigates, but never been aboard one.
Her severe hull lines reminded him of a Cigarette racing yacht. Six five-inch
mooring lines secured her to the pier, but the sleek form already seemed to be
straining at them. At only 3900 tons full load, not a large ship but manifestly
a fast one to go in harm's way.

Her superstructure was an aesthetic embarrassment, with all
the grace of a brick garage, topped with antenna whips and radar masts that
looked like they had been built by a child's erector set, but Morris saw the
functional simplicity of the design. The frigate's forty missiles were tucked
away in circular racks forward. Her boxy after deckhouse contained enough room
for a pair of deadly ASW helicopters. Her hull was sleek because speed required
it. Her superstructure was boxy because it had to be. This was a warship, and
whatever beauty Reuben James might have had was accidental.

Sailors wearing blue shirts and jeans moved rapidly across
three gangways, bringing supplies aboard for an immediate sailing. Morris
walked briskly to the after gangway. A Marine guard saluted him at the foot of
the brow and an officer on the frigate's deck frantically ordered preparations
to receive his new CO. The ship's bell was struck four times, and Commander Ed
Morris assumed his new identity.

"Reuben James, arriving."

Morris saluted the colors, then the officer of the deck.

"Sir, we didn't expect you for another-" the
lieutenant blurted.

"How's the work going?" Morris cut him off.

"Two more hours, tops, sir."

"Fine." Morris smiled. "We can worry about
the Mickey Mouse later. Get back to work, Mister-"

"Lyles, sir. Ship control officer."

And what the hell is that? Morris wondered. "Okay, Mr.
Lyles. Where's the XO?"

"Right here, skipper." The executive officer had
grease on his shirt and a smudge on his cheek. "I was in the generator
room. Pardon the way I look."

"What kind of shape are we in?"

"It'll do. Full load of fuel and weapons. The tail's
fully calibrated-"

"How'd you do that so fast?"

"It wasn't easy, sir, but we got it done. How's Captain
Wilkens?"

"The docs say he'll be all right, but-well, he's out of
the business for a while. I'm Ed Morris." Captain and executive officer
shook hands.

"Frank Ernst. First time I've operated in the Atlantic
Fleet." The lieutenant commander smiled crookedly. "Picked a great
time for it.

Anyway, we're in good shape, skipper. Everything works. Our
helo pilot's up in the Combat Information Center with the tactical guys. We got
Jerry the Hammer. I played ball with him at Annapolis, he's good people. We got
three real good chiefs. One's a qualified officer of the deck. The crew's on
the young side, but I'd say we're about as ready as you could ask. Ready to sail
in two, three hours, tops. Where's your personal gear, sir?"

"It ought to be here in half an hour. What was the
problem below?"

"No sweat. An oil line let go on number-three diesel
generator. Yard goof, wasn't welded right. It's fixed. You'll love the engine
room, skipper. On builder's trials in five-foot seas we topped out at
thirty-one-and-a-half knots." Ernst raised his eyebrows. "Fast
enough?"

"And the stabilizers?" Morris asked.

"They work just fine, skipper."

"What about the ASW troops?"

"Let's meet 'em."

Morris followed his XO into the superstructure. They
proceeded forward between the two helicopter hangars, then to the left past
officers country and up a ladder. The Combat Information Center was located one
level below and just aft of the bridge, adjoining the commanding officer's
stateroom. Dark as a cave, it was newer than Pharris's and larger, but no less
crammed. Twenty or more people were at work running a simulation.

"No, Goddammit!, howled a loud voice. "You have to
react faster. This here's a Victor, and he ain't gonna wait for you to make up
your damn mind!"

"Attention on deck! Captain in Combat," called
Ernst.

"As you were," called Morris. "Who's that
loud sunuvabitch?"

A barrel-chested man emerged from the shadows. His eyes were
surrounded by crinkles from looking into too many low suns. So this was Jerry
the Hammer O'Malley. He knew him only by a crackling voice on a UHF radio, and
by his reputation as a sub-hunter who cared more for his trade than promotion
boards.

"I guess you mean me, Captain. O'Malley. I'm supposed
to drive your Seahawk-Foxtrot."

"You're right about the Victor. One of those bastards
blew my first ship near in half."

"Sorry to hear that, but you oughta know that Ivan's
putting his best skippers in the Victors. She handles better than anything else
they got, and that rewards a smart driver. So you were up against the varsity.
Did you have him outside?"

Morris shook his head. "We were late picking him up,
just coming off a sprint, and acoustical conditions weren't all that great, but
we detected him, he couldn't have been more than five miles out. We had the
helo after him, just about had him localized, then he broke contact neat as you
please and got inside on us."

"Yeah, the Victor's good at that. Pump-fake, I call it.
He starts going one way, then turns hard the other, leaves a knuckle in the
water, and probably a noisemaker, too, right in the middle of it. Then he dives
down under the layer and makes a quick sprint in. They've been refining that
tactic for the past few years, and we've had trouble programming a reliable
counter for it. You need a sharp crew in the helo, and you need good teamwork
with these guys here."

"Unless you read my report, my friend, you must be a
mind reader."

"Right, Captain. But all the minds I read think in
Russian. The pump-fake's what the Victor is best at, and you have to pay
attention, what with his ability to accelerate and turn so quick. What I've
been trying to teach people is when he shows turn to port, you start thinkin'
he's really going to starboard, and you slide over maybe two thousand yards and
wait a minute or two, then you hammer the bastard hard and pickle off the fish
before he can react."

"And if you're wrong?"

"Then you're wrong, skipper. Mostly, though, Ivan's
predictable--if you think like a submariner and you look at his tactical
situation instead of your own. You can't keep him from running away, but his
mission is to close on the target, and you can make life real hard for him if
he does."

Morris looked O'Malley hard in the eyes. He didn't like
having the loss of his first command analyzed so glibly. But there was no time
for these thoughts. O'Malley was a pro, and if there was a man to handle
another Victor, this might be the one. "You all ready?"

"The bird is at the air station. We'll join up after
you clear the capes. I wanted to talk things over with the ASW team while we
had the time. We're gonna play outside ASW picket?"

"Probably. With a towed-array, it doesn't figure that
we're going to be in close. And we might be teamed with a Brit for the convoy
mission."

"Fair enough. If you want my opinion, we have a pretty
solid ASW team here. We might just give the bad guys a hard time. Weren't you
on Rodgers a few years back?"

"When you were working with the Moose We worked together
twice, but never met. I was 'X-Ray Mike' when we exercised against Skate"

"I thought I remembered you." O'Malley came closer
and dropped his voice. "How bad is it out there?"

"Bad enough. We lost the G-I-UK line. We're getting
some pretty good SURTASS info, but you can bet Ivan's going to be gunning for
those tuna boats pretty soon. Between the air threat and the sub threat-I don't
know." His face showed more than his voice did. Close friends dead or
missing. His own first command blown in half. Morris was tired in a way that
sleep alone would not cure.

O'Malley nodded. "Skipper, we got us a shiny new
frigate, a great new helo, and a tail. We can hold our end up."

"Well, we'll have a shot soon enough. We sail for New
York in two hours and take a convoy out on Wednesday."

"Alone?" O'Malley asked.

"No, we'll have Brit company for the New York run, HMS
Battleaxe. The orders haven't been confirmed yet, but it looks like we'll be
working together all the way across."

"That'll be useful," Ernst agreed. "Come on
aft, skipper, I'll show you what we're up to." The sonar room was aft of
CIC, closed off by a curtain. Here real lighting was on, as opposed to the
darkened, red-light world of Combat.

"Jeez, nobody ever tells me anything!" growled a
young lieutenant commander. "Good morning, Captain. I'm Lenner, combat
systems officer."

"How come you're not at your scope?"

"We froze the game, skipper, and I wanted to check out
the display on playback."

"I brought the game tape myself," O'Malley
explained. "This is the track of a Victor-III that faked out one of our
carriers in the eastern Med last year. See here? That's the pump-fake. You'll
notice that the contact fades out, then brightens up. That's the noisemaker
inside the knuckle. At this point he ducked under the layer and sprinted inside
the screen. Would've hit the carrier, too, because they didn't get him for
another ten minutes. That"-he jammed his finger at the display-"is what
you look for. This tells you you're up against a driver who knows his stuff,
and he's out for your ass." Morris examined the screen closely enough to
recognize the pattern. He'd seen it once before.

"What if they use the maneuver to break clear?"
Lenner asked.

"Because if they can break contact, why not break
contact towards the target?" Morris asked quietly, noting that he had a
very young combat systems officer.

"That's right, skipper." O'Malley nodded ruefully.
"Like I said, this is a standard tactic for them, and it rewards a sharp
driver. The aggressive ones will always bore in. The ones who break off-that's
effectively a kill. We have to reacquire, but so do they. With a twenty-knot
speed of advance, once we get past them, they have to play catch-up. That means
making noise. The guy who runs away probably won't run the risk, or if he does,
he'll do it badly and we'll get him. No, this tactic is for the guy who really
wants to get in close. Question is, how many of their skippers are that
aggressive?"

"Enough." Morris looked away for a moment.
"How's the helicopter complement?"

"Only one flight crew for the bird. My copilot's pretty
green, but our onboard systems operator's a first-class petty officer who's
been around the block a few times. The maintenance guys are a pickup bunch,
mostly from the readiness group at Jax. I've talked to them, they should do
just fine."

"We got berths for them all?" Morris asked.

Ernst shook his head. "Not hardly. We're packed pretty
tight."

"O'Malley, is your copilot deck-qualified?"

"Not on a frigate. I am-hell, I did some of the first
systems trials back in '78. We'll have to do workups on the way to New York,
both day and night to get my ensign in the groove. Scratch team, skipper. The
bird doesn't even belong to an operational squadron."

"You sounded confident a minute ago," Morris
objected.

"I am fairly confident," O'Malley said. "My
people know how to use the tools they got. They're sharp kids. They'll learn
fast. And we even get to make up our own call signs." A wide grin. Certain
things are important to aviators. There was one other unspoken message: when
O'Malley referred to the aviation department as "my people," he meant
that he didn't want any interference in how he ran his shop. Morris ignored it.
He didn't want an argument, not now.

"Okay, XO, let's look around. O'Malley, I expect we'll
rendezvous off the capes."

"The helo's ready to launch right now, Captain. We'll
be there when you want us."

Morris nodded and went forward. The captain's personal
ladder to the bridge was a bare three feet from the CIC door, and his own. He
trotted up-or tried to, his legs rubbery with exhaustion.

"Captain on the bridge!" a petty officer
announced.

Morris was not impressed. He was appalled to see that the
ship's "wheel" was only a brass dial about the size of a telephone's.
The helmsman actually had a seat, offset from the centerline, and to his right
was a clear plastic box containing the direct-control throttle to the ship's
jet-turbine engines. A metal rod suspended from the overhead ran completely
from one side of the pilothouse to the other at a height that allowed it to be
grabbed easily in heavy seas, and eloquent comment on this ship's stability.

"Have you served on a 'fig' before, sir?" the XO
asked.

"Never been aboard one," Morris answered. The
heads of the four men on bridge watch each turned a hair at that. "I know
the weapons systems; I was part of the design team at NAVSEA back a few years
ago, and I know more or less how she handles."

"She handles, sir. Like a sports car," Ernst
assured him. "You'll especially like the way we can turn the engines off,
drift as quiet as a log, then be up to thirty knots in two minutes flat."

"How quickly can we get under way?"

"Ten minutes from your say-so, Captain. The engine lube
oil is already warmed up. There's a harbor tug standing by to assist us away
from the dock."

"NAVSURFLANT, arriving," boomed the announcing
system. Two minutes later, the Admiral appeared in the pilothouse.

"I have a man bringing your gear up. What do you
think?"

"XO, will you see to the provisioning?" Morris
said to Ernst, then, "Shall we discover my stateroom together,
Admiral?"

A steward was waiting for them below with a tray of coffee
and sandwiches. Morris poured himself a cup, another for the Admiral, and
ignored the food.

"Sir, I've never handled one of these before. I don't
know the engines-"

"You've got a great chief engineer and she's a dream to
handle. Besides, you have your conning officers. You're a weapons and tactics
man, Ed. All your work is done in CIC. We need you out there."

"Fair enough, sir."

"XO, take her out," Morris ordered two hours
later. He watched Ernst's every move, embarrassed that he had to depend on
another to do it.

But it was amazingly easy. The wind was off the pier, and
the frigate had a huge sail area that invited help. As the mooring lines were
slackened off, the wind and the auxiliary power units located on the hull
directly under the bridge pushed James's bow into the clear, then the gas
turbine engines moved her forward into the channel. Ernst took his time, though
he was clearly capable of doing it faster. Morris took careful note of this,
too. The man didn't want to make his captain look bad.

From there on it was easy, and Ed Morris watched his new
crew at work. He'd heard stories about the California Navy-like, okay, man-but
the quartermasters at the chart table updated the position with crisp
assurance, despite the unfamiliar harbor. They glided noiselessly past the
piers of the navy yard. He saw empty berths that would not soon be filled, and
not a few ships whose sleek gray hulls were marred with scorched holes and
twisted steel. Kidd was there, her forward superstructure wrecked by a Russian
missile that had gotten past her multilayered defenses. One of his sailors was
looking that way, too, a boy still in his teens, puffing on a cigarette which
he flicked over the side. Morris wanted to ask what he was thinking, but could
scarcely describe his own thoughts.

It went quickly after that. They turned east at the empty
carrier berthings, over the Hampton bridge-tunnel, then past the crowded
amphibious basin at Little Creek. Now the sea beckoned them, forbiddingly gray
under the cloudy sky.

HMS Battleaxe was already out there, three miles ahead, a
subtly different shade on her hull, and the White Ensign fluttering at her
mast. A signal light started blinking at them.

WHAT THE DEVIL IS A REUBEN JAMES, Battleaxe wanted to know.

"How do you want to answer that, sir?" a signalman
asked.

Morris laughed, the ominous spell broken. "Signal, 'At
least we don't name warships for our mother-in-law.'"

"All right!" The petty officer loved it.

STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND

"The Blinder isn't supposed to be able to carry
missiles," Toland said, but what he saw gave the lie to that intelligence
assessment. Six missiles had gotten through the defending fighters and landed
inside the perimeter of the RAF base. Two aircraft were burning, half a mile
away, and one of the base's radars was wrecked.

"Well, now we know why their activity has been light
the past few days. They were refitting their bombers to deal with our new
fighter force," Group Captain Mallory said, surveying the damage to his
base. "Action, reaction. We learn, they learn."

The fighters were returning. Toland counted them off in his
head. He came up short by two Tornados and one Tomcat. As soon as the landing
rolls were completed, each fighter taxied to its shelter. The RAF did not have
enough permanent ones. Three of the American fighters ended up in sandbag
revetments, where ground crews immediately refueled and rearmed their aircraft.
The crews climbed down their ladders to waiting jeeps and were driven off for
debriefing.

"Bastards used our own trick on us!" one Tomcat
pilot exclaimed.

"Okay, what did you run into?"

"There were two groups, about ten miles apart. Lead
group was NEG-23 Floggers with the Blinders behind them. The MiGs launched
before we did. They really knocked our radars back with white noise, and some
of their fighters were using something brand new, a deceptive jammer we haven't
run across yet. They must have been at the edge of their fuel, 'cause they
didn't try to mix it up with us. I guess they just wanted to keep us off the
bombers until they launched. Damn near worked. A flight of Tornados came around
them on the left and bagged four of the Blinders, I think. We got a pair of
MiGs-no Blinders-and the boss vectored the rest of the Toms onto the missiles.
I splashed two. Anyway, Ivan's changed tactics on us. We lost one Tomcat, I
don't know what got him."

"Next time," another pilot said. "We go up
with some of our missiles preset to go after the jammers. We didn't have enough
time to set that up. If we can get the jammers first, it'll be easier to handle
the fighters."

And then the Russians will change their tactics again,
Toland thought. Well, at least we have them reacting to us for a change

FOLZIEHAUSEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

After eight hours of vicious fighting that saw artillery
fire dropping on the forward command post, Beregovoy and Alekseyev stopped the
Belgian counterattack. But stopping them wasn't enough. They'd advanced six
kilometers before running into a solid wall of tanks and missiles, and the
Belgian artillery was laying heavy intermittent fire on the main road
supporting the Russian advance toward Hameln. Certainly they were preparing for
another attack, Alekseyev thought. We have to hit them first-but with what? He
needed his three divisions to advance on the British formations standing before
Hameln.

"Every time we break through," Major Sergetov
observed quietly, "they slow us down and counterattack. This was not
supposed to happen."

"A splendid observation!" Alekseyev snarled, then
regained his temper. "We expected that a breakthrough would have the same
effect as in the last war against the Germans. The problem is these new light
antitank missiles. Three men and a jeep"-he even used the American title
for it-"can race along the road, set up, fire one or two missiles, be gone
before we can react, then repeat the process a few hundred meters away.
Defensive firepower was never so strong before, and we failed to appreciate how
effectively a handful of rearguard troops can slow down an advancing column.
Our security is based on movement"-Alekseyev explained the basic lesson
from tank school-"a mobile force under these conditions cannot afford to
be slowed down. A simple breakthrough is not enough! We must blast a massive
hole in their front and race at least twenty kilometers to be free of these
roving missile-crews. Only then can we switch over to true mobile
doctrine."

"You say we cannot win?" Sergetov had begun to
have his own doubts, but did not expect to hear them from his commander.

"I say what I did four months ago, and I was correct:
this campaign of ours has become a war of attrition. For the moment, technology
has defeated the military art, ours and theirs. What we're doing now is seeing
who runs out of men and arms first."

"We have more of both," Sergetov said.

"That is true, Ivan Mikhailovich. I have many more
young men to throw away." More casualties were arriving at the field
hospital. The line of trucks running in and out never stopped.

"Comrade General, I received a message from my father.
He wishes to know how things progress at the front. What should I tell
him?"

Alekseyev walked away from his aide for a minute to ponder
that.

"Ivan Mikhailovich, tell the Minister that NATO
opposition is far more serious than we expected. The key now is supplies. We
need the best information we can get on NATO's supply situation and a
determined effort to worsen that situation. We have received little information
on how well the naval operations to kill NATO convoys are going. I need that in
order to evaluate NATO's endurance. I don't want analyses out of Moscow. I want
the raw data."

"You are unhappy with what we get from Moscow?"

"We were told that NATO was politically divided and
militarily uncoordinated. How would you evaluate that report, Comrade
Major?" Alekseyev asked sharply. "I can't go through military
channels with that sort of request, can I? Write up your travel orders. I want
you back here in thirty-six hours. I'm sure we'll still be here."

ICELAND

"They should be there in half an hour."

"Roger that, Doghouse", Edwards replied.
"Like I said, no Russians visible. We haven't seen any aircraft all day.
There was some movement on the road west of us six hours ago. Four jeep-type
vehicles. Too far off to tell what was in them, and they were southbound. The
coast is clear. Over."

"Okay, let us know when they get there."

"Will do. Out." Edwards killed the radio.
"People, we got some friends coming in."

"Who and when, skipper?" Smith asked at once.

"Didn't say, but they'll be here in half an hour. Must
be an air drop."

"They come take us out?" Vigdis asked.

"No, they can't land a plane here. Sarge, you got any
opinions?"

"Same as yours, I 'spect."

The plane was early, and for once Edwards saw it first. The
C-130 Hercules four-engine transport skimmed down from the northwest, only a
few hundred feet over the eastern slope of the ridge they were on. A stiff
breeze blew from the west as four small shapes emerged from the aft cargo door
and the Hercules turned abruptly north to leave the area. Edwards concentrated
on the descending parachutes. Instead of drifting down into the valley below
them, the parachutists were coming straight down to a rock-filled slope.

"Oh, shit, he misjudged the wind! Come on!"

The parachutes dropped below them as they ran downhill. One
by one they stopped, losing their shape in the semidarkness as the men landed.
Edwards and his party moved rapidly, trying to remember where the men had
landed. Their camouflage 'chutes turned invisible as Soon as they touched the
ground.

"Halt!"

"Okay, okay. We're here to meet you", Edwards
said.

"Identify yourself!" The voice had an English
accent.

"Code name Beagle."

"Proper name?"

"Edwards, first lieutenant, U.S. Air Force."

"Approach slowly, mate."

Mike went forward alone. At length he saw a vague shape
half-hidden by a rock. The shape held a submachine gun.

"Who are you?"

"Sergeant Nichols, Royal Marines. You picked a bloody
poor place to receive us, Lieutenant."

"I didn't do it!" Edwards answered. "We
didn't know you were coming until an hour ago."

"Balls-up, another bloody balls-up." The man stood
and walked forward with a pronounced limp. "Parachuting's dangerous enough
without coming into a fucking rock garden!" Another figure came up.

"We found the lieutenant-I think he's dead!"

"Need help?" Mike asked.

"I need to wake up and find myself home in bed."

Edwards soon found that the party sent to rescue him--or
whatever their mission was--had gotten off to a disastrous start. The
lieutenant in command of the group had landed on one boulder and fallen
backward on another. His head hung from the rest of his body as if on a string.
Nichols had sprained his ankle badly, and the other two were uninjured but
shaken. It took over an hour to locate all their gear. There was no time for
sentiment. The lieutenant was wrapped in his parachute and covered with loose
rocks. Edwards led the rest back to his perch on the hilltop. At least they'd
brought a new battery pack for his radio.

"Doghouse, this is Beagle, and things suck, over."

"What took so long?"

"Tell that Herky-Bird driver to get a new eye doctor.
The Marines you sent here got their boss killed, and their sergeant ripped his
ankle up."

"Have you been spotted?"

"Negative. They landed in rocks. It's a miracle they
weren't all killed. We're back on the hilltop. We covered our tracks."

Sergeant Nichols was a smoker. He and Smith found a
sheltered spot to light up.

"Sounds rather excitable, your lieutenant."

"He's only a wing-wiper, but he's doin' all right. How's
the ankle?"

"I'll have to walk on it whether it's fit or not. Does
he know what he's about?"

"The skipper? I watched him kill three Russians with a
knife. That good enough?"

"Bloody hell."

33 - Contact

USS REUBEN JAMES

"Captain?"

Morris started at the hand on his shoulder. He'd just wanted
to lie down in his stateroom for a few minutes after conducting helicopter
night landing practice, and-he checked his watch. After midnight. His face was
sweaty. The dream had just started again. He looked up at his executive
officer.

"What is it, XO?"

"We got a request to check something out. Probably a
snowbird, but well, see for yourself "

Morris took the dispatch with him to his private bathroom,
tucked it in his pocket, then washed his face quickly.

"'Unusual contact repeated several times, have
attempted localization without success'? What the hell is this supposed to
be?" he asked, toweling off.

"Beats the hell out of me, skipper. Forty degrees,
thirty minutes north, sixty-nine, fifty west. They got a location but no ID.
I'm having the chart pulled now."

Morris ran his hand through his hair. Two hours sleep was
better than none. Wasn't it? "Okay, let's see how it looks from CIC."

The tactical action officer had the chart out on the table
next to the captain's chair. Morris checked the main tactical-display scope.
They were still far offshore in accordance with their orders to check out the
hundred-fathom curve.

"That's way the hell away from here", Morris
observed immediately. There was something familiar about the location. The
captain bent over the chart.

"Yes sir, about a sixty-mile run", Ernst agreed.
"Shallow water, too. Can't use the towed array there."

"Oh, I know what this place is! That's where the Andrea
Doria sank. Probably somebody's got a MAD contact and didn't bother checking
his chart."

"Don't think so." O'Malley emerged from the
shadows. "A frigate heard something first. The winch on their tail was
busted. They didn't want to lose it, so they were heading into Newport instead
of New York because the harbors deeper. They say they copied a strange
passive-sonar contact that faded out. They did a target-motion analysis and
generated this position. Their helicopter made a few passes, and its magnetic
anomaly detector registered right over the Doria, and that was that."

"How'd you find that out?"

O'Malley handed over a message form. "Came in right
after the XO went to get you. They sent an Orion to check it. Same story. They
heard something odd, and it faded out."

Morris frowned. They were chasing after a wild goose, but
the orders came from Norfolk. That made it an official wild-goose chase.

"What's the helo status?"

"I can be up in ten minutes. One torpedo and an
auxiliary fuel tank. All the gear's on line."

"Tell the bridge to take us there at twenty-five knots.
Battleaxe know about this?" He got a nod. "Okay. Signal them what
we're up to. Winch in the tail. Won't do us any good where we're going.
O'Malley, we'll close to within fifteen miles of the contact and have you search
for it. That puts you in the air about 0230. If you need me, I'll be in the
wardroom." Morris decided to sample his new ship's "mid-rats."
O'Malley was headed the same way.

"These ships are a little weird", the flyer said.

Morris grunted agreement. The main fore-and-aft passageway
was on the port side instead of the centerline, for one thing. The
"figs" broke a number of longstanding traditions in ship design.

O'Malley went down the ladder first and opened the wardroom
door for the captain. They found two junior officers in front of the TV set,
watching a taped movie that had mainly to do with fast cars and naked women.
The tape machine, Morris had already learned, was run from the chiefs'
quarters. One result of this was that a particularly attractive chest was instant
replayed for all hands.

Midwatch rations, or "mid-rats," was an open loaf
of bread and a plate of cold cuts. Morris got himself a cup of coffee and built
a sandwich. O'Malley opted for a fruit drink from the cooler on the after
bulkhead. The official Navy term for it was bug juice.

"No coffee?" Morris asked. O'Malley shook his
head.

"Too much makes me jumpy. You don't want shaky hands
when you're landing a helo in the dark." He smiled. "I really am
getting too old for this crap."

"Kids?"

"Three boys, and ain't none of them gonna be a sailor
if I have anything to say about it. You?"

"Boy and a girl. They're back in Kansas with their
mother." Morris went after his sandwich. The bread was a little stale and
the cold cuts weren't cold, but he needed to eat. This was the first meal in
three days he hadn't eaten alone. O'Malley pushed the potato chips over.

"Get all your carbohydrates, Captain."

"That bug juice'll kill you." Morris nodded at the
fruit drink.

"It's been tried before. I flew two years over 'Nam.
Mostly search-and-rescue stuff. Got shot down twice. Never got scratched,
though. Just scared to death."

Was he that old? Morris wondered. He had to have been passed
over for promotion a few times. The captain made a mental note to check
O'Malley's date of rank.

"How come you were in CIC?" the captain asked.

"I wasn't very sleepy and I wanted to see how the towed
array was working."

Morris was surprised. Aviators didn't generally show this
much interest in the ship's equipment.

"The word is you did pretty well with Pharris.

"Not good enough."

"That happens, too." O'Malley watched his skipper
very closely. The only man aboard with extended combat experience, O'Malley
recognized something in Morris that he hadn't seen since Vietnam. The flyer
shrugged. It wasn't his problem. He fished in his flight suit and came out with
a pack of cigarettes. "Mind if I smoke?"

"I just restarted myself."

"Thank God!" O'Malley raised his voice. "With
all these virtuous children in the wardroom, I thought I was the only dirty old
man here!" The two young lieutenants smiled at that, without taking their
eyes from the television screen.

"How much experience you have on figs?"

"Most of my time is on carriers, skipper. Last fourteen
months I've been an instructor down at Jax. I've done a lot of odd jobs, most
of them with the Seahawk. I think you'll like my bird. The dipping sonar is the
best I've ever worked with."

"What do you think about this contact report?"

O'Malley leaned back and puffed on his cigarette with a
faraway look. "It's interesting. I remember seeing something on TV about
the Doria. She sank on her starboard side. A lot of people have dived to look
at the wreck. It's about two hundred feet of water, just shallow enough for
amateurs to try. And there's a million cables draped over her."

"Cables?" Morris asked.

"Trawls. Lot of commercial fishing goes on there. They
tangle their nets on the wreck. It looks like Gulliver on the beach at
Lilliput."

"You're right! I remember that", Morris said.
"That explains the noise. It's the tide, or currents whistling through all
those cables."

O'Malley nodded. "Yep, that could explain it. I still
want to give it a look."

"Why?"

"All the traffic coming out of New York has to pass
right overtop the place for one thing. Ivan knows we got a big convoy forming
up in New York-he has to know unless the KGB has gone out of business. That's
one hell of a good place to park a submarine if they want to put a trailer on
the convoy. Think about it. If you get a NLAD contact there, you write it off.
The noise from a reactor plant at low power probably won't be louder than the
flow noise over the wreck if they get in close enough. If I was a real nervy
sub-driver, I'd think hard about using a place like that to belly-up."

"You really do think like them", Morris observed.
"Okay, let's see how we should handle this . . ."

0230 hours. Morris watched the takeoff procedures from the
control tower, then walked forward to CIC. The frigate was at battle stations,
doing eight knots, her Prairie/Masker systems operating. If there were a
Russian sub out there, fifteen or so miles away, there was no way she'd suspect
a frigate was nearby. In CIC the radar plot showed the helo moving into
position.

"Romeo, this is Hammer. Radio check, over,"
O'Malley said. The helicopter's on-board data link also transmitted a test
message to the frigate. The petty officer on the helicopter communications
panel checked it out, and grunted with satisfaction. What was that expression
he'd heard? Yeah, right-they had a "sweet lock on momma's gadget." He
grinned.

The helo began its search two miles from the grave of Andrea
Doria. O'Malley halted his aircraft and hovered fifty feet above the rolling
surface.

"Down dome, Willy."

In the back, the petty officer unlocked the hoist controls
and lowered the dipping sonar transducer down a hole in the belly of the
helicopter. The Seahawk carried over a thousand feet of cable, enough to reach
below the deepest of thermocline layers. It was only two hundred feet to the
bottom here, and they had to be careful not to let the transducer come near the
bottom for risk of damage. The petty officer paid close attention to the cable
and halted the winch when the transducer was a hundred feet down. As with surface
ships, the sonar readout was both visual and aural. A TV-type tube began to
show frequency lines while the sailor listened in on his headphones.

This was the hard part, O'Malley reminded himself. Hovering
a helicopter in these wind conditions required constant attention-there was no
autopilot-and hunting for a submarine was always an exercise in patience. It
would take several minutes for the passive sonar to tell them anything, and
they could not use their active sonar systems. The pinging would only serve to
alert a target.

After five minutes they had detected nothing but random
noise. They recovered the sonar and moved east. Again there was nothing.
Patience, the pilot told himself He hated being patient. Another move east and
another wait.

"I got something at zero-four-eight. Not sure what it
is, a whistle or something in the high-frequency range." They waited
another two minutes to make sure it wasn't a spurious signal.

"Up dome." O'Malley brought the helicopter up and
moved off northeast for three thousand yards. Three minutes later the sonar
went down again. Nothing this time. O'Malley changed positions again. If I ever
write a song about hunting submarines, he thought, I'll call it "Again,
and Again, and AGAIN!" This time a signal came back-two signals, in fact.

"That's interesting", the ASW officer aboard
Reuben James observed. "How close is this to the wreck?"

"Very close," Morris answered. "Just about
the same bearing, too."

"Could be flow noise", Willy told O'Malley.
"Very faint, just like the last time."

The pilot reached up to flip a switch to feed the sonar
signal into his headset. We're looking for a very faint signal, O'Malley
reminded himself. "Could be steam noise, too. Prepare to raise dome, I'm
gonna go east to triangulate."

Two minutes later, the sonar transducer went into the water
for a sixth time. The contact was now plotted on the helicopter's on-board
tactical display that sat on the control panel between pilot and copilot.

"We got two signals here," Ralston said.
"About six hundred yards apart."

"Looks that way to me. Let's go see the near one.
Willy---''

"Cable within limits, ready to raise, skipper."

"Up dome. Romeo, Hammer. You got what we got?"

"Affirmative, Hammer," Morris answered.
"Check out the southern one."

"Doing that right now. Stand by." O'Malley paid
close attention to his instruments as he flew toward the nearer of the two
contacts. Again he halted the aircraft. "Down dome."

"Contact!" the petty officer said a minute later.
He examined the tone lines on his display and mentally compared them with data
he had on Soviet submarines. "Evaluate this contact as steam and plant
noises from a nuclear submarine, bearing two-six-two."

O'Malley listened for thirty seconds. His face broke into a
slight smile. "That's a nuc boat all right! Romeo, Hammer, we have a
probable submarine contact bearing two-six-two our position. Moving to firm
that fix up right now."

Ten minutes later they had the contact locked in. O'Malley
made directly for it and lowered his sonar right on top of the contact.

"It's a Victor-class", the sonarman aboard the
frigate said. "See this frequency line? A Victor with his reactor plant
turned down to minimum power output."

"Hammer," Morris called. "Romeo. Any
suggestions?"

O'Malley was flying away from the contact, having left a
smoke float to mark it. The submarine probably hadn't heard them because of the
surface conditions, or if he had, he knew his safest bet was to sit on the
bottom. The Americans carried only homing torpedoes, which couldn't detect a
submarine on the bottom. Once launched, they'd either motor along in a circle
until running out of fuel or drive straight into the bottom. He could go active
and try to flush the submarine off the bottom, he thought, but active sonar
wasn't all that effective in shallow water, and what if Ivan didn't move? The
Seahawk was down to one hour's fuel. The pilot made his decision.

"Battleaxe, this is Hammer. Do you read, over?"

"Took your time to call us, Hammer", Captain
Perrin replied at once. The British frigate was monitoring the search closely.

"You have any Mark-11s aboard?"

"We can load them in ten minutes."

"We'll be waiting. Romeo, do you approve a
VECTAC?"

"Affirmative" Morris answered. The vectored attack
approach was perfect, and he was too excited at what they had here to be
annoyed at O'Malley for bypassing him. "Weapons free."

O'Malley circled his aircraft at one thousand feet while he
waited. This was really crazy. Was Ivan just sitting there? Was he waiting for
a convoy to pass by? It was about an even-money chance that he'd heard the
helicopter. If he'd heard the helo, did he want the frigate to come in so he
could attack her? His systems operator watched the sonar display intently for
any change in the signal from the contact. So far there'd been none. No
increase in engine power, no mechanical transients. Nothing at all but the
hissing of a reactor plant at fractional power, a sound undetectable from more
than two miles off. No wonder several people had looked and found nothing. He
found himself admiring the nerve of the Soviet submarine commander.

"Hammer, this is Hatchet."

O'Malley smiled to himself. Unlike American procedures, the
Brits assigned helicopter names associated with that of their mother ships. HMS
Brazen's helo was "Hussy." Battleaxe's was "Hatchet."

"Roger, Hatchet. Where are you?"

"Ten miles south of you. We've two depth charges
aboard."

O'Malley switched his flying lights back on. "Very
well, stand by. Romeo, the way I want to work this, you give Hatchet a radar
steer to our sonobuoy and we'll use our sonar for the cross-bearing to drop. Do
you concur, over?"

"Roger, concur," Morris answered.

"Arm the fish," O'Malley told his copilot.

"Why?"

"If the charges miss, you can bet he'll come off the
bottom like a salmon at spawning time." O'Malley brought his helo around
and spotted the blinking anticollision lights of the British Lynx helicopter.
"Hatchet, tallyho, I have you now at my nine o'clock. Please hold your
current position while we get set. Willy, any change in the contact?"

"No, sir. This dude's playing it awful cool, sir."

You poor brave bastard, O'Malley thought to himself. The
smoke float atop the contact was about burned out. He dropped another. After
rechecking his tactical display he moved to a position one thousand yards east
of the contact, hovered fifty feet above the surface and deployed the dipping
sonar.

"There he is," the petty officer reported.
"Bearing two-six-eight."

"Hatchet, Hammer. We're ready for your VECTAC. Take
your steer from Romeo."

Control of the British helicopter's course came now from
Reuben James's radar, which steered it onto a precise northerly course. O'Malley
watched the Lynx approach, checking to make sure the wind wasn't driving him
off his own position.

"You will drop your charges one at a time, on my mark.
Stand by, Hatchet."

"Standing by." The British pilot armed his depth
charges and came forward at ninety knots. O'Malley lined up the blinking lights
with the smoke float.

"Charge one-Mark-mark! Charge two-Mark-mark! Get
clear!"

The Lynx pilot needed no encouragement. Scarcely had the
second depth charge fallen free when the helo leaped upward and raced
northeast. Simultaneously, O'Malley yanked up on his collective control to
bring his delicate sonar transducer out of the water.

There was an odd flash of light from the bottom, then
another. The surface of the sea turned to foam that leaped into the starry sky.
O'Malley closed in and switched on his landing lights. The surface was churned
with mud, and . . . oil? Just like in the movies, he thought, and dropped
another sonobuoy into the water.

The bottom reverberated with the rumbles from the depth charges,
but the system fiItered them out and locked in on the higher frequency sounds.
They heard escaping air and rushing water. Someone aboard the submarine might
have hit the ballast controls in a vain attempt to blow the submarine to the
surface. Then there was something else, like water dropped on a hot plate. It
was a moment before O'Malley had it figured out.

"What's that, skipper?" Willy asked over the
intercom. "I never heard that before."

"The reactor vessel's ruptured. You're hearing a
runaway nuclear reactor." God, what a mess that'll be this close into
shore! he thought. No more diving on the Doria for a few years . . . O'Malley
switched to the radio circuit. "Hatchet, this is Hammer. I copy collapse
noises. We score that one as a kill. Do you claim the kill, over?"

"Our fox, Hammer. Thanks for the steer in."

O'Malley laughed. "Roger that, Hatchet. If you want the
kill, you also get to file the environmental-impact statement. Out."

Aboard the Lynx, pilot and copilot exchanged a look.
"What the devil is that?"

The two helicopters returned in loose formation and made a
pass over both the British and American frigates to celebrate their kill. It
was the second for Battleaxe, and Reuben James would now paint half a submarine
on the side of her pilothouse. The ships recovered their helicopters and turned
west for New York.

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

Mikhail Sergetov embraced his son in the Russian way, with
passion and kisses to welcome him back from the front. The Politburo member
took his son's arm and led him to his chauffeured Zil for the drive into
Moscow.

"You've been hurt, Vanya."

"I cut my hand on some glass." Ivan shrugged it
off. His father offered him a small glass of vodka, which he took. "I
haven't had a drink in two weeks."

"Oh?"

"The General does not permit it in his command
post," Ivan explained.

"Is he as good an officer as I thought?"

"Perhaps a better one. I've seen him in command at the
front. He is a truly gifted leader."

"Then why haven't we conquered Germany?"

Ivan Mikhailovich Sergetov had grown up while his father had
climbed the Party ladder nearly to the top, and he had often seen him switch in
a moment from affable host to abrasive Party apparatchik. This was the first
time it had ever happened to him, however.

"NATO was far readier than we had been led to expect,
father. They were waiting for us to come, and their first mission of the
war-before we had even crossed the border in force-came as a rude shock."
Ivan explained the effects of Operation Dreamland.

"We were not told it was that bad. Are you sure?"

"I've seen some of the bridges. Those same aircraft
raided a dummy command post outside Stendal. The bombs were falling before we
knew they were there. If their intelligence had been better, I might not be
here."

"So it's their air power?"

"That's a major part of it. I've seen their
ground-attack fighters cut through a tank column like a harvester through a
wheatfield. It's horrible."

"But our missiles?"

"Our missile troops practice once or twice a year,
firing at target drones that plod along in a straight line up where everyone
can see them. The NATO fighters fly between the trees. If the antiaircraft
missiles on either side worked as well as their makers said, every airplane in
the world would have been shot down twice over by now. But the worst thing of
all are their antitank missiles-you know, just like ours, and these missiles
work all too well." The younger man gestured with his hands. "Three
men in a wheeled vehicle. One driver, one loader, one gunner. They hide behind
a tree at a turn in the road and wait. Our column comes into view and they fire
from a range of-say two kilometers. They're trained to go for the command
tank-the one with the radio antenna up. As often as not the first warning we
have is when the first weapon hits. They fire one more and kill another tank,
then race away before we can call down artillery fire. Five minutes later, from
another spot, it happens again.

"It's eating us up," the young man said, echoing
the words of his commander.

"You say we are losing?"

"No. I say that we are not winning," Ivan said.
"But for us that is the same thing." He continued with the message
from his commander and saw his father settle into the leather seat of the car.

"I knew it. I warned them, Vanya. The fools!" Ivan
gestured with his head to the driver. His father smiled and made a dismissive
gesture. Vitaly had served Sergetov for years. His daughter was now a doctor
because of the Minister's patronage, his son safe in the university while most
of the young men in the country were under arms. "Oil expenditures are
twenty-five percent above predictions. That is, twenty-five percent above my
ministerial predictions. They are forty percent above the Defense Ministry's
predictions. It never occurred to anyone that NATO aircraft would be able to
find our hidden petroleum storage facilities. My people are reevaluating
national reserves even now. I am to receive the interim report this afternoon
if it's ready on time. Look around, Vanya. See for yourself."

There were hardly any vehicles in view, not even trucks.
Never a lively city, now Moscow was grim even to Russian eyes. People hurried
along half-empty streets, not looking around, not looking up. So many men were
gone, Ivan realized. So many of them would never return. As usual his father
read his thoughts.

"How bad are casualties?"

"Dreadful. Far over estimates. I do not have exact
numbers-my posting is intelligence, not administration-but losses are very
bad."

"This is all a mistake, Vanya," the Minister said
quietly. But the Party is always right. How many years did you believe that?

"Nothing can be done about that now, father. We also
need information on NATO's supplies. The data that gets to us at the front is
over-processed, shall we say. We need better data to make our own
estimates."

At the front, Mikhail thought. His anger at those words
could not entirely suppress the pride he felt at what his son had become. He'd
worried often that he'd turn into another young "nobleman" of a Party
family. Alekseyev was not the sort to promote lightly, and from his own sources
he'd learned that Ivan had accompanied the General to the battle line many
times. The boy had become a man. Pity it had taken a war to make that happen.

"I'll see what I can do."

USS CHICAGO

The Svyatana Anna Trough was their last bit of deep water.
The freight train of fast-attack submarines slowed almost to a halt as it
approached the edge of the icepack. They expected to find two friendly
submarines here, but "friendly" was not a word that went well with
combat operations. All the American submarines were at battle stations.
McCafferty checked the time and the location. So far everything had gone
according to plan. Amazing, he thought.

He didn't like being the lead boat. If there were a Russian
patrolling the edge of the pack . . . he'd get first shot, McCafferty knew.
Wondering if the "he" would be a speaker of English or Russian.

"Conn, sonar, I got faint machinery noises bearing
one-nine-one."

"Bearing change?"

"Just picked it up, sir. Bearing is not changing at the
moment."

McCafferty reached past the duty electrician's mate and
switched on the gertrude, a sonar telephone as archaic as it was effective. The
only noise was the hissing and groaning of the icepack. Behind him the exec got
the firecontrol tracking party working on a torpedo solution for the new
target.

A garbled group of syllables came over the speaker.

McCafferty took the gertrude phone off the receiver and
depressed the Transmit trigger.

"Zulu X-ray." There came a pause of several
seconds, then a scratchy reply.

"Hotel Bravo," replied HMS Sceptre. McCafferty let
out a long breath that went unnoticed by the rest of the attack center crew,
all of whom were doing exactly the same thing.

"All ahead one-third," the captain said. Ten
minutes later they were within easy range of the gertrude. Chicago halted to
communicate.

"Welcome to the Soviet back garden, old boy. Slight
change in plans. Keyboard"-the code name for HMS Superb-"is two-zero
miles south to check further on your route. We've encountered no hostile
activity for the past thirty hours. The coast is clear. Good hunting."

"Thank you, Keylock. The gang's all here. Out."
McCafferty hung the phone set back in its place. "Gentlemen, the mission
is a go! All ahead two-thirds!"

The nuclear attack submarine increased speed to twelve knots
on a heading of one-nine-seven degrees. HMS Sceptre counted the American boats
as they passed, then resumed her station, circling slowly at the edge of the
icepack.

"Good luck, chaps," her captain breathed.

"They should get in all right."

"It's not getting in that I'm worried about,
Jimmy," the captain replied, using the traditional name for a British
sub's first officer. "The ticklish part's getting back out."

STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND

"Telex for you, Commander." An RAF sergeant handed
the message form over to Toland.

"Thank you." He scanned the form.

"Leaving us?" Group Captain Mallory asked.

"They want me to fly down to Northwood. That's right
outside London, isn't it?"

Mallory nodded. "No problem getting you there."

"That's nice. It says 'immediate.'"

NORTHWOOD, ENGLAND

He'd been to England many times, all on business with his
opposite numbers at Government Communications Headquarters outside Cheltenham.
His flights always seemed to arrive at night. He was flying at night now, and
something was wrong. Something obvious . . .

Blackout. There were few lights below. Did that really
matter now that aircraft had sophisticated navigation aids, or was it mainly a
psychological move to remind the people of what was going on? If the continuous
television coverage, some of it "live" from the battlefront, didn't
do that already. Toland had been spared most of that. Like most men in uniform,
he had no time for the big picture while he concentrated on his little corner
of it. He imagined it was the same for Ed Morris and Danny McCafferty, then
realized this was the first time he'd thought of them in over a week. How were
they doing? They were certainly more exposed to danger than he was at the
moment, though his experience on Nimitz the second day of the war had given him
enough terror to last the remainder of his life. Toland did not yet know that
with a routine telex message sent a week before, he would directly affect their
lives for the second time this year.

The Boeing 737 airliner touched down ten minutes later. Only
twenty people were aboard, almost all of them in uniform. Toland was met by a
car and a driver which sped him off to Northwood.

"You're Commander Toland?" a Royal Navy lieutenant
asked. "Please come with me, sir. COMEASTLANT wants to see you."

He found Admiral Sir Charles Beattie chewing on an unlit
pipe in front of a huge map of the eastern and northern Atlantic.

"Commander Toland, sir."

"Thank you," the Admiral said without turning.
"Tea and coffee in the corner, Commander."

Toland availed himself of the tea. He drank it only in the
U.K., and after several weeks he found himself wondering why he didn't have it
at home.

"Your Tomcats have done well up in Scotland,"
Beattie said.

"It was the aerial radar that made the real difference,
sir. More than half the kills were made by the RAF."

"Last week you sent a message to our air operations
chaps to the effect that your Tomcats were able to track Backfires visually at
very long range."

It took Toland a few seconds to remember it. "Oh, yes.
It's the video-camera system they have, Admiral. It's designed to identify
fighter-size aircraft at thirty miles or so. Tracking something as big as a
Backfire they can do at fifty or so if the weather's good."

"And the Backfires would not know they were
there?"

"Not likely, sir."

"How far could they follow a Backfire?"

"That's a question for a driver, sir. With tanker
support, we can keep a Tomcat aloft for almost four hours. Two hours each way,
that would take them almost all the way home."

Beattie turned to face Toland for the first time. Sir
Charles was a former aviator himself, last commander of the old Ark Royal,
Britain's last real carrier. "How sure are you of Ivan's operating
airfields?"

"For the Backfires, sir? They operate from the four
airfields around Kirovsk. I would presume you have satellite photos of the
places, sir."

"Here." Beattie handed him a folder.

There was a degree of unreality to this, Toland thought.
Four-star admirals didn't chew the fat with newly frocked commanders unless
they had nothing better to do, and Beattie had lots of things to do. Bob opened
the folder.

"Oh." He looked at a photo set for Umbozero, the
field east of Kirovsk. There'd been lit smokepots during the satellite pass,
and the resulting black smoke had completely hidden the runways to visual
light, with flares messing up the infrared imaging systems as well. "Well,
there are the hardened shelters, and maybe three aircraft. Was this taken
during a raid?"

"Correct. Very good, Commander. The Backfire force left
the airfield three hours before the satellite pass."

"Trucks, too-fuel bowsers?" He got a nod.
"They refuel them right after they land?"

"We think yes, before they get into the shelters.
Evidently they don't like the idea of fueling inside a building. Seems
reasonable enough. Ivan's had problems with accidental explosions the last few
years."

Toland nodded, remembering the explosion at the main
ordnance storage facility for the Russian Northern Fleet in 1984. "Be a
hell of a nice time to catch them on the ground-but we don't have any tactical
aircraft that'll reach nearly that far. B-52s could do it, but they'd be
murdered. We learned that over Iceland."

"But a Tomcat could trail the Backfires nearly to the
Russian doorstep, and that could allow you to predict exactly when they'll
land?" Sir Charles persisted.

Toland looked at the map. The Backfires reentered Russian
fighter cover about thirty minutes, flying time from their home bases.

"Plus or minus fifteen minutes . . . yes, Admiral, I
think we can do that. I wonder how long it takes to refuel a Backfire."
There was a lot of thinking going on behind those blue eyes, Toland saw.

"Commander, my operations officer will brief you on
something called Operation Doolittle. We named it after one of your chaps as a
clever bit of subterfuge to weasel the assets from your navy. For the moment,
this information is eyes-only to you. Be back here in an hour. I want your
evaluation of how we can improve the basic operational concept."

"Yes, sir."

USS REUBEN JAMES

They were in New York harbor. O'Malley was in the wardroom
finishing up the written account of the destruction of the Soviet submarine
when the growler phone on the port bulkhead started making noise. He looked up
and discovered he was the only officer in the room. That meant he had to answer
it.

"Wardroom. Lieutenant Commander O'Malley."

"Battleaxe here. May I please speak to your CO?"

"He's taking a nap. Can I help you, or is it
important?"

"If he's not too busy, the captain wishes to invite him
to dinner. Half an hour from now. Your XO and helicopter pilot also if he's
available."

The pilot laughed. "The XO's on the beach, but the helo
driver's available if the Queen's ships are still wet."

"Indeed we are, Commander."

"Okay. I'll go wake him up. Be back to you in a few
minutes." O'Malley hung up and went out the door. He bumped into Willy.

"Excuse me, sir. The torpedo-loading practice?"

"Okay, I'm going to see the skipper anyway." Willy
had complained that the last practice had gone a little slow. He handed the
petty officer his report. "Take this down to the ship's office and tell
'em to type it up."

O'Malley went forward and found the door to the captain's
stateroom closed, but the do-not-disturb light was switched off. He knocked and
went in. The noise surprised him.

"Don't you see it!" The words came out as a gasp.
Morris was lying on his back, his hands balled into fists on the blanket. His
face was covered in sweat and he breathed like a man finishing a marathon.

"Jesus." O'Malley hesitated. He didn't really know
the man.

"Look out!" This was louder, and the pilot
wondered if anyone in the passageway outside might hear it and wonder if the
captain were-he had to do something.

"Wake up, Captain!" Jerry grabbed Morris by the
shoulders and lifted him up into a sitting position.

"Don't you see it!" Morris shouted, still not
really awake.

"Settle down, pal. You're tied to the pier in New York
harbor. You're safe. The ship is safe. Come around, Captain. It's okay."
Morris blinked his eyes about ten times. He saw O'Malley's face about six
inches away.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Glad I came. You all right?" The pilot lit a
cigarette and handed it to the captain.

Morris refused it and stood. He walked to his basin and got
a glass of water. "Just a dumb dream. What do you want?"

"We've been invited out to dinner next door in half an
hour-I guess a reward for giving them the Victor. Also, I'd like your deck crew
to practice loading torps on my bird. Last time was a little slow, my petty
says."

"When do you want 'em to do it?"

"Soon as it gets dark, Captain. Better they should
learn it the hard way."

"Okay. Half an hour on dinner?"

"Yes, sir. Be nice to have a drink."

Morris smiled without much enthusiasm. "Guess it would.
I'll wash up. Meet you in the wardroom. This thing formal?"

"They didn't say so. I wasn't planning to change, if
that's all right with you, skipper." O'Malley was wearing his flight suit.
He got lonely without all the pockets.

"Twenty minutes."

O'Malley went to his stateroom and ran a cloth over his
flight boots. The flight suit was new, and he figured that was dressy enough.
Morris worried him. The man might come apart, not something that should happen
to a commanding officer. That made it partly his problem. Besides, O'Malley
told himself, he's a pretty good man.

He looked better when they met again. Amazing what a shower
could do. His hair was brushed back and his service khakis pressed. The two
officers went aft to the helicopter pad, then down the brow to the dock.

HMS Battleaxe gave the appearance of a larger ship than the
American frigate. In fact she was about twelve feet shorter, but seven hundred
tons heavier, various differences in her design reflecting the philosophies of
her builders. She was undeniably prettier than her American counterpart, her
unexciting hull lines more than balanced by a superstructure that looked as
though it had been sculpted to sit atop a ship instead of a parking lot.

Morris was glad to see that things were informal. A youthful
midshipman met them at the foot of the brow and escorted them aboard,
explaining that the captain was on the radio at the moment. After the customary
salutes of flag and duty officer, the midshipman led them into the ship's
air-conditioned citadel, then forward to the wardroom.

"Hot damn, a piano!" O'Malley exclaimed. A
battered upright was secured to the port bulkhead with two-inch line. Several
officers rose and introduced themselves.

"Drinks, gentlemen?" a steward asked. O'Malley got
himself a can of beer and moved toward the piano. A minute later he was
battering his way through some Scott Joplin. The wardroom's forward door
opened.

"Jerr-O!" a man with four stripes on his shoulder
boards exclaimed.

"Doug!" O'Malley jumped up from the stool and ran
to shake his hand. "How the hell are you!"

"I knew it was your voice on the radio. 'Hammer"
indeed. The American Navy's run out of competent pilots and scraped you up,
eh?" Both men laughed out loud. O'Malley waved his captain over.

"Captain Ed Morris, meet Captain Doug Perrin, MBE, RN,
and a shitload of other acronyms. Watch this turkey, skipper, he used to drive
submarines before he went straight."

"I see you guys know each other."

"Some bloody fool decided to send him to lecture at HMS
Dryad, our ASW school, when I was taking the advanced course. Set back our
relations by at least a hundred years."

"Is the Fox and Fence put back together yet?"
O'Malley asked. "Skipper, there was this pub about half a mile from the
place, and one night Doug and me-"

"I am trying to forget that night, Jerr-O. Susan gave
me hell about it for weeks." He led them aft and got himself a drink.
"Marvelous job with that Victor last night! Captain Morris, I understand
you did very well with your previous command."

"Killed a Charlie and picked up two assists."

"We stumbled across an Echo on our last convoy. Old
boat, but she had a good driver. Took us six hours. But a pair of diesel
submarines, probably Tangos, got inside and killed five ships and an escort.
Diomede may have gotten one of them. We're not sure."

"Was the Echo coming after you?" Morris asked.

"Possibly", Perrin answered. "it does appear
that Ivan's going after the escorts quite deliberately. We had two missiles
shot at us by the last Backfire raid. One ran into our chaff cloud, and
fortunately our Sea Wolf intercepted the other. Unfortunately, the one that
exploded behind us amputated our towed array and we're down to just our 2016
sonar."

"So you've been assigned to ride shotgun on us
then?"

"It would seem so."

The captains lapsed into shoptalk, which was the whole point
of the dinner in any case. O'Malley found the English helicopter pilot while
the tables were set, and they started the same thing while the American played
the piano. Somewhere in the Royal Navy was a directive: when dealing with American
naval officers, get them over early, get a drink in them first, then talk
business.

Dinner was excellent, though the Americans, judgment was
somewhat affected by the liquid refreshments. O'Malley listened closely as his
captain described the loss of Pharris, the tactics employed by the Russians,
and how he had failed to counter them properly. It was like listening to a man
relate the death of his child.

"Under the circumstances, hard to see what you could
have done differently," Doug Perrin sympathized. "Victor is a capable
opponent, and he must have timed your coming off the sprint very
carefully."

Morris shook his head. "No, we came off sprint well
away from him, and that blew his solution right out the window. If I'd done
things better, those men wouldn't be dead. I was the captain. It was my
fault."

Perrin said, "I've been there in the submarine, you
know. He has the advantage because he's already been tracking you." He
flashed O'Malley a look.

Dinner ended at eight. The escort commanders would meet the
following afternoon, and the convoy would sail at sundown. O'Malley and Morris
left together, but the pilot stopped at the brow.

"Forgot my hat. I'll be back in a minute." He
hurried back to the wardroom. Captain Perrin was still there.

"Doug, I need an opinion."

"He shouldn't go back out in his current state. Sorry,
Jerry, but that's how I see things."

"You're right. There's one thing I can try."
O'Malley made a small purchase and rejoined Morris two minutes later.

"Captain, any particular reason you have to head right
back to the ship?" he asked quietly. "Something I need to talk about
and I don't want to do it aboard. It's a personal thing. Okay?" The pilot
looked very embarrassed.

"How about we take a little walk?" Morris agreed.
The two officers walked east. O'Malley looked up and down the street, and found
a waterfront bar with sailors going in and out. He steered Morris into it and
they found a booth in the back.

"Two glasses", O'Malley told the barmaid. He
unzipped the leg pocket of his flight suit and withdrew a bottle of Black Bush
Irish whiskey.

"You want to drink here, you buy it here."
O'Malley handed her two twenty-dollar bills.

"Two glasses and ice." His voice did not brook
argument. "And leave us alone." Service was quick.

"I checked my logbook this afternoon," O'Malley
said after tossing off half his first drink. "Four thousand three hundred
sixty hours of stick time. Counting last night, three hundred eleven hours of
combat time."

"Vietnam. You said you were there." Morris sipped
at his own.

"Last day, last tour. Search-and-rescue mission for an
A-7 pilot shot down twenty miles south of Haiphong." He had never even
told his wife this story. "Saw a flash, made the mistake of ignoring it.
Thought it was a reflection off a window or a stream or something. Kept going.
Turned out it was probably a reflection of a gunsight, maybe a pair of
binoculars. One minute later some hundred-millimeter flak goes off around us.
Helo just comes apart. I get her down, we're on fire. Look left-copilot's torn
apart, his brains are in my lap. My crew chief, a third-class named Ricky, he's
in the back. I look. Both his legs are torn off. I think he was still alive
then, but there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it-couldn't even get to
him the way things were-and there's three people heading towards us. I just ran
away. Maybe they didn't see me. Maybe they didn't care-hell, I don't know.
Another helo found me twelve hours later." He poured himself another drink
and topped off the one for Morris. "Don't make me drink alone."

"I've had enough."

"No, you haven't. And neither have I. It took me a year
to get over that. You don't have a year. All you got's tonight. You gotta talk
about it, Captain. I know. Think it's bad now? It gets worse."

He took another pull on the drink. At least it was good
stuff, O'Malley told himself He watched Morris sit there for five minutes,
sipping at his drink and wondering if he should just go back to the ship. The
proud captain. Like all captains, condemned to live alone, and this one was
lonelier than most. He's afraid I'm right, O'Malley thought. He's afraid it
will get worse. You poor bastard. If you only knew.

"Run through it" the pilot said quietly.
"Analyze it one step at a time."

"You already did that for me."

"I have a big mouth. Has to be for my feet to fit in
it. You do it in your sleep, Ed. Might as well do it when you're awake."

And, slowly, he did. O'Malley coached him through the
sequence. Weather conditions, ship's course and speed. What sensors were operating.
In an hour they were three quarters of the way down the bottle. Finally they
got to the torpedoes. Morris's voice started to crack.

"There just wasn't anything else I could do! The
Goddamned thing just came in. We only had one nixie out, and the first fish
blew that the hell away. I tried to maneuver the ship, but-"

"But you were up against a homing torpedo. You can't
outrun 'em and you can't outturn 'em."

"I'm not supposed to let-"

"Oh, horseshit!" The pilot refilled the glasses.
"You think you're the first guy ever lost a 'can? Didn't you ever play
ball, Ed? Hell, there's two sides, and both of 'em play to win. You expect
those Russian sub skippers are just gonna sit there and say, 'Kill me, kill
me'? You must be dumber 'n I thought."

"My men-"

"Some of them are dead, most of them aren't. I'm sorry
some're dead. I'm sorry Ricky died. Kid wasn't even nineteen yet. But I didn't
kill him, and you didn't kill your men. You saved your ship. You brought her
back with most of the crew."

Morris drained his glass with one long pull. Jerry refilled
it, not bothering with ice.

"It's my responsibility. Look, when I got back to
Norfolk, I visited-I mean, I had to visit their families. I'm the captain. I
gotta-there was this little girl, and . . . Jesus, O'Malley, what the hell do
you say?" Morris demanded. He was sobbing, near tears, Jerry saw. Good.

"They don't put that in the book," O'Malley
agreed. You think they would have learned by now.

"Pretty little girl. What do you tell the kids?"
The tears started. It had taken nearly two hours.

"You tell the little girl that her daddy was a good man
and he did his best, and you did your best, cause that's all we can do, Ed. You
did everything right, but sometimes it just doesn't matter." It wasn't the
first time O'Malley had had men cry on his shoulder. He remembered doing it
himself What a miserable life this can be, he thought, that it can bring good
men to this.

Morris recovered a few minutes later, and by the time they
finished the bottle both men were as drunk as either ever got. O'Malley helped
his captain up and walked him to the door.

"What's the matter, Navy, can't take it?" He was a
merchant seaman standing alone at the bar. It was the wrong thing to say.

It was hard to tell from the baggy flight suit that O'Malley
was a man of considerable strength. His left arm was wrapped around Morris. His
right hand grabbed the other man by the throat and dragged him away from the
bar.

"You got anything else to say about my friend,
Dickweed?" O'Malley tightened his grip.

The reply came in a whisper. "All I meant was he has
trouble with his liquor."

The pilot released him. "Good night."

Maneuvering the captain back to the ship was difficult,
partly because O'Malley was also drunk but mainly because Morris was on the
point of passing out. That had been part of the plan, too, but the Hammer had
cut his timing a little close. The brow looked awfully steep from the pier.

"What seems to be the problem?"

"Good evening, Master Chief."

"Good evening, Commander. You got the captain with
you?"

"Sure could use a hand, too."

"You're not kidding." The chief came down the
gangway. Together they got the captain aboard. The really hard part was the
ladder up to his stateroom. For this another sailor was summoned.

"Damn," the youngster observed. "The old man
really knows how to tie one on!"

"Takes a real sailorman to know how to get
blasted," the master chief agreed. The three of them got him up the
ladder. O'Malley took it from there and landed Morris on his bunk. The captain
was sleeping soundly, and the flyer hoped the nightmare wouldn't come back. His
still did.

NORTHWOOD, ENGLAND

"Well, Commander?"

"Yes, sir. I think it'll work. I see most of the assets
are nearly in place."

"The original plan had a lesser chance of success. I'm
sure it would have got their attention, of course, but this way we just might
be able to damage the force severely."

Toland looked up at the map. "The timing is still
tricky, but not very different from that attack we made on the tankers. I like
it, sir. Sure would solve a few problems. What's the convoy situation?"

"There are eighty ships assembled in New York harbor.
They sail in twenty-four hours. Heavy escort, carriers in support, even a new
Aegis cruiser with the merchants. And the next step after that, of
course-" Beattie went on.

"Yes, sir. And Doolittle is the key."

"Exactly. I want you back at Stornoway. I'll also be
sending one of my air operations types to work with your chaps. We'll keep you
informed of all developments. Remember that distribution for this is to be
strictly limited to the personnel involved."

"Understood, sir."

"Off with you, then."

34 - Feelers

USS REUBEN JAMES

0700 hours came rather early for Jerry O'Malley. He had the
lower bunk in a two-man stateroom-his copilot had the upper-and his first
considered move was to take three aspirins and sit back down. It was almost
funny, he thought. "The Hammer." He felt it inside his head. No, he
corrected himself, he had his dipping sonar in there, on automatic ping. Still
and all, he had performed something remembered from his youth as a corporal
work of mercy, and that helped give purpose to his suffering. He gave the
aspirins ten minutes to get into his bloodstream, then went forward to the
shower. First cold, then hot water cleared his head.

The wardroom was full but quiet, the officers assembled
according to age into little knots of whispered conversation. These young
officers hadn't faced combat before, and the bravado they might have felt on
leaving San Diego some weeks before had been replaced with the sober reality of
the task at hand. Ships had been sunk. Men they knew were dead. For these kids,
fear was a more terrible unknown than the technical aspects of combat for which
they had been trained. He could see the question in their faces; only time
would answer it. They would learn to endure it, or they would not. Combat held
no mysteries for O'Malley. He knew that he would be afraid, and that he would
put the fear aside as best he could. There was no sense dwelling on it. It
would come soon enough.

"Good morning, XO!"

"Morning, Jerry. I was just going to call the
skipper."

"He needs his sleep, Frank." The pilot had
disconnected Morris's alarm clock before leaving the stateroom. Ernst read
O'Malley's face.

"Well, nothing we really need him for till
eleven."

"I knew you were a good XO, Frank." O'Malley
debated between bug juice and coffee. The fruit drink this morning was the
orange kind-the flavors didn't relate to any particular fruit. O'Malley liked
the red kind, but not the orange. He poured some coffee.

"I supervised the torpedo loading last night. We cut a
minute off our best time-in the dark."

"Sounds good to me. When's the pre-sail brief?"

"Fourteen hundred, in a theater two blocks from here.
COs, XOs, and selected others. I expect you'll want to come, too?"

"Yeah."

Ernst's voice dropped. "You sure the skipper's all
right?" There are no secrets aboard a ship.

"He's been on straight combat ops since Day One of this
fracas. He needed to get a little unwrapped, an ancient and honored naval
tradition"-he raised his voice-"damned shame that all these little
boys are too young to partake in it! Didn't anybody think to get a newspaper?
NFL summer camps are opened all over the country, and there ain't no paper!
What the hell kind of wardroom is this!"

"I've never met a dinosaur before," a junior
engineering officer observed sotto voce.

"You get used to him," Ensign Ralston explained.

ICELAND

Two days' rest was just what the doctor ordered for
everyone. Sergeant Nichols could almost walk normally on his ankle, and the
Americans, who were beginning to regard fish with distinct distaste filled up
on the extra rations the Royal Marines had packed in.

Edwards's eyes traced around the horizon again. The human
eye automatically locks onto movement, and she was moving. It was hard not to
look. It was almost impossible. In fact, Edwards told himself, it was
impossible to stand guard and not look around. The hell of it was, she thought
it was funny. Their rescuers-Edwards knew better, but why upset her?-had also
brought soap. A tiny lake half a mile from their hilltop perch was the
designated bathing area. In hostile country no one went that far alone, and the
lieutenant had naturally been detailed to look after her-and she after him.
Guarding her as she bathed with a loaded rifle seemed absurd, even with
Russians around. Her bruises were nearly healed, he noted as she dressed.

"Finished, Michael." They didn't have towels, but
that was a small price to pay for smelling human. She came up to him with her
hair still wet and an impish expression on her face. "I embarrass you.
Sorry."

"It's not your fault." It was also impossible to
be angry with her.

"The baby makes me fat," she said. Mike could
scarcely tell, but then it wasn't his figure being changed.

"You look fine. I'm sorry if I looked when I shouldn't
have."

'What is wrong?"

Edwards found himself struggling with his words again.
"Well, after-after what happened to you, I mean, you probably don't need a
bunch of strange men standing around looking at you when you're, well, naked."

"Michael, you are not like that one. I know you would
never hurt me. Even after what he do to me, you say I am pretty-when I grow
fat."

"Vigdis, baby or no baby, you are the prettiest girl I
have ever known. You're strong, and you're brave." And I think I love you,
but I'm afraid to say so. "We just picked a bad time to meet, that's
all."

"For me was a very good time, Michael." She took
his hand. She smiled a lot now. She had a gentle, friendly smile.

"As long as you know me, every time you think about me,
you'll remember that Russian."

"Yes, Michael, I will remember that. I remember that
you save my life. I ask Sergeant Smith. He say you have orders not to come near
Russians because it so dangerous for you. He say you come because of me. You do
not even know me then, but you come."

"I did the right thing." He held both of her hands
now. What do I say now? Darling, if we ever get out of this alive . . . that
sounds like a bad movie. Edwards hadn't been sixteen in a long time, but now
all the awkwardness that had poisoned his adolescence came back to him. Mike
hadn't exactly been the makeout king of Eastpoint High School. "Vigdis,
I'm not any good at this. It was different with Sandy. She understood me. I
don't know how to talk to girls, hell, I'm not that good talking to people. I
do weather maps, and play with computers, but I usually have to have a few
beers in me before I get the nerve to say-"

"I know you love me, Michael." Her eyes sparkled
when she revealed the secret.

"Well, yes."

She handed him the soap. "Your time to wash. I will not
look too much."

F™LZIEHAUSEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

Major Sergetov handed over his notes. The Leine had been
forced at a second place-Gronau, fifteen kilometers north of Alfeld-and now six
divisions were involved in the drive on Hameln and others were attempting to
widen the breach. Still they were handicapped. There were relatively few roads
in this part of Germany, and those routes they controlled were still suffering
from air and artillery attacks that bled reinforcement columns long before they
could be committed to battle.

What had begun with three motor-rifle divisions attempting
to forge an opening for one tank division had now become the focus of two
complete Soviet armies. Where they had attacked into a pair of depleted German
brigades, now they faced a hodgepodge of units from nearly all NATO members.
Alekseyev anguished over lost chances. What if divisional artillery hadn't
dropped multiple rocket fire on the bridges? Could he have reached the Weser in
a day as he had thought? That is in the past, Pasha told himself. He looked
over the information on fuel availability.

"One month?"

"At current operational tempos, yes," Sergetov
said grimly. "And to do this we have crippled the whole national economy.
My father asks if we can reduce expenditures at the front-"

"Certainly," the General exploded. "We can
lose the war! That ought to save his precious fuel!''

"Comrade General, you requested that I provide you with
accurate information. I have done this. My father was also able to give me
this." The younger man took a document from his coat pocket. Ten pages
thick, it was a KGB intelligence assessment marked POLITBURO EYES ONLY.
"It makes very interesting reading. My father asks me to point out the
risk he has taken in giving you this document."

The General was a fast reader and ordinarily not a man given
to displays of emotion. The West German government had established direct
contact with the Soviets through the embassies both maintained in India. The
preliminary discussion had been an inquiry into the possibility of a negotiated
settlement. The KGB's assessment was that the inquiry reflected the
fragmentation of NATO politically, and possibly a grave supply situation on the
other side of the battle line. There followed two pages of graphs and claims of
damage to NATO shipping, plus analysis of NATO's munitions expenditures to
date. The KGB calculated that NATO supplies were down to the two-week mark now,
despite all the shipping that had arrived to date. Neither side had produced
enough consumable ordnance and fuel to sustain its forces.

"My father feels that this data on the Germans is
particularly significant."

"Potentially so," Alekseyev said cautiously.
"They will not slacken their fighting while their political leadership
works to achieve an acceptable settlement, but if we can make them an
acceptable offer and remove the Germans from NATO, then our objective is
achieved, and we can seize the Persian Gulf at leisure. What offer are we
making to the Germans?"

"That has not yet been decided. They have asked for our
withdrawal to prewar lines, with final terms to be negotiated on a more formal
basis under international supervision. Their withdrawal from NATO is to be
contingent upon the terms of the final treaty."

"Not acceptable. It gives us nothing. Why are they
negotiating at all, I wonder?"

"Evidently there has been considerable turmoil in their
government over the dislocation of civilians, and destruction of economic
assets."

"Ah." The economic damage to Germany was not
something in which Alekseyev had the slightest interest, but the German
government was watching the work of two generations being dismantled by Soviet
explosives. "But why hadn't they told us this?"

"The Politburo feels that news of a possible negotiated
settlement would discourage further pressure on the Germans."

"Idiots. This sort of thing tells us what to
attack!"

"That is what my father said. He wants your opinion on
all this."

"Tell the Minister that I see no indication at all of
weakening NATO resolve on the battle line. German morale in particular is still
high. They resist everywhere."

"Their government could be doing this without the
knowledge of their own army. If they are deceiving their NATO allies, why not
their high command also?" Sergetov suggested. After all, it worked that
way in his country . . .

"A possibility, Ivan Mikhailovich. There is another
one, as well." Alekseyev turned back to the papers. "That this is all
a sham."

NEW YORK

The briefing was conducted by a captain. As he spoke, the
escort commanders and their senior officers leafed through the briefing
documents like high school students at a Shakespeare play.

"Outlying sonar pickets will be positioned along the
threat axis here." The captain moved his pointer across the viewgraph. The
frigates Reuben James and Battleaxe were to be almost thirty miles from the
rest of the formation. That put them outside SAM coverage from the other ships.
They had their own surface-to-air missiles, but they would be completely on
their own. "We will have SURTASS support for most of the trip. The ships
are repositioning themselves now. We can expect Soviet submarine and air
attacks.

"To deal with the air threat, the carriers Independence
and America will be supporting the convoy. The new Aegis cruiser Bunker Hill,
as you may have noticed, will be traveling in the convoy. Also, the Air Force
will be taking out the Russian radar-ocean-reconnaissance satellite on its next
pass, about twelve hundred hours zulu tomorrow."

"All right!" a destroyer captain observed.

"Gentlemen, we are delivering a total load of over two
million tons of equipment, plus a complete armored division made up of reserve
and National Guard formations. Not counting the materiel reinforcements, this
is enough supplies to keep NATO in action for three weeks. This one goes
through.

"Any questions? No? Then, good luck."

The theater emptied, the officers filing past the armed
guards onto the sunny street.

"Jerry?" Morris said quietly.

"Yes, Captain?" The pilot donned his aviator's
sunglasses.

"About last night-"

"Captain, last night we both had too much to drink, and
to tell you the truth, I don't remember all that much. Maybe six months from
now we can decide what happened. You sleep well?"

"Almost twelve hours. My alarm clock didn't go
off."

"Maybe you should get a new one." They walked past
the bar both had visited the night before. The captain and the pilot gave it a
look, then laughed.

"Once more into the breach, dear friends!" Doug
Perrin joined them.

"Just don't give us any of this laying your ship
alongside the enemy crap," O'Malley suggested. "That 'away boarders'
shit is dangerous."

"Your job is to keep the bastards away from us, Jerr-O.
Up to it?"

"He'd better be," Morris observed lightly.
"I'd hate to think he's all talk!"

"We got a real nice bunch here," the pilot
observed angrily. "Jeez, I fly up all on my own, find a damned submarine,
give it to Doug here, and do I get any respect?"

"That's the problem with aviators. You don't tell them
how great they are every five minutes, they go and get depressed on you,"
Morris said with a smile. He was a different person from the one who had
mumbled through dinner last night. "Anything you need that we might have,
Doug?"

"Perhaps we might exchange some foodstuffs?"

"No problem. Send your supply officer over. I'm sure we
can negotiate something." Morris checked his watch. "We don't sail
for another three hours. Let's have a sandwich and talk over a few things. I
got an idea for spoofing those Backfires that I want to try out on you . .
."

Three hours later, a pair of Moran harbor tugs eased the
frigates away from the pier. Reuben James moved slowly, her turbine engines
pushing her through the polluted water at a gentle six knots. O'Malley watched
from the right seat of his helicopter, on alert for a possible Russian sub near
the entrance to the harbor, though four Orion patrol aircraft were vigorously
sanitizing the area. Probably the Victor they had killed two days before had
been detailed to trail and report on the convoy, first to direct a Backfire
raid, then to close and launch her own attack. The trailer was dead, but that
did not mean that the sailing was a secret. New York was a city of eight
million, and surely one of them was standing at his window with a pair of
binoculars, cataloging the ship types and numbers. He or she would make an
innocent telephone call, and the data would be in Moscow in a few hours. Other
submarines would close on their expected track. As soon as they were outside of
shore-based air cover, Soviet search aircraft would come looking, with
missile-armed Backfires behind them.

So many ships, O'Malley thought. They passed a series of
Ro/Ros, roll-on/roll-off container ships loaded with tanks, fighting vehicles,
and the men of a whole armored division. Others were piled high with containers
that could be loaded right onto trucks for dispatch to the front, their
contents recorded on computer for rapid delivery to the proper destination. He
thought about the news reports, the taped scenes of land combat in Germany.
That was what this was all about. The Navy's mission: keep the sea-lanes open
to deliver the tools those men in Germany needed. Get the ships across.

"How does she ride?" Calloway asked.

"Not too bad," Morris answered the reporter.
"We have fin stabilizers. She doesn't roll very much. If you have any
problem, our corpsman can probably come up with something. Don't be bashful
about asking."

"I will try to keep out of your way."

Morris gave the man from Reuters a friendly nod. He'd
arrived with only an hour's warning, but he seemed to be a pro, or at least
experienced enough to have all his gear packed in one bag. He took the last
available bunk in officers' country.

"Your admiral said that you're one of his best
commanders."

"I guess we'll find that out," Morris said.

35 - Time on Target

USS REUBEN JAMES

The first two days went well. The escort force sailed first,
blasting with their sonars at the shallow coastal water for possible submarines
and finding none. The merchant ships followed, forming slowly into eight
columns of ten each. The twenty-knot convoy was in a hurry to deliver its
goods. Covered by a massive umbrella of land-based aircraft, it pressed on
through the first forty-eight hours with only minor zigzagging as it sailed
past the coast of New England and Eastern Canada, Sable Island, and the Grand
Banks. The easy part was behind them now. As they left coastal waters for the
Atlantic Ocean proper, they entered the unknown territory.

"About filing my dispatches . . . " Calloway said
to Morris.

"Twice a day you can use my satellite transmitter as
long as it doesn't interfere with official traffic. You understand that your
reports will be run through Norfolk for sensitive information?"

"Quite so. Captain, you may believe me when I say that
as long as I'm here with you, I will reveal nothing that would endanger your
ship! I had quite enough excitement this year in Moscow."

"What?" Morris turned and lowered his binoculars.
Calloway explained what his spring had been like.

"Patrick Flynn, my opposite number from Associated
Press, is aboard Battleaxe. Doubtless drinking beer," he concluded.

"So you were there when all this boiled up. Do you know
why all this started?"

Calloway shook his head. "If I did, Captain, I'd have
filed the story long ago."

A messenger appeared on the bridge wing with a clipboard.
Morris took it, read through three messages, and signed for them.

"Something dramatic?" Calloway asked hopefully.

"Fleet weather-update and something about that Russian
reconnaissance satellite. It comes overhead in another three hours. The Air
Force is going to try and shoot it down before it gets to us, though. Nothing
major. You're comfortable, I presume. Any problems?"

"None, Captain. Nothing like a nice sea voyage."

"True enough." Morris stuck his head into the
pilothouse. "General Quarters, Air Action."

Morris led the reporter into the Combat Information Center,
explaining that the drill he was about to see was to make sure his men could do
everything properly even in the dark.

"One of those dispatches give you a warning?"

"No, but in six hours we'll be outside of land-based
fighter cover. That means Ivan is going to come looking for us." And it's
going to get awfully lonely out here by ourselves, Morris thought. He gave his
men an hour's worth of drill. The CIC crew ran a pair of computer simulations.
On the second one an enemy missile got through their defenses.

LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, VIRGINIA

The F-15 fighter rolled to a halt just outside the shelter
building. The crew chief set the ladder next to the aircraft, and Major
Nakamura climbed down, already looking aft at her scorched airplane. She walked
over to examine the damage.

"Don't look bad, Major," the sergeant assured her.
A fragment from the exploding rocket motor had drilled a hole the size of a
beer can right through her left wing, missing a fuel tank by three inches.
"I can fix that in a couple of hours."

"You all right?" the Lockheed engineer asked.

"It blew, fifty feet away, and it just blew the hell
up. You were wrong, by the way. When they blow, it's pretty spectacular. Pieces
all over the damned place. I was lucky I only caught one of them." It had
scared hell out of the pilot, but she'd then had an hour to recover. Now she was
just mad.

"Sorry, Major. Wish I could say more than that."

"Just have to try again," Buns said, looking up at
the sky through the hole. "When's the next window?"

"Eleven hours, sixteen minutes."

"That's it, then." She walked into the building,
then upstairs to the pilots' lounge. There was carpeting on the walls of the
building for noise absorption. It also prevented serious injury to the pilots'
fists.

KIROVSK, R.S.F.S.R.

Unhampered, the Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite
continued its orbit, and on its next pass over the North Atlantic found itself
looking down on a collection of nearly a hundred ships in even columns. This
must be the convoy their intelligence reports had told them about, the Russian
analysts decided-and, they noted with satisfaction, it was out in the open,
right where they could get at it.

Ninety minutes later, two regiments of missile-armed
Backfire bombers, preceded by Bear-D search aircraft, lifted off the four
airfields around Kirovsk, topped off their fuel tanks, and headed for the radar
gap over Iceland.

USS REUBEN JAMES

"So this is the surprise you have in store for
them?" Calloway asked. He tapped some symbols on the main tactical-display
scope.

Morris nodded thoughtfully. "So far we've sent most of
the convoys across under EMCON-that's emission control-with their radars
blacked out to make them hard to find. This time we're doing something a little
different. This is the display from the SPS-49 radar-"

"That black monster atop the pilothouse?"

"Right. These symbols are Tomcats from the carrier
America. This is a KC-135 tanker, and this baby here is an E-2C Hawkeye radar
bird. The Hawkeye's radar is shut down. When Ivan shows up, he'll have to close
to see what's here."

"But he already knows," Calloway objected.

"No, he knows there's a convoy around here somewhere.
That's not good enough to launch missiles. All he knows for sure is that there
is one operating SPS-49 radar. He'll have to light off his own radar to see
what's on the water. If Mr. Bear does that, we see him, and we'll have fighters
on his ass so fast he'll never know what hit him."

"And if the Backfires don't come today?"

"Then we'll see them some other time. The Bears talk to
submarines, too, Mr. Calloway. They are still worth killing."

ICELAND

It was the first time they'd been bored. Edwards and his
party had been terrified often enough, but never bored. Now they had been in
the same place for four complete days, and still they had no orders to move.
They observed, and reported minor Russian activity, but without anything
substantive to do, time was heavy on them.

"Lieutenant." Garcia pointed up. "I got
airplanes heading south."

Edwards got out his binoculars. The sky was dotted with white,
fleecy clouds. There were no contrails to be seen today, but-there! he saw a
flash, a reflection off something. He strained his eyes to identify it.

"Nichols, what do you think?" He handed the
glasses over.

"That's a Russian Backfire," Nichols said simply.

"You sure?"

"Quite sure, Leftenant. I've seen them before often
enough."

"Get a count." Edwards unpacked his radio.

"I only see four. All heading south, sir."

"You're sure they're Backfires?" Edwards
persisted.

"I am bloody sure, Leftenant Edwards!" Nichols
answered testily. He watched the officer turn on the radio.

"Beagle calling Doghouse, over." The
communications station was a little slow today. It took three calls before they
acknowledged.

"Doghouse, this is Beagle, and I have some information
for you. We see Backfire-type bombers southbound over our position."

"How do you know they're Backfires?" Doghouse
wanted to know.

"Because Sergeant Nichols of the Royal Marines says
he's bloody sure they're Backfires. Four of them"-Nichols held up five fingers
now" correction five aircraft southbound."

"Roger, thank you, Beagle. Anything else
happening?"

"Negative. How long do you expect us to sit on this
hill, over?"

"We'll let you know. Patience, Beagle. We haven't
forgotten you. Out."

NORTH ATLANTIC

Bears advanced in an oblique line, their crews scanning the
air with their eyes and probing the radar and radio frequencies. Presently the
leading Bear detected the emissions of a single American radar, and it took
only a minute to identify it as an SPS-49 air-search model of the type used by
Perry-class missile frigates. The technicians on board measured the signal's
intensity and, plotting its position, judged that they were far outside the
radar's detection range.

The raid commander riding in the third Bear received the
information and compared it with his intelligence data for the convoy. The
position was exactly in the middle of the circle he had drawn on his map. He
was suspicious of things that were so exact. The convoy was taking a direct
route to Europe? Why? Most convoys to date had taken a more evasive course,
detouring far south to the Azores in order to force his aircraft to reach
farther than they wanted-and thereby forcing the Backfires trailing the scouts
to carry only one missile instead of two. Something was strange here. On his
order, the patrol line reoriented itself to a north-south disposition and began
reducing altitude to keep below the horizon of the American radar.

USS REUBEN JAMES

"How far can you see?" Calloway asked.

"Depends on the altitude and size of the target, and
atmospheric conditions," Morris answered, staring down from his chair to
the electronic displays. Two Navy Tomcats were ready for combat. "For the
Bear, at thirty thousand feet or so, we can probably spot it about two hundred
fifty miles away. But the lower he flies, the closer he can get. Radar can't
see through the horizon."

"But flying low will cost him fuel."

Morris looked down at the reporter. "Those damned
things carry enough fuel to stay up all week," he exaggerated.

"Message from LANTFLT, Captain." The
communications officer handed the form over: REPORT POSSIBLE BACKFIRE RAID
SOUTHBOUND OVER ICELAND 1017z. Morris handed the message to his tactical action
officer, who immediately looked at the chart.

"Good news?" Calloway asked. He had better sense
than to ask to see the dispatch.

"We may be seeing Backfire bombers in a little over two
hours."

"Shooting for the convoy?"

"No, probably they'll want to shoot at us first. They
have a good four days to blast the convoy, and getting the escorts out of the
way makes that job a lot easier."

"Are you concerned?"

Morris smiled thinly. "Mr. Calloway, I'm always
concerned."

The captain reflexively checked the various status boards.
All his weapons and sensor systems were fully operational-so nice to have a
brand-new ship! The threat board showed no known submarine activity in the
immediate area, a datum to be taken with a considerable bit of skepticism. He
could call General Quarters now, but much of his crew was at lunch. Better to
have everyone fed and alert.

The damned waiting, Morris thought. He watched the displays
in silence. The blips indicating friendly aircraft orbited slowly as their
pilots waited too.

"More CAP coming up." an officer reported. Another
pair of Tomcats, part of the combat air patrol, appeared on the scope. America
had gotten the same raid warning. The carrier was two hundred miles away,
westbound for Norfolk. The same was true of Independence, returning from the
Azores. The carriers had been at sea since the war began, cruising back and
forth to avoid the orbiting Soviet ocean-reconnaissance satellites. They had
been able to provide antisubmarine protection for a number of convoys, though
only at great hazard to the carriers themselves. Up to now, the American
flattops had not been able to act as they were supposed to act. They were not
yet offensive weapons. The fate of the Nimitz group had come as a bitter
lesson. Morris lit another cigarette. Now he remembered why he'd quit in the
first place. Too many of them burned his throat, destroyed his sense of taste,
and made his eyes water. On the other hand, they did give him something to do
while he waited.

NORTH ATLANTIC

The Bears were on a precise north-south line now centered on
the position of the frigate's radar signals. The raid commander ordered them to
turn west and reduce altitude. Two aircraft failed to acknowledge the order,
and he had to repeat it.

Two hundred miles west of them, aboard the circling E-2C
Hawkeye surveillance aircraft, a technician's head went up. Held just heard
someone speaking Russian; in code, but definitely Russian.

Within minutes, every ship in the escort force had the
information, and they all came up with the same answer: the Backfires couldn't
be here yet. These were Bears. Everyone wanted to kill the Bears. The carrier
America started launching her fighters and additional radar aircraft. After
all, the Russians could be looking for her.

USS REUBEN JAMES

"He's gotta be heading right for us," the tactical
action officer said.

"That's the general idea," Morris agreed.

"How far?" Calloway asked.

"No way to know that. The Hawkeye copied a voice radio
transmission. Probably it's, fairly close, but freak atmospheric conditions can
let you hear that sort of thing from half a world away. Mr. Lenner, let's go to
battle stations for air action."

Five minutes later the frigate was ready.

NORTH ATLANTIC

"Good morning, Mr. Bear." The Tomcat pilot stared
at his TV display tube. The Russian aircraft was about forty miles away, the
sun glinting off its massive propellers. Deciding to close without using his radar
for the moment, the fighter pilot advanced his throttles to 80-percent power
and activated his missile controls. The head-on closure rate was over a
thousand miles per hour, seventeen miles per minute.

Then: "Energize!" the pilot ordered, and instantly
the radar intercept officer in the rear seat powered up the fighter's AWG-9
radar.

"We've got him," the RIO reported a moment later.

"Shoot!" Two missiles dropped free and accelerated
to over three thousand miles per hour.

The Soviet electronics-warfare technician was trying to
isolate the signature characteristics of the frigate's search radar when a beep
sounded on a separate warning receiver. He turned to see what the noise was and
went pale.

"Air-attack warning!" he shouted over the
intercom.

Reacting at once, the pilot rolled the Bear left and dove
for the surface of the ocean, while aft the EW technician activated his
protective jamming systems. However, the turn had masked the jammer pods from
the incoming missiles.

"What's happening?" the raid commander demanded
over the intercom.

"We have an interceptor radar on us," the
technician replied, scared but cool. "Jamming pods are activated."

The raid commander turned to his communications man.
"Get a warning out: enemy fighter activity this position."

But there wasn't time. The Phoenixes covered the distance in
less than twenty seconds. The first went wild and missed, but the second locked
on the diving bomber and blew its tail off. The Bear fell to the sea with as
little grace as a dropped sheet of paper.

USS REUBEN JAMES

The radar showed the Tomcat, and they watched as it launched
two missiles that immediately disappeared from sight, and then, silently, as
the Tomcat continued east for thirty seconds. Then it turned around and headed
back west.

"That, gentlemen, is a kill," Morris said.
"Splash one Bear."

"How do you know?" Calloway asked.

"You think he would have turned back if he missed? And
if it was anything but a Bear, he'd have broken radio silence. ESM, we copy any
radio traffic from zero-eight-zero?"

The petty officer in the forward starboard corner of the
compartment didn't look up. "No, Captain, not a peep."

"Damn," Morris said. "It works."

"And if the bugger didn't get a message out-"
Calloway understood.

"We're the only ones who know. Maybe we can bushwhack
the whole attack force." Morris stepped over to the display screen. The
America's fighters were now all in the air, seventy miles south of the convoy.
He looked at the bulkhead clock: the Backfires were about forty minutes away.
He lifted a phone. "Bridge, Combat. Signal Battleaxe to close in."

Within seconds, Battleaxe turned hard a'port and headed west
toward  Reuben James. One new thing had
already worked today, Morris thought. Why not another?

"Stand by to launch helo," he ordered.

O'Malley was sitting in his cockpit reading a magazine, or
at least letting his eyes scan the pictures while his mind struggled to detach
itself from what was going on around him. The announcement over the loudspeaker
tore him away from Miss July. Immediately, Ensign Ralston began the engine
start sequence while O'Malley scanned the trouble board for any mechanical
problems, then looked out the door to be sure that the deck crewmen were clear.

"What are we supposed to be doing, Commander?" the
systems operator inquired.

"We're supposed to be missile bait, Willy,"
O'Malley replied amiably, and lifted off.

NORTH ATLANTIC

The southernmost Bear was within sixty miles of the convoy,
but didn't yet know it, nor did the Americans, since he was below the horizon
from Reuben James's radar. The Bear's pilot did know that it was about time for
the aircraft to climb and switch on their own search radars. But word hadn't
come yet from the raid commander. Though there was no indication of trouble,
the pilot was worried. His instinct told him something strange was happening.
One of the Bears that had disappeared last week, reported tracking a single
American frigate radar-nothing more. Just like now . . . The raid commander
then had aborted the Backfire mission for fear of enemy fighter activity, only
to be dressed down for supposed cowardice. As was so often the case in combat,
the only data available were negative. They knew that four Bears had not
returned. He knew that his raid commander had not yet given the expected order.
He knew there had not been any positive sign of trouble. He also knew that he
was not happy.

"Estimated distance to that American frigate?" he
asked over his intercom.

"One hundred thirty kilometers," the navigator
answered.

Maintain radio silence, the pilot told himself. Those are
the orders . . .

"Screw the orders!" he said aloud. The pilot
reached down and flipped on his radio. "Gull Two to Gull One, over."
Nothing. He repeated the call twice more.

Lots of radio receivers heard that, and in less than a
minute the Bear's position was plotted, forty miles southeast of the convoy. A
Tomcat dove after the contact.

The raid commander didn't answer . . . he would have
answered, the pilot told himself. He would have answered. The Backfires should
now be less than two hundred kilometers away. "What are we leading them
into?

"Activate the radar!" he ordered.

Every screen ship detected the distinctive emissions from
the Big Bulge radar. The nearest SAM-equipped ship, the frigate Groves,
immediately energized her missile radars and fired a surface-to-air missile at
the oncoming Bear-but the Tomcat fighter that was also racing toward the Bear
was too close. The frigate shut down her tracking radar, and the SMI missile
lost radar lock and self-destructed automatically.

Aboard the Bear the warnings came back to back, first
surface-to-air missile alarm, then an air-intercept radar-and then the radar
operator acquired the convoy.

"Many ships to the northwest." The radar operator
passed the information to the navigator, who worked out a position report for
the Backfires. The Bear shut down her radar and dove while the communications officer
broadcast his sighting report. And then everyone's radars lit up.

USS REUBEN JAMES

"There are the Backfires," the tactical action
officer said as the symbols appeared on the scope. "Bearing zero-four-one,
range one hundred eighty miles."

On the bridge the executive officer was as nervous as he
would ever get. In addition to the inbound bomber raid, he was now conning his
ship exactly fifty feet from the side of HMS Battleaxe The ships were so close
together that on a radarscope they'd appear as a single target. Five miles
away, O'Malley and the helicopter from Battleaxe were also flying close
formation over the ocean at twenty knots. Each had its blip-enhance transponder
turned on. Ordinarily too small to register on this sort of radar, the helicopters
would now appear to be a ship, something worthy of a missile attack.

NORTH ATLANTIC

The air action now had all the elegance of a saloon fight.
The Tomcats on combat air patrol near the convoy flew toward the three Bears,
the first of which already had a missile streaking toward it. The other two had
not yet detected the convoy, and never would, as they ran due east to get away.
It was a vain attempt. Propeller-driven patrol bombers cannot run from
supersonic fighters.

Gull Two died first. The pilot managed to get his contact
report out and acknowledged before a pair of Sparrow missiles exploded close
aboard, setting his wing afire. He ordered his men to bail out, kept the
aircraft level so they could, and a minute later struggled out of his seat and
jumped through the escape hatch in the floor. The Bear exploded five seconds
after he opened his parachute. As the pilot watched his aircraft fireball into
the sea, he wondered if he'd drown.

Above him a squadron of Tomcats headed toward the Backfires,
and the race was to see who got into missile-firing position first. The Soviet
bombers climbed steeply on afterburner, activating their own look-down radars
to find targets for their missiles. Their orders were to locate and kill
escorts, and they found what they were looking for thirty miles from the body
of the convoy: two blips. The large blip in the rear drew six shots. The
smaller one five miles away drew four.

STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND

"We have a multi-regiment Backfire raid in progress now
at forty-five degrees north, forty-nine west." Toland held the Red Rocket
telex in his hand.

"What does COMEASTLANT have to say about it?"

"He's probably going over this one now. You
ready?" he asked the fighter pilot.

"Damned right I'm ready!"

The teleprinter in the corner of the room started
chattering: INDICATE OPERATION DOOLITTLE.

USS REUBEN JAMES

"Vampire, vampire! We have incoming missiles."

Here we go again, Morris thought. The tactical display was
more modern than what he'd had on Pharris--each of the incoming missiles was
marked with a velocity vector that indicated speed and direction. They were
coming in low.

Morris lifted his phone. "Bridge, Combat. Execute
separation maneuver."

"Bridge, aye. Separating now," Ernst said.
"Crash stop! All back emergency!"

The helmsman pulled the throttle control back, then abruptly
reversed the pitch of the propeller blades, throwing the ship from ahead to
full astern. Reuben James slowed so rapidly that men had to brace themselves,
and Battleaxe forged ahead, accelerating to twenty-five knots. As soon as it
was safe, the British frigate turned hard to port, and Reuben James went to
ahead full and turned sharply to starboard.

Any Soviet radar operator who had lingered behind would have
been impressed by the deception. The oncoming AS-4 missiles had been targeted
on a single blip. Now there were two, and they were separating. The missiles
divided their attention evenly, with three opting for either target.

Morris watched his display intently. The distance between
his ship and his companion was widening rapidly.

"Missiles are tracking us!" the ESM operator said
loudly. "We have multiple missile seeker heads tracking us."

"Right full rudder, reverse course. Fire off chaff
rockets!"

Everyone in the Combat Information Center jumped as four
canisters exploded directly overhead, filling the air with aluminum foil and
creating a radar target for the missiles to track while the frigate heeled
violently to port as she turned. Her forward missile launcher turned around
with her, a SAM already assigned to the first incoming Russian missile. The
frigate righted herself on a northerly course, three miles behind Battleaxe.

"Here we go," the weapons officer said. The
solution light blinked on the firecontrol console.

The first of the white-painted SMI missiles shot into the
sky. It had scarcely cleared the launch rail when the launcher twisted in two
dimensions and accepted another missile from the circular magazine, then turned
and elevated again, firing seven seconds after the first missile was launched,
then repeated the cycle twice more.

"That's it!" O'Malley said when he saw the first
smoke trail. He punched his finger on the blip-enhance button. "Hatchet,
shut down your emitter and break left!" Both helicopters went to full
power and ran away. Four missiles suddenly had no targets. They kept heading
west to look for more, but there were none to be found.

"More chaff," Morris ordered, watching the
electronic traces of friendly and unfriendly missiles converge. The CIC shook
again as another cloud of aluminum blasted into the air, and the wind carried
it toward the incoming missiles.

"We still have missiles tracking us!"

"Hit!" the weapons officer exclaimed. The first
missile disappeared from the scope, intercepted sixteen miles out, but the
second Soviet missile kept coming. The first SAM sent after it missed,
exploding harmlessly behind it, and then the second one missed, too. Another
SAM was fired. Range was down to six miles. Five. Four. Three.

"Hit! One missile left-veering off. Going after the
chaff! Passing aft!"

The missile struck the water two thousand yards from Reuben
James Even at that distance the noise was impressive. It was followed by total
silence in the CIC. Men kept staring at their instruments, looking for
additional missiles, and it took several seconds before they were satisfied
that there were no more. One by one the sailors looked at their comrades and
began to breathe again.

"What modern combat lacks in humanity," Calloway
observed, "it more than makes up for in intensity."

Morris leaned back in his chair. "Or something like
that. What's the story on Battleaxe?"

"Still on radar, sir," the tactical action officer
replied. Morris lifted the radiotelephone.

"Bravo, this is Romeo. Do you read, over."

"I do believe we're still alive." Perrin was
examining his tactical display and shaking his head in amazement.

"Any damage?"

"None. Hatchet is checking in. He's all right, too.
Remarkable," Captain Perrin said. "Any further inbound traffic? We
show none."

"Negative. The Tomcats chased the Backfires off the
scope. Let's get reformed."

"Roger, Romeo."

Morris hung up and looked around the CIC. "Well done,
people."

The sailors in the room looked at each other, and presently
some grins started showing. But they didn't last long.

The TAO looked up. "For your information, Captain, Ivan
fired a quarter of his missiles at us. So far as I can tell, the Tomcats got
about six, and Bunker Hill got most of the rest . . but we show one frigate
hit, and three merchies. The fighters are returning." He kept his voice
neutral. "They report zero kills on the Backfire force."

"Damn!" Morris said. The trap had failed-and he
didn't know why.

He had no idea that Stornoway considered it a success.

STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND

The key to the operation, as with all military operations,
was communications, and not enough time had been spent setting the lines up on
this one to suit Toland. The America's radar aircraft tracked the Backfires all
the way off the scope. The data from the aircraft was linked to the carrier,
thence by satellite to Norfolk, and by satellite again to Northwood. His data
came by land line from Royal Navy headquarters. The most important NATO mission
of the war depended on transistors and telephone wire more than the weapons
that were to be employed.

"Okay, their last course was zero-two-nine, speed six
hundred ten knots."

"That puts them over Iceland's north coast in two
hours, seventeen minutes. How much time did they have on burner?"
Commander Winters asked.

"About five, according to America. " Toland
frowned. This was pretty thin intelligence information.

"Any way you cut it, their fuel reserves are thinned
down some . . . Okay. Three aircraft, eighty miles apart." He looked over
at the newest satellite weather photo. "Good visibility. We'll spot 'em.
Whoever does, follows-the other planes come right back home."

"Good luck, Commander."

NORTH ATLANTIC

The three Tomcats climbed slowly to altitude on a course
northwest from Stornoway, and at thirty-five thousand feet linked up with their
tankers. Several hundred miles away the Backfire crews did much the same thing.
The presence of American fighters over the convoy in large numbers had come as
a rude shock, but time and distance had been in their favor, and they'd managed
to escape without loss this time. The crew of each aircraft talked among
themselves, their emotions released by the climax of yet another dangerous
mission. They discussed the claims they'd make on returning to Kirovsk, based
on a straightforward mathematical formula. One missile in three was judged to
have hit a target, even accounting for enemy SAM fire. Today SAM opposition had
been light-though none had lingered to evaluate it properly. By consensus they
would claim sixteen ship kills, and claim both the outside sonar pickets that
their comrades in submarines were having such a bad time with. The flight crews
relaxed and sipped tea from thermos jugs as they contemplated their next visit
to the eighty-ship convoy. The Tomcats separated as they spotted the mountains
of Iceland. No radio signals were passed; the flyers exchanged hand signals
before breaking off on their patrol stations. They knew the radars couldn't
reach them there. Commander Winters checked his watch. The Backfires should be
here in about thirty minutes.

"Such a beautiful island," the Backfire pilot
observed to his copilot.

"Pretty to took at, living there I am not so certain
about. I wonder if the women are as pretty as I have heard? One day we must
have 'mechanical difficulties.' Then we could land there and find out."

"We must get you married, Volodya."

The copilot laughed. "So many tears would be shed! How
can I deny myself to the women of the world?"

The pilot punched up his radio. "Keflavik, this is Sea
Eagle Two-Six, status check."

"Sea Eagle, we show no contacts except for your group.
Count is correct. IFF transponders show normal."

"Acknowledged. Out." The pilot switched off.
"So, Volodya, our friends are still there. Lonely place."

"If there are women about, and you are kulturny, you
need never be lonely." Another voice came over the intercom.

"Will somebody shut that horny bastard up!'' the
navigator suggested.

"Studying to be a political officer?" the copilot
inquired. "How long to home?"

"Two hours twenty-five minutes."

The Backfire continued northeast at six hundred knots as it
passed over the desolate center of the island.

"Tallyho!" the pilot said quietly. "One
o'clock and low." The Tomcat's onboard television system showed the
distinctive shape of the Russian bomber. Say what you want about the Russians,
Winters thought, they do build 'em pretty.

He turned the aircraft, which took his nose-mounted camera
off the target, but his back-seat officer put his binoculars on the Backfire
and soon spotted two more flying in a loose formation. As expected, their
course was northeast, and they were cruising at about thirty thousand feet.
Winters looked for a big cloud to hide in and found one. Visibility dropped to
a few yards. There could be another Backfire out there, Winters thought, and
maybe he likes flying in clouds, too. That could really ruin this mission.

He ran out of cloud a moment later, banked his fighter hard,
and ducked back inside, his mind computing time and distance. The Backfires
should all be past now. He pulled back on his stick and popped out of the cloud
top.

"There they be," the back-seater said first.
"Heads up! I see more of ,em at three o'clock."

The pilot vanished back into the cloud for another ten
minutes. Finally: "Nothing to the south of us. They should all be past by
now, don't you think?"

"Yeah, let's go looking."

One terrifying minute later, Winters was wondering if he
hadn't let them get too far ahead, as his TV system swept across the sky and
found nothing. Patience, he told himself, and increased his speed to six
hundred ninety knots. Five minutes later, a dot appeared on his screen. It grew
to three dots. He estimated he was forty miles behind the Backfires, and with
the sun at his back, there was no way they could spot him. His backseater made
a check of the radar warning receiver and the air behind them for additional
aircraft, a procedure repeated three times a minute. If an American fighter
could be out here, why not a Russian?

The pilot watched the numbers click off on his inertial
navigation system, kept an eye on fuel, and watched forward for any change in
the Russian bomber formation. It was both exciting and boring. He knew the
significance of what he was doing, but the actual doing was no more thrilling
than driving a 747 from New York to L.A. For over an hour they flew, covering
the seven hundred miles between Iceland and the Norwegian coast.

"Here's where it gets cute," the back-seater said.
"Air-search radar ahead, looks like Andoya. Still over a hundred miles
away, they'll probably have us in two or three minutes."

"That's nice." Where there was air-search radar,
there would be fighters. "Got their position worked out?"

"Yep."

"Start transmitting." Winters turned the aircraft
and headed back out to sea.

Two hundred miles away, a circling British Nimrod receipted
the signal and retransmitted to a communications satellite.

NORTHWOOD, ENGLAND

Admiral Beattie was trying to remain calm, but it didn't
come easily to a man whose nerves had been stretched and abused by crisis after
crisis since the war began. Doolittle was his baby. For the past two hours,
he'd waited for word from the Tomcat. Two had returned without sighting the
Russians. One had not. Was it tracking them as planned or had it merely fallen
into the sea?

The printer in the corner of the communications room began
to make the screening sound that the Admiral had learned to hate: EYEBALLS
REPORTS HARES AT 69/20N, 15/45E AT 1543z COURSE 021 SPEED 580 KTS ALT 30.

Beattie tore the page off and handed it to his
air-operations officer. "That puts them on the ground in thirty-seven
minutes. Assuming it's the last group, and a fifteen-minute spread, the first
bombers will be landing in twenty-two minutes."

"Fifteen minutes from now, then?"

"Yes, Admiral."

"Get the order out!"

In thirty seconds half a dozen separate satellite channels
began transmitting the same message.

USS CHICAGO

The three American submarines had lain on the bottom of the
Barents Sea near the Russian coastline-so near, it was only one hundred
seventy-four feet of water-for what seemed like half a lifetime, before finally
receiving the signal to move south. McCafferty smiled with relief. The three
British submarines, including HMS Torbay, had already done their job. They had
sneaked up on a Russian frigate and four patrol boats patrolling the
Russian/Norwegian coastline and attacked with torpedoes. The Russians could
only assume a major effort was under way to penetrate their patrol barrier, and
had sent their antisub patrol force west to meet it.

Leaving the way clear for USS Chicago and her mates. He
hoped.

As they closed in, his electronics technicians plotted and
replotted their bearings. They had to be in exactly the right place when they
fired their missiles.

"How long before we shoot?" the XO asked.

"They'll let us know," McCafferty said.

And then, with the chatter of the message from Northwood,
they did know.

They would launch at 1602 Zulu Time.

"Up scope." McCafferty spun the instrument around.
A rainstorm overhead drove four-foot waves.

"Looks clear to me," the XO said, watching the TV
display.

The captain slapped the handles up on the scope. It headed
down into its well. "ESM?"

"Lots of radar stuff, Cap'n," the technician
replied. "I show ten different transmitters in operation."

McCafferty inspected the Tomahawk weapons status board on
the starboard side of the attack center. His torpedo tubes were loaded with two
Mark-48s and two Harpoon missiles. The clock ticked away toward 1602.

"Commence launch sequence."

Toggle switches were thrown, and the weapons status lights
blinked red; the captain and the weapons officer inserted their keys in the
panel, and turned them; the petty officer on the weapons board turned the
firing handle to the left-and the arming process was complete. Forward, in the
bow of the submarine, the guidance systems of twelve Tomahawk cruise missiles
were fully activated. On-board computers were told where their flight would
begin. They already knew where it was supposed to end.

"Initiate launch," McCafferty ordered.

Ametist was not part of the regular Soviet Navy. Principally
concerned with security operations, this Grisha-class patrol frigate was manned
by a KGB crew, and her captain had spent the last twelve hours sprinting and
drifting, dipping his helicopter-type sonar and listening in the American
fashion rather than the Russian. With her diesel engines shut down, she made no
noise at all, and her short profile was hard to spot from more than a mile
away. She had not heard the American submarines approach.

The first Tomahawk broke the surface of the Barents Sea at
16:01:58, two thousand yards from the Russian frigate. The lookout took a second
or two to react. As he saw the cylindrical shape rise on its solid-rocket
booster and arc southwest, an icy lead ball materialized in his stomach.

"Captain! Missile launch to starboard!"

The captain raced out onto the bridge wing and looked on in
amazement as a second missile broke the surface, then he leaped back into the
pilothouse.

"Battle stations! Radio room, call Fleet HQ, tell them
enemy missiles launching from grid square 451/679-now! All ahead full! Rudder
right!"

The frigate's diesel engines roared into life.

"What in hell is that?" the sonar chief asked. His
submarine shuddered every four seconds with the missile launches, but-
"Conn, sonar, we have a contact bearing zero-nine-eight. Diesel-surface
ship, sounds like a Grisha, and he's close, sir!"

"Up scope!" McCafferty whirled the periscope
around and snapped the handle to full power. He saw the Russian frigate turning
hard. "Snap shot! Set it up! Surface target bearing zero-nine-seven,
range"-he worked the stademeter control-"one six hundred, course,
shit! he's turning away. Call it zero-nine-zero, speed twenty." Too close
for a missile shot, they had to engage with torpedoes. "Down scope!"

The fire-control man tapped the numbers into the computer.
The computer needed eleven seconds to digest the information. "Set! Ready
for tubes one and three."

"Flooding tubes, outer doors open-ready!" the XO
said.

"Match generated bearings and shoot!"

"Fire one, fire three." The executive officer
struggled with his emotions and won. Where had that Geisha come from?
"Reload with 48s!"

"Last bird away!" the missile technician
announced. "Securing from launch."

"Left full rudder!''

Ametist never saw the missiles launching behind her. The men
were too busy racing to stations, while her captain rang up full power and the
ship's weapons officer ran up in his shorts to work the rocket launchers. They
didn't need sonar for this; they could see all too well where the submarine
was-firing missiles at the Motherland!

"Fire when ready!" the captain yelled.

The lieutenant's thumb came down on the firing key. Twelve
antisubmarine rockets arched through the air.

"Ametist," the radio squawked. "Repeat your
message-what missiles? What kind of missiles!"

Providence discharged her last missile just as the frigate fired
at her. The captain ordered flank speed and a radical turn even as the rockets
tipped over and began to fall toward his submarine. They fell in a wide
circular pattern designed to cover the maximum possible area, two exploding
within one hundred yards, close enough to startle but not to damage. The last
one hit the water directly over the submarine's sail. A second later, the
forty-six-pound warhead exploded.

Ametist's captain ignored the radio while he tried to decide
if his first salvo had hit the target or not. The last rocket had exploded
faster than the others. He was about to give the order to fire again when the
sonar officer reported two objects approaching from aft, and he shouted rudder
orders. The ship was already at full speed as the radio speaker continued to
scream at him.

"Both fish have acquired the target!"

"Up scope!" McCafferty let it go all the way up
before pulling the handles down. At full magnification the Grisha nearly filled
the lens, and then both fish hit her port side and the thousand-ton patrol
frigate disintegrated before his eyes. He turned completely around, sweeping
the horizon to check for additional enemy ships. "Okay, it's clear."

"That won't last very long. He was shooting at
Providence, sir."

"Sonar, what do you have on zero-nine-zero?"
McCafferty asked.

"Lotsa noise from the fish, sir, but I think we have
blowing air at zero-nine-eight."

"Get us over there." McCafferty kept the periscope
up as the XO conned the sub toward Providence. The Grisha was well and truly
destroyed. Together the torpedoes carried nearly fifteen hundred pounds of high
explosives. He saw two life rafts that had inflated automatically on hitting
the water, but no men.

"Boston is calling on the gertrude, skipper. They want
to know what the hell happened."

"Tell 'em." The captain adjusted the periscope
slightly. "Okay, there she is, she's surfacing-holy shit!"

The submarine's sail was wrecked, the after third of it
completely gone, and the rest shredded. One diving plane hung down like the
wing of a crippled bird, and the Periscopes and masts housed in the structure
were bent into the shape of a modernistic sculpture.

"Try to raise Providence on the gertrude."

Sixty Tomahawk missiles were now in the air. On leaving the
water, solid-fuel rockets had boosted them to an altitude of one thousand feet,
where their wings and jet-engine air inlets had deployed. As soon as their jet
engines had begun to function, the Tomahawks began a shallow descent that ended
thirty feet above the ground. On-board radar systems scanned ahead to keep the
missiles close to the ground, and to match the terrain with map coordinates
stored in their computer memories. Six separate Soviet radars detected the
missiles' boost phase, then lost them as they went low.

The Russian technicians whose job it was to watch for a
possible nuclear attack against their homeland were every bit as tense as their
Western counterparts, and the weeks of sustained conventional conflict, coupled
with continuous maxirnum-alert status, had frayed nerves to the breaking point.
As soon as the Tomahawks had been detected rising from the sea, a
ballistic-missile attack warning had flashed to Moscow. Ametist's visual
missile warning arrived at naval headquarters in Severomorsk almost as fast,
and a THUNDERBOLT alert sent immediately, the code-word prefix guaranteeing
instant passage to the Ministry of Defense. Launch authority for the
antiballistic missiles deployed around Moscow was automatically released to the
battery commanders, and though it was several minutes before radar officers
were able to confirm to Moscow's satisfaction that the missiles had dropped off
their scopes and were not on ballistic trajectories, defense units stayed on
alert, and all over northern Russia air-defense interceptors scrambled.

The missiles could not have cared about the furor they had
caused. At this point, the Russian coast was composed of rocky bluffs and
cliffs that gave way to tundra, the flat marsh of northern climes. It was ideal
terrain for the cruise missiles, which settled down to a flight path scant feet
over the grassy swamps at a speed of five hundred knots. Each flew over Lake
Babozero, their first navigational reference point, and there their flight
paths diverged.

The Soviet fighters now lifting off the ground had little
idea what they were after. Radar information gave the course and speed of the
targets, but if they were cruise missiles, they could reach as far as the Black
Sea coast. They could even be targeted on Moscow and be flying a deceptive
course far off the direct path to the Soviet capital. On orders from their
ground controllers, the interceptors arrayed themselves south of the White Sea,
and switched on their look-down radars to see if they could spot the missiles
crossing the flat surface.

But they weren't going to Moscow. Dodging between the
occasional hills, the missiles flew on a bearing of two-one-three until they
reached the scrub pine forest. One by one they banked hard to the right and
changed course to two-nine-zero. One missile went out of control and fell to
the earth, another failed to make the turn and went south. The rest continued
to their targets.

SEA EAGLE TWO-SIX

The last Backfire bomber circled Umbozero-South, waiting to
land. The pilot checked his fuel. About thirty minutes left, there was not that
much of a hurry. For security reasons the three regiments were divided among
four airfields clustered south of the mining city of Kirovsk. The tall hills
around the town held powerful radars and mobile SAM batteries to stave off a
NATO air attack. Most of the smelters were still operating, the pilot saw, the
smoke rising from the many tall chimneys.

"Sea Eagle Two-Six, you are cleared to land," the
tower said finally.

"Who will it be tonight, Volodya?"

"Twenty degrees of flaps. Air speed two hundred.
Landing gear is down and locked. Irina Petrovna, I think. The tall, skinny one
at the telephone exchange."

"What's that?" the pilot asked. A small white
object suddenly appeared over the runway in front of him.

The first of twelve Tomahawk missiles assigned to
Umbozero-South cut across the runway at a shallow angle, then the blunt nose
cover sprang off the airframe, and several hundred small bomblets began to
sprinkle over the area. Seventeen Backfires were already on the ground. Ten
were being refueled from trucks in the open, the others were armed and ready
for another mission, dispersed in concrete revetments. Each bomblet was the
equivalent of a mortar shell. The Tomahawk dropped its complete load, then
climbed straight up, stalled, and crashed back to earth, adding its own fuel
load to the destruction. A ready-force Backfire went first. Two bomblets fell
on its wing and the bomber fireballed into the sky.

The pilot of Two-Six advanced his throttles and climbed out
of the landing pattern, watching in horror as ten bombers exploded before his
eyes and telltale puffs of smoke told him of less serious damage to many
others. In two minutes, it was over. Crash trucks raced like toys along the
concrete as men played fire hoses on the burning trucks and aircraft. The pilot
headed north for his alternate field and saw smoke rising there also.

"Fifteen minutes' fuel. You'd better find us a place
fast," Volodya warned. They turned left for Kirovsk-South and the same
story was repeated. The attack had been timed for the missiles to hit all four
targets simultaneously.

"Afrikanda, this is Sea Eagle Two-Six. We are low on
fuel and need to land immediately. Can you take us?"

"Affirmative, Two-Six. Runway is clear. Wind is
two-six-five at twenty."

"Very well, we're coming in. Out." The pilot
turned. "What the hell was that?" he asked Volodya.

USS CHICAGO

"Communications is gone, fire-control is gone,
fairwater planes gone. We stopped the leaks. Engines are okay, we can
steam," the skipper of  Providence
said over the gertrude.

"Very well. Stand by." Boston was also alongside.
"Todd, this is Danny. What do you think?"

"She won't make it out alone. I suggest we send the
rest back out. You and me escort her."

"Agreed. You follow 'em out. We'll try to clear datum
as quick as we can."

"Good luck, Danny." Boston raised her radio whip
and made a quick transmission. A minute later USS Chicago's sonar showed the
noise of the other submarines racing north.

"Providence, recommend you come to course zero-one-five
and go as fast as you can. We'll cover your tail. Boston will rendezvous later
and we'll both escort you to the pack."

"You can't risk it, we can-"

"Move your fucking boat!" McCafferty shouted into
the microphone. He was exactly three months senior in rank to his counterpart
on Providence. Presently the wounded submarine dived and headed northeast at
fifteen knots. Her damaged sail structure sounded like a junk wagon in the
waterflow, but there was nothing they could do about it. If the submarines were
to have any chance of survival, they had to put as much distance between
themselves and the firing point as they could.

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

Mikhail Sergetov looked around at a group of men still pale
at what might have been.

"Comrade Defense Minister," the General Secretary
said. "Can you tell us what has happened?"

"It would seem that submarines launched a number of
cruise missiles at some of our northern airfields. Their aim was evidently to
destroy a number of our Backfire bombers. How successful they were I do not yet
know."

"Where did they launch their missiles from?" Pyotr
Bromkovskiy asked.

"East of Murmansk, less than thirty kilometers from our
coast. A frigate saw and reported the launch, then went off the air. We have
aircraft searching for him now."

"How the hell did he get there! If that submarine had
launched ballistic missiles at us," Bromkovskiy demanded, "how much
warning would we have had?"

"Six to seven minutes."

"Wonderful! We cannot react that fast. How can you let
them get so close!"

"They won't get out, Petya, I promise you that!"
the Defense Minister replied heatedly.

The General Secretary leaned forward. "You will see to
it that this can never happen again!"

"While we are all here, Comrades," Sergetov spoke
up. "Can the Comrade Defense Minister review overnight developments on the
German Front?"

"NATO forces are strained to the breaking point. As the
KGB has told us, their supplies are critically low, and with the diplomatic
developments of the past few days, I think we may safely assume that NATO is on
the verge of political disintegration. All we have to do is keep the pressure
on, and they must collapse!"

"But we are running out of fuel also!" Bromkovskiy
said. "The offer the Germans have given us is a reasonable one."

"No." The Foreign Minister shook his head
emphatically. "This gives us nothing."

"It gives us peace, Comrade," Bromkovskiy said
quietly. "If we continue-consider, my friends, consider what we were all
thinking a few hours ago when the rocket warning came in."

For the first time, Sergetov realized, the old man had made
a point they all agreed with. After weeks and months of promises and plans and
assurances on how things could be kept under control, that one false alarm had
forced them to look at what lay over the edge of the abyss. For ten minutes
they feared that control had been lost, and all the Defense Minister's bluster
could not make them forget that.

After a moment of consideration, the General Secretary
spoke. "Our representatives are meeting with the Germans in a few hours.
The Foreign Minister will report to us tomorrow on the substance of their new
offer."

On that note the session ended. Sergetov tucked his notes in
his leather briefcase, left the room alone, and walked downstairs to his
official car. A junior aide held the door open when a voice called.

"Mikhail Eduardovich, may I ride with you? My car has
broken down." It was Boris Kosov, chairman of the Committee for State
Security, the KGB.

36 - Shootout at 31 West!

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

"Shall we take a drive today, Mikhail Eduardovich?
Perhaps we can talk?" Sergetov's blood chilled, though he did not let it
show. Was it possible for the Chief of the KGB not to look sinister? he
wondered. From Leningrad, like Sergetov, Kosov was a short, rotund man who had
taken over the KGB after running the Central Committee's shadowy "General
Department." He had a jolly laugh when he wanted to, and in another guise
could be the personification of Grandfather Frost, the State's acceptable
version of Santa Claus. But he was not in another guise now.

"Certainly, Boris Georgiyevich," Sergetov said,
and pointed at his driver. "You may speak freely. Vitaly is a good
man."

"I know it," Kosov replied. "He's worked for
us the last ten years." Sergetov only had to watch the back of his
driver's neck to know that Kosov spoke the truth.

"So what shall we talk about?"

The Director of the KGB reached into his briefcase and came
out with a device about the size of a paperback book. He flipped a switch and
it gave off an unpleasant buzz."

"A clever new device made in the Netherlands, he
explained. "It gives off a noise that renders most microphones useless.
Something to do with harmonics, my people tell me." Then his manner
changed abruptly.

"Mikhail Eduardovich, do you know the significance of
the American attack on our airfields?"

"A troublesome development to be sure, but-"

"I thought not. Several NATO convoys are at sea. A
major one left New York several days ago. It carries two million tons of
essential war materiel, plus a complete American division, to Europe. In
destroying a number of our bombers, NATO has significantly reduced our ability
to deal with the convoys. They have also cleared the way for direct attacks
against Soviet soil."

"But Iceland-"

"Has been neutralized." Kosov explained what had
happened to the Soviet fighters at Keflavik.

"You're telling me the war goes badly? Then why is
Germany making overtures for peace?"

"Yes, that is a very good question."

"If you have suspicions, Comrade Director, you should
not bring them to me!"

"I will tell you a story. Back in January when I had my
bypass surgery, day-today control of KGB passed to the First Deputy Chairman,
Josef Larionov. Have you met little Josef?" Kosov asked.

"No, he never took your place at Politburo
meetings-what about the Defense Council?" Sergetov's head snapped around.
"They did not consult you? You were recovering then."

"An exaggeration. I was quite ill for two weeks, but
naturally this information was kept quiet. It took another month before I was
back working full time. The members of the Defense Council had no wish to
impede my recovery, and so young, ambitious Josef was called in to give KGB's
official intelligence assessment. As you might imagine, we have many schools of
thought in the intelligence services-it is not like your precious engineering
where all things are broken into neat little numbers and graphs. We have to
look inside the heads of men who often as not do not themselves know what they
think on an issue. Sometimes I wonder why we do not employ gypsy
fortune-tellers . . . but I digress.

"KGB maintains what we call the Strategic Intelligence
Estimate. This is a document updated on a daily basis which gives our
assessment of the political and military strength of our adversaries. Because
of the nature of our work, and because of serious mistakes made in the past, we
have three assessment teams who make the estimate: Best Case, Worst Case, and
Middle Case. The terms are self-explanatory, are they not? When we make a
presentation to the Politburo, we generally use the Middle Case estimate, and
for the obvious reasons we annotate our estimates with data from the other two."

"So when he was called in to give his assessment to the
Politburo-"

"Yes. Young Josef, the ambitious little bastard who
wants my job as a wolf wants a sheep, was clever enough to bring all three with
him. When he saw what they wanted, he gave them what they wanted."

"But when you returned, why didn't you correct the
mistake?"

Kosov gave his companion an ironic smile. "Misha,
Misha, sometimes you can be most engagingly naive. I should have killed the son
of a bitch, but this was not possible. Josef suffers from poor health, though
he is not aware of it. The time is not yet right," Kosov said, as though
discussing a vacation. "KGB is split into several factions at the moment.
Josef controls one. I control another. Mine is larger, but not decisively so.
He has the ear of the General Secretary and the Defense Minister. I am a sick
old man-they have told me this. Except for the war I would have been replaced
already."

"But he lied to the Politburo!" Sergetov nearly
shouted.

"Not at all. You think Josef is foolish? He handed over
an official KGB intelligence estimate drawn up under my chairmanship, by my
department heads."

Why is he telling me all this? He fears losing his post, and
he wants support with other Politburo members. Is that all?

"You're telling me that this is all a mistake."

"Exactly," Kosov answered. "Bad luck and poor
judgment in our oil industry-not your fault, of course. Add some fear in the
hearts of our Party hierarchy, some ambition in one of my subordinates, the
Defense Minister's sense of importance, and outright stupidity on the part of
the West; and here we are today."

"So, what do you think we should do?" Sergetov
asked warily.

"Nothing. I ask that you keep in mind, however, that
the next week will probably decide the outcome of our war. Ah!" he
exclaimed. "Look, my car has been repaired. You may pull over here,
Vitaly. Thank you for the ride, Misha. Good day." Kosov retrieved his
jamming device and stepped out of the car.

Mikhail Eduardovich Sergetov watched the KGB limousine pull
away and disappear around the comer. He had played many power games in his
life. Sergetov's climb up the Party ladder had been more than an exercise in
efficiency. Men had stood in his way, and needed brushing aside. Promising
careers had been broken so that he could sit in this Zil automobile and aspire
to real power in his country. But never had the game been this dangerous. He
didn't know the rules, was not sure what Kosov was really up to. Was his story
even true? Might he be trying to cover his own flanks for errors he had made
and blame it all on Josef Larionov? Sergetov could not recall ever meeting the
First Deputy Chairman.

"Straight to the office, Vitaly," Sergetov
ordered. He was too deep in thought to worry about his driver's other
activities.

NORTHWOOD, ENGLAND

Toland scanned the satellite photographs with great
interest. The KH-11 satellite had passed over Kirovsk four hours after the
missile attack and the signals sent by real-time link to the NATO command
center. There were three frames for each of the Backfire bases. The
intelligence officer took out a pad and started his tally, commanding himself
to be conservative. The only aircraft he counted as destroyed were those with
large pieces broken or burned off.

"We figured a total force of about eighty-five
aircraft. Looks to me like twenty-one totally destroyed, and another thirty or
so damaged. The base facilities took a real beating. The only other thing I'd
like to know is how hard their personnel were hit. If we killed a lot of crews,
too-the Backfires are out of business for at least a week. They still have the
Badgers, but those birds have shorter legs, they're a lot easier to kill.
Admiral, it's a new ball game."

Admiral Sir Charles Beattie smiled. His intelligence chief
had said almost exactly the same thing.

LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, VIRGINIA

The F-15 interceptor streaked over the runway at a height of
one hundred feet. As she passed the tower, Major Nakamura threw her fighter
into a slow roll, then turned around for a more sedate landing. She was an Ace!
Three Badger bombers and two satellites! The first female Ace in the history of
the U.S. Air Force. The first Space Ace.

She rolled to a stop at the ready shelter, jumped off the
ladder, and ran to the reception committee. The deputy commander of Tactical
Air Command was red-faced with anger.

"Major, if you ever pull something like that again I'll
bust your ass back to doolie!"

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir." She grinned. Nothing was
going to spoil today. "Won't ever happen again, sir. You only make Ace
once, sir."

"Intelligence says Ivan has one more RORSAT ready to
use. Probably they'll think it over some before launching," the General
said, calming down somewhat.

"Have they put any more birds together?" Buns
asked.

"They're working on two, and we might have them by the
end of the week. If we get them, your next target will be their real-time photo
reconnaissance satellite. Until then the RORSATs have highest priority."
The General smiled briefly. "Don't forget to paint that fifth star on the
bird, Major."

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

They would have sailed anyway. The destruction of the Soviet
RORSAT merely made it safer. First came the destroyers and frigates, fanning
out, looking for submarines under an umbrella of patrol aircraft. Then the
cruisers and carriers. Last of all came the ships from Little Creek, Tarawa,
Guam, Nassau, Inchon, and twenty more. Over sixty ships in all, they formed
into three groups and steamed northeast at twenty knots. It would be a six-day
trip.

USNS PREVAIL

Even at three knots she didn't ride well. The ship was just
over two hundred feet long, and she responded to every wave like a horse to a
fence. She had a mixed crew, not really Navy, not really civilian. The
civilians ran the ship. The naval personnel ran the electronics gear. The
really amazing thing, everyone agreed, was that they were still alive.

Prevail was an adaptation of a blue-water fishing boat.
Instead of a trawl, she pulled a sonar array at the end of a six-thousand-foot
cable filled with sonar sensors. The signals received were pre-processed by
onboard computers, then sent via satellite to Norfolk at a rate of thirty-two
thousand bits of data per second. The ship was driven by quiet electric motors,
and her hull had been installed with the Prairie/Masker system to eliminate
even her tiny amount of machinery noise. Her topsides were made of fiberglass
to reduce her radar signature. In a very real sense she was one of the first
Stealth ships, and despite the fact that she carried no weapon other than a
rifle for dealing with sharks, she was also the most dangerous antisubmarine
platform ever made. Prevail and three sister ships were cruising the North
Atlantic on the great circle route between Newfoundland and Ireland, listening
for the telltale noise of a submarine in transit. Two already had kills painted
up on their bridges since each had an Orion patrol aircraft in constant
attendance, and Soviet submarines had twice had the misfortune to approach one
of them. But their job was not to kill submarines. It was to warn others of
them, far away.

In the midships operations center of Prevail, a team of
oceanographic technicians watched a bank of TV-type display tubes, while others
worked up tracks of anything that might be close enough to be a direct threat.

A petty officer ran his finger down a fuzzy line on the
display. "That must be the convoy from New York."

"Yeah," said the technician next to him. "And
there're the folks who want to meet them."

USS REUBEN JAMES

"At least we're not going to be lonely," O'Malley
observed.

"You always have such a positive attitude?" Frank
Ernst inquired.

"Our Russian friends must have excellent intelligence.
I mean, your Air Force chaps did kill their satellite." Captain Perrin set
his coffee down on the table. The five officers conferred in Morris's
stateroom. Perrin had flown over by helicopter from Battleaxe.

"Yeah, so they know our composition," Morris said.
"And they'll want to cut this bunch down to size."

The message from Norfolk stated in clipped navalese that at
least six Soviet submarines were believed to be heading for the convoy. Four
would be on the north. That was their area of responsibility.

"We should be getting some data off the tail any time
now," Morris said. "Jerry, you up to three days of continuous
ops?"

O'Malley laughed. "If I say no, will it matter?"

"I think we should remain close together," Perrin
said. "Five miles' separation at most. The real trick will be timing our
sprints. The convoy wants to make as straight a run as possible, right?"

"Yeah." Morris nodded. "Hard to blame the
Commodore for that. Zigzagging all those ships could create almost as much
confusion as a real attack."

"Hey, the good news is no more Backfires for a
while," O'Malley pointed out. "We're back to a one-dimension
threat."

The ship's motion changed as power was reduced. The frigate
was ending a twenty-eight-knot sprint and would now drift for several minutes
at five knots to allow her passive sonar to function.

USS CHICAGO

"Sonar contact, bearing three-four-six."

Seven hundred miles to the icepack, McCafferty thought as he
went forward. At five knots.

They were in deep water. It was a gamble, but a good one, to
run away from the coast at fifteen knots despite the noise Providence made. It
had taken four hours to reach the hundred-fathom curve, a period of constant tension
as he had worried about the Russian reaction to their missile attack. The
Russians had sent antisubmarine patrol aircraft first of all, the ubiquitous
Bears dropping sonobuoys, but they'd been able to avoid them. Providence still
had most of her sonar systems in operation, and though she could not defend
herself, she could at least hear the danger coming.

Throughout the four-hour run the wounded submarine had
sounded like a wagonload of pipes, and McCafferty didn't want to think about
how she had handled, with her fairwater planes hanging like laundry in a
breeze. But that was behind them. Now they were in seven hundred feet of water.
With their towed-array sonars deployed, they'd have an extra measure of warning
for approaching danger. Boston and USS  Chicago cruised three miles on either side of their wounded
sister. Seven hundred miles at five knots, McCafferty thought. Almost six days
. . .

"Okay, what do we have here, Chief?"

"Came in slowly, sir, so it's probably direct path. We
have a slow bearing change rate. My first guess would be a diesel boat on
batteries, and close." The sonar chief showed no emotion.

The captain leaned back into the attack center. "Come
right to zero-two-five."

The helmsman applied five degrees of right rudder, gently
bringing the submarine to a northeasterly course. At five knots USS  Chicago was "a hole in the ocean"
that made almost no noise at all, but her contact was almost as quiet.
McCafferty watched the line on the screen change shape ever so slightly over a
period of several minutes.

"Okay, we have a bearing change to the contact. Bearing
is now three-four-one."

"Joe?" McCafferty asked his executive officer.

"I make the range eight thousand yards, plus or minus.
He's on a reciprocal heading, speed about four knots."

Too close, the captain thought. He probably doesn't hear us
yet, though.

"Let's get him."

The Mark-48 torpedo fired at its slowest speed setting,
turned forty degrees to the left on leaving the tube, then settled down to head
for the contact, its guidance wires trailing back to the submarine. The
sonarmen directed the fish toward its target while USS Chicago moved slowly
away from the launch point. Suddenly the sonar chief's head jerked up.

"He's heard it! He just kicked his engines. I got a
blade count-it's a Foxtrot-class, doing turns for fifteen. Transient,
transient, he just flooded tubes."

The torpedo accelerated and switched on its homing sonar.
The Foxtrot knew it had been found, and her captain reacted automatically,
increasing speed and ordering a radical turn to starboard, then firing a homing
torpedo back down the line of bearing at its attacker. Finally he dove deep,
hoping to shake off the closing fish.

The hard turn left a knuckle in the water, an area of
turbulence which confused the Mark-48 briefly, but then the torpedo charged
right through it, and on coming back to undisturbed water, found its target
again. The green-painted weapon dove after the Foxtrot and caught it at a depth
of four hundred feet.

"Bearing is changing rapidly on the inbound," the
sonar chief said. "It's going to pass well aft of us---hit, we got a hit
on the target." The sound echoed through the steel hull like distant
thunder. McCafferty plugged in a set of phones in time to hear the Foxtrot's
frantic attempt to blow to the surface, and the screech of metal as the
internal bulkheads gave way. He did not hear the captain's last act. It was to
deploy the rescue buoy located on the aft comer of the sail. The buoy floated
to the surface and began transmitting a continuous message. All the men aboard
the Foxtrot were already dead, but the rescue buoy told their fleet
headquarters where they had died-and several submarines and surface ships
immediately set off to that point.

USS REUBEN JAMES

O'Malley pulled up on the collective control and climbed to
five hundred feet. From this height he could see the northern edge of the
convoy off to the southwest. Several helicopters were in the air-a good idea of
someone's. Many of the merchant ships were carrying Army helicopters as deck
cargo, and most of them were flyable. Their crews were taking them up to patrol
the convoy perimeter, looking for periscopes. The one thing any submariner
would admit to being afraid of was a helicopter. This procedure was called
"black-sky" ASW. Throughout the convoy, soldiers were being told to
watch the ocean and report anything they saw, which made for many false
sighting reports, but it gave the men something to do, and sooner or later they
might just spot a real periscope. The Seahawk moved twenty miles east before
circling. They were looking for a possible submarine detected on the frigate's
passive sonar array during the last drift.

"Okay, Willy, drop a LOFAR-now-now-now!"

The petty officer punched a button to eject a sonobuoy out
the side panel. The helicopter continued forward, dropping four additional
buoys at intervals of two miles to create a ten-mile barrier, then O'Malley
held his aircraft in a wide circle, watching the sea himself as the petty
officer examined the sonar display on his screen.

"Commander, what's this I hear about the skipper? You
know, the night before we sailed."

"I felt like getting drunk, and he was kind enough not
to make me drink alone. Didn't you ever get drunk before?"

"No, sir. I don't drink."

"What's this Navy coming to! You take her for a
minute." O'Malley took his hand off the stick and adjusted his helmet. It
was a new one and he hadn't quite gotten used to it yet. "You got
anything, Willy?"

"Not sure yet, sir. Give me another minute or
two."

"Fair enough." The pilot contemplated his
instruments briefly, then resumed his outside scanning. "I ever tell you
about this thirty-five-footer in the Bermuda-to-Newport race? Storm beat hell
out of it. Anyway, it had an all-girl crew and when the boat swamped they lost
all their-"

"Skipper, I got a weak signal on number four."

"Grateful as hell for being rescued, too."
O'Malley took the stick and brought the helicopter around to the northwest.
"You don't do any of that either, Mr. Ralston?"

"Strong drink giveth the desire, sir, but taketh away
the ability," the copilot said. "Two more miles, sir."

"He even knows Shakespeare. There may be hope for you
yet. Talk to me, Willy."

"Still a 'weak' on number four. Nothing else."

"One mile," Ralston said, watching the tactical
display.

O'Malley's eyes scanned the surface, looking for a straight
vertical line or a wisp of foam.

'Number four's signal strength is now medium, sir. Getting a
twitch on five."

"Romeo, Hammer, I think we may have something here. I'm
going to drop another LOFAR between four and five. Designate this one number
six. Dropping-now!" Another sonobuoy was ejected clear of the aircraft.

"Hammer, this is Romeo," called the controller.
"Looks to us like the contact is north of the line, say again north."

"Roger, concur on that. We ought to know something in a
minute."

"Skipper," Willy called. "I have a 'medium'
on six."

"Romeo, Hammer, we're going to dip on this character
right now."

Aboard Reuben James they marked the helicopter's position,
along with the line of sonobuoys.

O'Malley eased back on the stick to kill forward velocity,
while his other hand eased the collective control down very gently until the
helicopter was in hover fifty feet over the water. Willy unlocked the dipping
sonar and lowered it to a depth of two hundred feet.

"Sonar contact, sir. Classify as possible submarine,
bearing three-five-six."

"Up dome!" O'Malley commanded.

The Seahawk lifted high and raced north for one mile.
Hovering once more, O'Malley dipped his sonar a second time.

"Contact! Bearing one-seven-five. Sounds like a twin
screw doing turns for maybe ten knots."

"We've bracketed him," the pilot said. "Let's
set this one up." Ralston entered the numbers into the tactical computer.

"Bearing change, looks like he's turning to
port-yeah," Willy confirmed. "Turning to port."

"He hear us?" Ralston asked.

"He might hear the convoy and be turning to get a fix
on them. Willy, up dome," O'Malley ordered. "Romeo, Hammer, we have a
maneuvering target, classify as probable submarine. Request weapons free."

"Roger, Hammer, weapons free, repeat weapons are
free."

The pilot flew one thousand yards southeast. The sonar dome
went down again and the helicopter hovered head into the wind.

"Got him again, sir," Willy said excitedly.
"Bearing three-five-five. Bearing is changing right to left, sir."

"Going right past us," Ralston said, looking at
the TACNAV.

"Romeo, this is Hammer. We're calling this a positive
submarine and we are making a deliberate attack on this contact." O'Malley
held the aircraft in hover as his petty officer called off the bearing change.
"Attack sequence."

"Master Arm." Ralston ran his hands across the
buttons. "Torpedo Select, position one."

"Set initial search depth two-fifty; course-select,
Snake." Ralston made the proper settings.

"Set."

"Okay, Willy, get ready for Yankee-search,"
O'Malley ordered, meaning a search using active sonar.

"Ready, sir. Bearing to contact now two-zero-zero,
changing right-to-left rapidly."

"Hammer his ass!" O'Malley switched the sonar
signals into his headset.

Willy thumbed the button and the sonar transducer fired off
a series of pings. The wave fronts of sound energy reflected off the
submarine's hull and came back to the transducer. The contact suddenly
increased engine power.

"Positive contact, bearing one-eight-eight, range eight
hundred yards."

Ralston fed the last numbers into the fire-control system:
"Set!"

The pilot brought his thumb across the stick to a button on
the right side and pressed it home. The Mark-46 torpedo dropped free of its
shackles and plunged into the sea. "Torp away."

"Willy, secure pinging." O'Malley keyed his radio.
"Romeo, we just dropped on a diving two-screw submarine, approximately
eight hundred yards from us on a bearing of one-eight-eight. Torpedo is in the
water now. Stand by."

The Mark-46 torpedo was set on a "snake" pursuit
pattern, a series of undulating curves that carried it in a southerly
direction. Alerted by the helicopter's sonar, the Soviet submarine was running
at flank speed and diving to evade the torpedo.

"Hammer, Romeo, be advised that Hatchet is en route to
you in case your torp misses, over."

"Roger that," O'Malley acknowledged.

"It's got him!" Willy said excitedly. The torpedo
was on automatic pinging as it closed with the submarine. The captain made a
hard right turn, but the fish was too close to be fooled.

"Hit! That's a hit!" Willy said almost as loudly
as the noise of the explosion. Directly ahead of them the surface seemed to
jump, but no gout of foam leaped up. The torpedo had gone off too deep for
that.

"Well," O'Malley said. In all his years of
practice he'd never fired a live fish at a live sub. The sounds of the dying
sub seemed the saddest thing he'd ever heard. Some oil bubbled to the surface.
"Romeo, we're calling that one a kill. Tell the bosun to get out his
paintbrush. We are now orbiting to look for wreckage and possible
survivors." Another frigate had rescued the entire crew from a downed
Russian Bear the previous day. They were already on the mainland for
interrogation. But there would be none from this incident. O'Malley circled for
ten minutes, then turned for home.

ICELAND

"Beagle, you all fed and rested?" Doghouse asked.

"I guess you could say that." Edwards had been
waiting for this, but now that it had come it sounded ominous enough.

"We want you to patrol the southern shore of the
Hvammsfj”rdur and let us know of any Russian activity you see. We are
particularly interested in the town of Stykkisholmur. That's a small port about
forty miles west of you. As before, your orders are to evade, observe, and
report. You got that?"

"Roger. How long we got?"

"I can't say that, Beagle. I don't know. You want to
move right along, though."

"Okay, we'll be moving in ten minutes. Out."
Edwards dismantled the antenna, then stowed the complete radio assembly in the
backpack. "People, it's time to leave this mountain retreat. Sergeant
Nichols?"

"Yes, sir?" Nichols and Smith came over together.

"Were you briefed on what we're supposed to be up
to?"

"No, sir. Our orders were to relieve your party and
await further instructions." Edwards had already seen the sergeant's map
case. He had cards for the whole western Icelandic coast, all but their drop
zone in a pristine condition. Of course, the purpose of their coastal
reconnaissance was clear enough, wasn't it? The lieutenant took out a tactical
map and plotted their course west.

"Okay, we'll pair off. Sergeant Smith, you take the
point along with one of our new friends. Nichols, you take Rodgers with you and
cover the back door. You both have a radio, and I'll take the third and keep
the rest of the party with me. The groups stay within sight of each other. We
keep to the high ground as much as possible. The first hard-surface road we hit
is ten miles west of here. If you see anything, you drop and report in to me.
We are supposed to avoid contact. No hero crap, okay? Good, we'll move out in
ten minutes." Edwards assembled his gear.

"Where we go, Michael?" Vigdis asked.

"Stykkisholmur," he answered. "You feel
okay?"

"I can walk with you, yes." She sat down beside
him. "And when we get to Stykkisholmur?"

Mike smiled. "They didn't tell me that."

"Why they never tell you anything?"

"It's called security. That means the less we know, the
better it is for us."

"Stupid," she replied. Edwards didn't know how to
explain that she was both right and wrong.

"I think when we get there, we can start thinking about
a normal life again."

Her face changed. "What is normal life, Michael?"

Another good question, Edwards thought. But I have too much
on my mind to chew that one over. "We'll see."

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

The battle for Hameln and the battle for Hannover were now
essentially the same action. Two hours before, the NATO forces had withdrawn to
the west, south of the industrial city, allowing them to shorten lines and
consolidate. Soviet units were probing forward cautiously, suspicious of
another German trap. Alekseyev and Commander-in-Chief West pored over their
maps in an attempt to analyze the consequences of the NATO withdrawal.

"It allows them to put at least one, probably two
brigades in reserve," Alekseyev thought. "They can use this Highway
217 to move troops rapidly from one sector to another."

"How often have the Germans given ground
voluntarily?" his superior asked. "They didn't do this because they
wanted to. Their lines were overextended. Their units are depleted."

"So are ours. The Category-B units we're committing to
battle are taking losses almost a third greater than the 'A' units they
replace. We are paying dearly for our advances now."

"We have paid dearly already! If we fail now it will
all have been for nothing. Pasha, we must attack in force. This entire sector
is ready to collapse."

"Comrade General, that is not my impression. Resistance
is spirited. German morale remains high despite their losses. They have hurt us
badly and they know it." Alekseyev had returned from the forward command
post at Folziehausen only three hours before.

"Viewing the action from the front lines is very
useful, Pasha, but it hinders your ability to perceive the larger
picture."

Alekseyev frowned at that. "The larger picture"
was frequently an illusion. His commander had told him that very thing many
times.

"I want you to organize an attack along this entire
front. NATO formations are gravely depleted. Their supplies are low, they have
taken massive casualties. A vigorous attack now will sunder their lines on a
fifty-kilometer front."

"We don't have enough A units to attack on this
scale," Alekseyev objected.

"Keep them in reserve to exploit the breakthrough.
We'll launch the attack with our best reserve divisions from Hannover in the
north to Bodenwerder in the south."

"We don't have the strength for that, and it will use
up too much fuel," Alekseyev warned. "If we have to attack, I suggest
an assault on a two-division front here, south of Hameln. The units are in
place. What you propose is too ambitious."

"This is not a time for half measures, Pasha!"
CINC-West shouted. He'd never raised his voice to Alekseyev before. The younger
man found himself wondering what pressure was being applied to his commander,
who calmed down now. "An attack along a single axis allows a counterattack
along a single axis," he continued. "This way we can greatly
complicate the enemy's task. He can't be strong everywhere. We will find a
weakness, break out, and drive our remaining A units through to the
Rhein."

USS REUBEN JAMES

"Drop now-now-now!" O'Malley yelled. The eighth
sonobuoy ejected from the side of the Seahawk, and the pilot brought the
helicopter around and headed back east.

O'Malley had already been up for three long, grueling hours
this time, with precious little to show for it. Stop, dip, listen; stop, dip,
listen. He knew there was a sub down there, but every time he thought he was
beginning to get a line on it, the damn thing slipped away! What was it doing different?

Hatchet was having the same problem, except its sub had
turned around on it and nearly scored a hit on Battleaxe. The frigate's violent
wake turbulence had detonated the Russian torpedo astern, but it had been
close, too close by half. He brought the helicopter into hover.

"Down dome!" They hovered for a minute. Nothing.
It began again. "Romeo, this is Hammer. You got anything, over?"

"Hammer, he just faded out a moment ago. Our last
bearing was three-four-one."

"Cure. This character's listening for you to stop your
sprint, and he cuts his power back."

"That's a fair guess, Hammer," Morris said.

"Okay, I got a barrier to the west if he heads that
way. I think he's going due south, and we're dipping for him now. Out."
O'Malley switched to intercom. "You got anything, Willy?"

"Nothing, sir."

"Prepare to raise dome." A minute later the
helicopter was moving again. They dipped their sonar six more times in the next
twenty minutes and came up blank.

"Again, Willy. Prepare to lower. Set it down to, uh,
eight hundred feet this time."

"Ready, sir."

"Down dome." O'Malley squirmed in his seat. The
outside temperature was moderate, but the sun made a greenhouse of the cockpit.
He'd need a shower when he got back to the frigate.

"Searching at eight hundred feet, sir," the petty
officer said. He was hot, too, though he'd brought a pair of cold drinks along
for the flight. "Sir, I have something . . . possible contact bearing
one-eight-five."

"Up dome! Romeo, Hammer, we got a possible contact
south of us. Going after it now."

"Hammer, we have nothing anywhere near you. Be advised
Bravo and Hatchet are working a contact. Two torps have been launched with no
hits."

Nobody ever said it was easy, the pilot thought. He moved
three thousand yards and dipped the sonar again.

"Contact, this one's for real. Type-two engine plant
bearing one-eight-three."

O'Malley checked his fuel. Forty minutes. He had to get this
one in a hurry. He ordered the dome up again and went another three thousand
yards south. His shoulders flexed against the seat straps. It seemed to take
forever for the sonar dome to get down to search depth.

"There it is again, sir, north of us, bearing
zero-one-three. Bearing is changing. Zero-one-five now."

"Set it up!" Thirty minutes' fuel. Time was their
enemy now. Ralston punched up the Master Arm and Select buttons.

"Willy: hammer!" The sonar sent out five ranging
pings.

"Zero-one-nine, range nine hundred!"

Ralston set search depth and pattern. O'Malley brought his
thumb across the stick and dropped the torpedo.

The submarine went to full power and turned left away from
the helicopter while the torpedo plunged to eight hundred feet before beginning
its search. O'Malley growled to himself that he'd launched from a bad angle,
but it would have taken too long to reel in and reacquire. He held the aircraft
in hover and listened over his headset as the whine of the torpedo screws
chased after the deeper thrum of the Charlie's powerful twin screws. The
nuclear sub maneuvered frantically, trying to turn inside the pursuing torpedo.

"They're on the same bearing now," Willy reported.
"I think the fish has him-hit!"

But the Charlie didn't die. They heard the sound of blowing
air, then it stopped. A wild cacophony of mechanical noise followed as the
contact moved off to the north, then faded as the submarine slowed. O'Malley
didn't have enough fuel to pursue. He came around west and headed for Reuben
James.

"Hammer, Romeo, what happened?"

"We hit him, but he's still alive. Stand by, Romeo,
we're coming in skosh fuel. Five minutes out."

"Roger that, we'll be ready for you. We're vectoring
another helo onto the Charlie. I want you to join Hatchet."

"How come we didn't kill him?" Ralston asked.

"Almost all Russian subs have double hulls, and that
dinky hundred pound warhead on the Mark-46 isn't gutsy enough to give you a
kill every time. You try to attack from the stem if you can, but this time we
couldn't. If you get a stem hit, you pop the shaft seals and flood his engine room.
That'll kill anybody. They didn't tell you to go for a stem shot in school, did
they?"

"Not especially."

"Figures," O'Malley growled.

It was good to see the Reuben James after four hours. It
would have been even better to visit the officers' head, O'Malley thought
bleakly. He brought the Seahawk over the port comer of the frigate's stern and
paced the ship. Aft, Willy opened the sliding door and tossed down a messenger
line. The frigate's deck crew attached a refueling hose to the line and Willy
hauled it in, plugging the hose into the fuel tank. The procedure was called
HIFR, for helicopter in-flight refueling. While O'Malley fought his helo
through the roiled air behind the ship, fuel was pumped into his tanks, giving
him another four hours' endurance. Ralston kept his eyes on the fuel indicators
while O'Malley flew the aircraft.

"We're full up, Willy. Secure."

The petty officer lowered the fuel hose and retrieved his
line. He was glad to close the door and strap himself back into his chair.
Officers, he told himself, were too smart to do what he just did.

"Bravo, this is Hammer, where do you want us,
over?"

"Hammer, Bravo, come right to one-three-zero and
rendezvous with Hatchet eight miles from Bravo."

"On the way." O'Malley curved around Reuben James
and headed southeast.

"Hammer, Romeo, be advised Sea Sprite from Sims just
finished off that Charlie for you. We got a 'well done' from the screen
commander for that prosecution, over."

"Tell the Commodore 'you're welcome.' Bravo, Hammer,
what is it we're after, over?"

"We thought it was a twin-screw submarine. We're not
quite so sure now, Hammer," Perrin replied. "We've fired three
torpedoes at this target now for zero hits. He got one off at us, but it prematured
in our wake."

"How close was it?"

"Fifty yards."

Ouch! the pilot thought.

"Okay, I have Hatchet in sight. Bravo, it's your ball
game. Where do you want me now?"

Morris had allowed himself to fall far behind in the hunt
for the now dead Charlie. On his command the frigate went to full speed,
closing on Battleaxe at twenty-five knots. In response to the multiple
submarine contacts, the convoy was turning slightly south.

O'Malley's Seahawk hovered seven miles from Battleaxe while
Hatchet ran back home for fuel and sonobuoys. Again the process of dipping and
moving began.

"Nothing," Willy reported.

"Bravo, Hammer, can you give me a rundown of what this
target's been doing?"

"We've nearly gotten him twice atop the layer. His
course is generally south."

"Sounds like a missile boat."

"Agreed," Perrin answered. "Our last datum
point was within one thousand yards of your position. We have nothing at this
time."

O'Malley examined the data transmitted from Battleaxe's
plot. As was usually true of submarine course tracks, it was a collection of
vague opinions, shaky judgments, and not a few wild guesses.

"Bravo, you're a sub-driver. Talk to me, over."
This was lousy radio procedure, but what the hell?

"Hammer, the only thing that makes the least bit of
sense is that he's extremely fast." O'Malley examined the tactical display
more closely.

"You're right, Bravo." O'Malley pondered this. A
Papa, maybe? he wondered. Twin screws, cruise missiles, fast as a thief.

"Hammer, Bravo, if we proceed on the assumption that
he's very fast, I recommend you go east until Romeo comes off sprint and can
give us a bearing."

"Concur, Bravo. Give me a vector." On command from
Battleaxe, the Seahawk ran twenty miles east and began dipping his sonar. It
took fifteen minutes to load another pair of Stingray torpedoes on Hatchet,
along with fuel and sonobuoys.

"What do you think we're after, skipper?" Ralston
asked.

"How's a Papa grab you?" O'Malley asked.

"But the Russians only have one of those," the
copilot objected.

"Doesn't mean they're saving it for a museum,
mister."

"Nothing, sir," Willy reported.

Reuben James came off sprint, turning to a southerly heading
to bring her sonar to bear on the remaining contact. If only Battleaxe still
had her tail, Morris thought, we could triangulate on every contact, and with
two helos . . .

"Contact, evaluate as possible submarine, bearing
zero-eight-one, bearing-changing slowly, looks like. Yeah, bearing changing
north to south." The data went at once to Battleaxe and the screen
commander. Another helicopter joined the hunt.

"Down dome!" This was the thirty-seventh time
today, O'Malley thought. "My ass is asleep."

"Wish mine was." Ralston laughed without much
humor. Again they detected nothing.

"How can something be exciting and boring at the same
time?" the ensign asked, unconsciously echoing the Tomcat pilot days ago.

"Up dome! You know, I've wondered that a few times
myself." O'Malley keyed his radio. "Bravo, Hammer, I got an idea for
you."

"We're listening, Hammer."

"You have Hatchet dropping a line of buoys south of us.
Deploy another line west. Then I start pinging. Maybe we can flush the guy into
doing something. You ever get herded by a dipping helo when you were driving
subs?"

"Not herded, Hammer, but I have gone far out of my way
to avoid one. Stand by while I get things organized."

"You know, this one's a nervy bastard. He's gotta know
we're onto him, but he isn't breaking off. He really thinks he can beat
us."

"He has for the last four hours, boss," Willy
observed.

"You know what the most important part of gambling is?
You have to know when it's time to quit." O'Malley circled up high and
turned his search radar on for the first time that day. It was not very useful
for detecting a periscope, but it might just scare a sub running near the
surface into heading back under the layer. The sun was sinking, and O'Malley
could pick out the two other helicopters working this contact from their flying
lights. They dropped two lines of passive sonobuoys, each eight miles long, at
right angles to each other.

"The picket lines are in place, Hammer," Captain
Perrin called. "Begin."

"Willy: hammer!" Six hundred feet below the
helicopter, the sonar transducer pounded the water with high-frequency sonar pulses.
He did this for one minute, then reeled in and flew southeast. The process
lasted half an hour. By this time his legs were knotting up, making his control
movements awkward.

"Take over for a few minutes." O'Malley took his
feet off the pedals and worked his legs around to restore circulation.

"Hammer, Bravo, we have a contact. Buoy six, line
Echo." This was the east-west line. Buoy number six was third from the
west end, where the north-south "November" line began. "Weak
signal at this time."

O'Malley took the controls back and headed west while the
other two helicopters circled behind their respective lines.

"Gently, gently," he murmured over the intercom.
"Let's not spook him too much." He picked his course carefully, never
heading directly for the contact, never heading far away from it. Another half
hour passed, one miserable second at a time. Finally they had the contact
running east at about ten knots, far below the layer.

"We now have him on three buoys," Perrin reported.
"Hatchet is moving into position."

O'Malley watched the blinking red lights about three miles
away. Hatchet dropped a pair of directional DIFAR buoys and waited. The display
came up on O'Malley's scope. The contact passed right between the DIFARS.

"Torpedo away!" Hatchet called. The black-painted
Stingray dropped invisibly into the water, half a mile in front of the oncoming
submarine. O'Malley closed and dropped his own buoy to listen as he brought the
Seahawk into hover.

Like, the American Mark-48 torpedo, the Stingray didn't use
conventional propellers, which made it hard to locate on sonar both for
O'Malley and the submarine. Suddenly they heard the sound of propeller
cavitation as the submarine went to full power and turned. Then came
hullpopping noises as she changed depth abruptly to throw the fish off. It
didn't work. Next came the metallic crash of the exploding warhead.

"Hit!" Hatchet called.

"Down dome!"

Willy lowered the sonar transducer one last time. The
submarine was coming up.

"Again!" Ralston wondered. "That's two in a
row."

"Set it up! Willy, hammer him."

"Range four hundred, bearing one-six-three, I have an
up-doppler."

"Circular search, initial search depth one
hundred."

"Set," Ralston replied.

O'Malley dropped his torpedo at once. "Up dome! Bravo,
the hit did not kill the target, we just dropped another one on him."

"He might be trying to surface to get his crew
off," Ralston said.

"He might want to fire his missiles, too. He should
have run when he had the chance. I would have."

The second hit finished the submarine. O'Malley flew
straight back to Reuben James. He let Ralston land the Seahawk. As soon as its
wheels were chocked and chained down, he got out and walked forward. Morris met
him in the passageway between the helo hangars.

"Great job, Jerry."

"Thanks, skipper." O'Malley had left his helmet in
the aircraft. His hair was matted to his head with perspiration and his eyes
stung from hours of it.

"I want to talk over a few things."

"Can we do it while I shower and change, Cap'n?"
O'Malley went through the wardroom and into his stateroom. He stripped out of
his clothing in under a minute and headed for the officers' shower.

"How many pounds you sweat off on a day like
this?" Morris said.

"A lot." The pilot pushed the shower button,
closing his eyes as the cold water sprayed over him. "You know, I've been
saying for ten years that the -46 needed a bigger warhead. I hope to hell those
bastards in ordnance will listen to me now!"

"The second one. What was it?"

"If I had to bet, I'd say it was Papa. Great job from
the sonar guys. Those steers you gave us were beautiful." He pushed the
button again for more cold water. O'Malley emerged a minute later, looking and
feeling human again.

"The Commodore is writing you up for something. Your
third DFC, I guess."

O'Malley thought about that briefly. His first two were for
rescues, not for killing other men.

"How soon will you be ready to go up again?"

"How does next week grab you?"

"Get dressed. We'll talk in the wardroom."

The pilot raked his hair into place and changed into fresh
clothing. He remembered the last time his wife had told him to use baby powder
to protect his skin from the abuse of sweaty, tight clothes, and how stupid
he'd been to reject the suggestion as not in keeping with aviator machismo.
Despite the shower, there were a few patches of skin that would continue to
itch and chafe. When he went to the wardroom, he found Morris waiting for him
with a pitcher of iced bug juice.

"You got a diesel boat and two missile boats. How were
they operating? Anything unusual?"

"Awfully aggressive. That Papa should have backed off.
The Charlie took a smart route, but he was boring in pretty hard, too."
O'Malley thought it over as he drained his first glass. "You're right.
They are pushing awful hard."

"Harder than I expected. They're taking chances they
ordinarily wouldn't take. What's that tell us?"

"It tells us we got two more busy days ahead, I guess.
Sorry, Captain, I'm a little too wasted for deep thinking at the moment."

"Get some rest."

37 - The Race of the Cripples

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

Two o'clock in the morning. The attack would begin in four
hours despite all his efforts to change it. Alekseyev stared at the map with
its symbols of friendly units and intelligence estimates of enemies.

"Cheer up, Pasha!" Commander-in-Chief West said.
"I know that you think we use up too much fuel. It will also destroy their
remaining stocks of war supplies."

"They can resupply, too."

"Nonsense. Their convoys have suffered heavily, as our
own intelligence reports have told us. They are sending one massive shipment
across now, but the Navy tells me they are sending everything they have against
it. And in any case it will arrive too late."

Alekseyev told himself that his boss was probably right.
After all, he had made his rank on the basis of a distinguished career. But
still . . .

"Where do you want me?"

"With the OMG command post. No closer to the front than
that."

The OMG command post, Pavel thought ironically. First 20th
Guards Tank Division was supposed to be the operational-maneuver group, then a
two-division formation, then three divisions. Every time the breakthrough
maneuver had been frustrated, until the very term "operational-maneuver
group" sounded like some kind of absurd joke. His pessimism returned. The
reserve formations held for exploitation of the attack were far behind the
front, so as to be able to move to wherever the best penetration of NATO lines
happened. It might take hours for them to reach the proper point. NATO had
demonstrated a remarkable ability to compensate for sudden breakthroughs, he
reminded himself. Alekseyev set this thought aside as he had with so many
others and left the command center, collected Sergetov, and once again found a
helicopter to take him on the trip west. His aircraft waited on the ground for
its usual fighter escort.

The use of fighters to escort a single helicopter lifting
off from Stendal was a pattern NATO air-control officers had noted before, but
they'd never had the available units to do anything about it. This time it was
different. An AWACS control aircraft over the Rhein watched the chopper lift
off with three MiGs in attendance. The sector controller had a pair of F-4
Phantoms returning from a counter-air mission south of Berlin, and he vectored
them north. The fighters skimmed the trees, their own radars off as they
followed a safe-transit lane used by Russian aircraft.

Alekseyev and Sergetov sat alone in the back of the Mi-24
attack helicopter. There was room for eight combat-loaded infantrymen, so both
had room to stretch and Sergetov took the chance for a nap. Their escorting
MiGs were a thousand meters overhead, circling continuously as they watched for
low-flying NATO fighters.

"Six miles," came the call from the AWACS.

One Phantom popped up, illuminated two MiGs with its radar,
and loosed a pair of Sparrow missiles. The other fired two Sidewinders at the
helicopter.

The MiGs were caught looking the wrong way when their threat
receivers went off. One dashed to the ground and evaded. The other exploded in
midair as the surviving wingman radioed a warning. Alekseyev blinked in
surprise at the sudden gout of light overhead, then grabbed for his seatbelt as
the helicopter turned hard left and dropped like a stone. It was almost in the
trees when the Sidewinder chopped off the tail rotor. Sergetov awoke and
shouted in surprise and alarm. The Mi-24 spun in the air as it crashed into the
trees and bounced the last fifty feet to the ground. The main rotor came apart,
sending pieces in all directions, and the sliding door on the left side of the
aircraft popped off as though made of plastic. Alekseyev went out right behind
it, dragging Sergetov with him. Once again his instincts had saved him. The two
officers were twenty meters away when the fuel tanks exploded. They never heard
or saw the Phantoms that continued west to safety.

"Are you hurt, Vanya?" the General asked.

'I didn't even piss my pants. That must mean I'm a seasoned
veteran." The joke didn't work. The young man's voice shook along with his
hands. "Where the hell are we?"

"An excellent question." Alekseyev looked around.
He hoped to see lights, but the entire country had a blackout in force, and
Soviet units had learned the hard way about using lights on the highways.
"We have to find a road. We'll head south until we hit one."

"Where is south?"

"Opposite from north. That is north." The General
pointed to a star, then turned to select another. "That one will lead us
south."

SEVEROMORSK, R.S.F.S.R.

Admiral Yuri Novikov monitored the progress of the battle
from his underground headquarters a few kilometers from his main fleet base. He
was stung by the loss of his principal long-range weapon-the Backfire
bombers-but the way the Politburo had reacted to the missile attack was a
greater shock. Somehow the politicians thought that it meant a
ballistic-missile attack from the same area was possible, and no amount of
argument to the contrary would change their minds. As if the Americans would
risk their precious ballistic-missile subs in such restricted waters! the
Admiral growled to himself. He was up against fast-attack boats-he was certain
of it-and he was being forced to go after them with half his assets to prevent
their escape. He didn't have that many assets to go around.

The Commander-in-Chief of Soviet Northern Fleet had had a
good war to this point. The operation to seize Iceland had gone almost
perfectly-the boldest Soviet attack ever staged! The very next day he had
smashed a carrier battle group, an epic victory for his forces. His plan to use
his missile-armed bombers and submarines in combination against the convoys had
worked well, particularly after he'd decided to use the bombers to eliminate
the escort ships first. Submarine losses to date had been heavy, but he'd
expected that. The NATO navies had practiced antisubmarine warfare for
generations. There had to be losses. He'd made mistakes, Novikov admitted to
himself. He should have gone after the escorts in a systematic way sooner-but
Moscow wanted the merchants killed most of all, and he'd acceded to the
"suggestion."

Things were changing now. The sudden loss of his Backfire
force-it would be out of action for another five days-forced him to take his
dedicated anticarrier submarine teams and send them against the convoys, which
meant crossing NATO's picket line of submarines, and losses there were heavy,
too. His force of Bear reconnaissance bombers was hard hit. The damned war was
supposed to be over by now, Novikov thought angrily. He had a powerful surface
force waiting to escort additional troops to Iceland, but he couldn't move that
group until the campaign in Germany was within sight of its conclusion. No
battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy, he reminded himself.

"Comrade Admiral, satellite photographs have
arrived." His aide handed over a leather dispatch case. The fleet
intelligence chief arrived a few minutes later with his senior
photo-interpretation expert. The photos were spread out across a table.

"Ali, we have a problem here," the photo expert
said.

Novikov didn't need the expert to tell him that. The piers
at Little Creek, Virginia, were empty. The American amphibious assault force
had sailed with a full Marine division. Novikov had watched the progress of
Pacific Fleet units to Norfolk with great interest, but then his
ocean-reconnaissance satellites had both been killed, and launch authority on
the last of them had been withheld. The next photo showed the carrier berths,
also empty.

"Nimitz is still at Southampton," his intelligence
chief pointed out. "He came into port with a severe list, and there is no
drydock large enough to accommodate him. He's tied to the Ocean Dock; he's not
going anywhere. That gives the Americans three carriers: Coral Sea, America,
and Independence. Saratoga is being used for convoy escorting duties. The rest
of their Atlantic Fleet carriers are in the Indian Ocean."

Novikov grunted. That was bad news for the Indian Ocean
squadron, but they were part of the Soviet Pacific Fleet. Not his problem. He
had enough of his own. For the first time he faced a dilemma that he'd
inflicted on the NATO navies. He had more tasks than he had ships, and sending
half of his dedicated ASW forces after submarines that were already retreating
didn't help matters!

NORTHWOOD, ENGLAND

"Hello again, Admiral," Toland said.

Beattie looked much better. The blue eyes had the gleam of
crystal now and the Admiral's back was ramrod-straight as he stood in front of
his wall-sized map with his arms folded.

"How are things in Scotland, Commander?"

"Good, sir. The last two raids got chewed up. May I ask
how the Doolittle force made out? One of the boats is commanded by a friend of
mine."

Beattie turned. "Which?"

"Chicago, sir. Dan McCafferty."

"Oh. It would seem that one of the boats was damaged.
Chicago and one other are escorting her out. In fact, they are raising quite a
rumpus in the eastern Barents. We have indications that the Soviets are sending
a sizable force after them. In any case, you're going back to your carrier
fleet, and you're to meet with my intelligence staff so that you can bring your
chaps up to date when you get there. I wanted to see you personally to thank
you for that telex you sent about trailing the Backfires to their doorstep.
That idea was very useful to us. You're a reservist, I understand. How on earth
did they ever let you go?"

"I put my destroyer on a sandbar once."

"I see. You have atoned for that error,
Commander." Beattie offered his hand.

WACHERSLEBEN, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

"Stop that Goddamned truck!" Alekseyev screamed.
He stood in the middle of the road, daring the vehicle to run over him. It
stopped and he ran around to the cab.

"Who the hell are you?" the corporal asked.

"I am General Colonel Alekseyev," he answered
agreeably. "Who might you be, Comrade?"

"I am Corporal Vladimir Ivan'ch Maryakhin." He
managed to say this despite a mouth that hung open on seeing the General's
shoulder boards.

"Since I appear to outrank you, Corporal, you will take
me and my aide to the next traffic-control point as quickly as this truck will
go. Move!"

Alekseyev and Sergetov got in the back. They found a solid
mass of crates, but had enough room to sit on top of them.

The General swore. "Three wasted hours."

"It could have been worse."

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

"It's a major attack, sir. They just started moving on
what looks like a eighty-kilometer front."

SACEUR looked at the map impassively. It wasn't as though
they hadn't expected this. Intelligence had predicted it twelve hours earlier
from Soviet traffic patterns. He had exactly four reserve brigades that he
could use in this sector. Thank God, he thought, that I managed to persuade the
Germans to shorten the line at Hannover. Half his reserves had come from that,
and not a day too soon.

"Main axis of the attack?" the General asked his
operations officer.

"None is apparent at the moment. It looks like a
general attack-"

"Pushing hard to find a weak point," SACEUR
finished the statement. "Where's their reserve force?"

"Sir, we've identified elements of three divisions here
south of Folziehausen. They appear to be A units. The attack now under way
appears to be mainly B formations."

"Have we hurt them that bad?" SACEUR asked
rhetorically. His intelligence officers were working hard to establish just
what enemy casualties were, and he got a report every evening. B-class reserve
units had started appearing at the front five days before, which was puzzling.
He knew the Soviets had at least six Category-A units in reserve in the southern
Ukraine, but there were no indications they were moving. Why wasn't this force
being committed to the German front? Why were they sending reservists instead?
He'd been asking that question for several days, only to get shrugs from his
intelligence chief. Not that I'm complaining, he thought. Those two field
armies might have been enough to rupture his front entirely.

"Where's a good place to hit back?"

"Sir, we have these two German tank brigades at
Springe. The Russian attack appears to have two reserve motor-rifle divisions,
with a divisional border right here, ten kilometers from them. They've been off
the line for two days now. I wouldn't call them well rested, but-"

"Yeah." SACEUR was given to cutting his officers
off. "Get 'em moving-,"

USS REUBEN JAMES

O'Malley circled the frigate after a long morning's search
for what turned out to be nothing. Three merchant ships had died in the past
three hours, two to missiles that had leaked through the convoy's SAM defenses
and one to a torpedo. Both submarines had been prosecuted, one sunk by
Gallery's helo inside the convoy itself They were about to come within
ground-based air coverage from the European mainland, and it seemed to the
pilot that they'd won this battle. The convoy was getting across with
acceptable losses. Thirty-six more hours to landfall.

The landing was routine, and after a trip to the head,
O'Malley went into the wardroom for a drink and a sandwich. He found Calloway
waiting for him. The pilot had met the reporter briefly but not really spoken
with him.

"Is landing your helicopter on this little toy ship as
dangerous as it looks?"

"A carrier has a slightly larger deck. You're not doing
a story about me, are you?"

"Why not? You killed three submarines yesterday."

O'Malley shook his head. "Two ships, two helos, plus
some help from the rest of the screening force. I just go where they send me.
There's a lot to subhunting. All the parts have to work or the other guy
wins."

"Is that what happened last night?"

"Sometimes the other guy does something right, too. I
just spent four hours looking and came away empty. Maybe that was a sub, maybe
not. Yesterday was pretty lucky all the way around."

"Does it bother you, sinking them?" Calloway
asked.

"I've been in the Navy for seventeen years and I've
never met anybody who likes killing people. We don't even call it that, except
maybe when we're drunk. We sink ships and try to pretend that they're just
ships-things without people in them. It's dishonest, but we do it anyway. Hell,
this is the first time I've actually done what my main job is supposed to be.
Until now all my combat experience has been search-and-rescue stuff. I never
even dropped a war-shot on a real sub until yesterday. I haven't thought about
it enough to know if I like it or not." He paused. "It's an awful
sound. You hear rushing air. If you penetrate the hull at deep depth, the
sudden pressure change inside the hull supposedly causes the air to ignite and
everyone inside the boat incinerates. I don't know if it's true, but somebody
told me that once. Anyway, you hear the rushing air, then you hear the
screech-like a car throwing its brakes on hard. That's the bulkheads letting
go. Then comes the noise of the hull collapsing, hollow boom, sort of. And
that's it: a hundred people just died. No, I don't much like it.

"The hell of it is, it's exciting," O'Malley went
on. "You're doing something extremely difficult. It requires concentration
and practice and a lot of abstract thought. You have to get inside the other
guy's head, but at the same time you think of your mission as destroying an
inanimate object. Doesn't make much sense, does it? So, what you do is, you
don't think about that aspect of the job. Otherwise the job wouldn't get
done."

"Are we going to win?"

"That's up to the guys on land. All we do is support
them. This convoy's going to make it."

F™LZIEHAUSEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

"They told me you were dead," Beregovoy said.

"Not even scratched this time. It startled Vanya here
out of a sound sleep, however. How does the attack go?"

"Initial signs are promising. We have an advance of six
kilometers here, and almost as much here at Springe. We might have Hannover
surrounded by tomorrow."

Alekseyev found himself wondering if his superior had been
right. Perhaps NATO lines had been thinned so much they'd been forced to give
ground.

"Comrade General." It was the Army intelligence
officer. "I have a report of German tanks at Eldagsen. He-he just went off
the air."

"Where the hell is Eldagsen?" Beregovoy peered
down at the map. "That's ten kilometers behind the line! Confirm that
report!"

The ground shook under them, followed by the roar of jet
engines and launching missiles.

"They just hit our radio transmitters," the
communications officer reported.

"Switch to the alternate!" Alekseyev shouted.

"That was the alternate. They took out the primary last
night," Beregovoy answered. "Another is being assembled now. So we
use what we have here."

"No," Alekseyev said. "If we do that, we do
it on the move."

"I can't coordinate well that way!"

"You can't coordinate at all if you're dead."

USS CHICAGO

All hell was breaking loose. It was like a nightmare, except
you woke up from those, McCafferty reminded himself. At least three Bear-F
patrol aircraft were overhead, dropping sonobuoys all over the place, two
Krivak-type frigates and six Grisha patrol boats had shown up on the sonar, and
a Victor-III submarine had decided to come to the party.

Chicago had nibbled the odds down some. For the past few
hours, fancy footwork had killed the Victor and a Grisha and damaged a Krivak,
but the situation was deteriorating. The Russians were mobbing him, and he
would not be able to keep them at arm's length much longer. In the time it had
taken him to localize and kill the Victor, the surface groups had closed five
miles on him. Like a boxer against a puncher, he had the advantage only as long
as he kept them away.

What McCafferty wanted and needed to do was talk with Todd
Simms on Boston to coordinate their activities. He couldn't, because the
underwater telephone couldn't reach that far and made too much noise. Even if
he tried to make a radio broadcast, Boston would have to be near the surface,
with her antenna up to hear him. He was sure Todd had his boat as deep as he
could drive her. American submarine doctrine was for each boat to operate
alone. The Soviets practiced cooperative tactics, but the Americans never felt
the need. McCafferty needed some ideas now. The "book" solution to
the tactical problem at hand was to maneuver and look for openings, but Chicago
was essentially tied to a fixed position and could not stray too far from her
sisters. As soon as the Russians understood that there was a cripple out there,
they'd close in like a pack of dogs to finish Providence off, and he would not
be able to stop them. Ivan would gladly exchange some of his small craft for a
688.

"Ideas, XO?" McCafferty asked.

"How about, 'Scotty, beam us up!' " The executive
officer tried to brighten things a bit. It didn't work. So, okay, maybe the
skipper wasn't a Star Trek fan. "The only way I see to keep them off our
friends is to get them to chase us awhile."

"Go east and attack this group from the beam?"

"It's a gamble," the exec admitted. "But what
isn't?"

"You conn her. Two-thirds, and hug the bottom."

Chicago turned southeast and increased speed to eighteen
knots. This was a fine time to find out how accurate our charts are, McCafferty
thought. Did Ivan have any minefields set here? He had to shut that thought
out. If they hit one, he'd never know it. The executive officer kept the
submarine within fifty feet of where the chart said the bottom was-actually he
hedged, keeping fifty feet above the highest bottom marker within a mile. Even
that would do no good if there was an uncharted wreck. McCafferty remembered
his first trip into the Barents Sea. Somewhere close to, here were those
destroyers sunk as targets. If he hit one of those at eighteen knots . . . The
run lasted forty minutes.

"All ahead one-third!" McCafferty ordered when he
couldn't stand it anymore. Chicago slowed to five knots. To the diving officer:
"Take her up to periscope depth."

The planesmen pulled back on their controls. There was some
minor groaning from the hull as the outside water pressure relented, allowing
the hull to expand an inch or so. On McCafferty's order the ESM mast went up
first. As before there were several radar sources. The search periscope went up
next.

A weather front was moving in, with a rain squall to the
west. Fabulous, McCafferty thought. There goes ten percent of our sonar
performance.

"I got a mast at two-six-four--what is it?"

"No radar signals on that bearing," a technician
said.

"It's broken-it's the Krivak. We got a piece of her,
let's finish her off. I-" A shadow went across the lens. McCafferty angled
the instrument up and saw the swept wings and propellers of a Bear.

"Conn, sonar, multiple sonobuoys aft!"

McCafferty slapped the scope handles up and lowered the
scope. "Take her down! Make your depth four hundred feet, left full
rudder, all ahead full."

A sonobuoy deployed within two hundred yards of the
submarine. The brassy sound of its pings reverberated through the hull.

How long for the Bear to turn and drop on us? On
McCafferty's order a noisemaker was ejected into the water. It didn't work, and
he fired off another. One minute passed. He'll try to get a magnetic fix on us
first.

"Rewind the tape." The duty electrician was
grateful to have something to do. The video record of his five-second periscope
exposure showed what looked like the remains of a Krivak's topsides.

"Passing three hundred feet. Speed twenty and
increasing."

"Scrape the bottom, Joe," McCafferty said. He
watched the tape rerun, but that was only to have something for his eyes to do.

"Torpedo in the water port quarter! Torpedo bearing
zero-one-five."

"Right fifteen degrees rudder! All ahead flank! Come to
new course one-seven-five." McCafferty put the torpedo on his stem. His
mind went through the tactical situation automatically. Russian ASW torpedo.-
sixteen-inch diameter, speed about thirty-six knots, range four miles, runs
about nine minutes. We're doing-he looked-twenty-five knots. It's behind us So
if he's a mile behind us . . . seven minutes to cover the distance. It can get
us. But we're accelerating at ten knots per minute . . . No, it can't.

"High-frequency pinging aft! Sounds like a torpedo
sonar."

"Settle down, people, I don't think it can catch
us." Any Russian ship in the neighborhood can hear us, though.

"Passing through four hundred feet, starting level
out."

"Torpedo is closing, sir," the sonar chief
reported. "The pings sound a little funny, like-" The sub shook with
a powerful explosion aft.

"All ahead one-third, right ten degrees rudder, come to
new course two-six-five. What you just heard was their fish hitting the bottom.
Sonar, start feeding me data."

The Russians had a new line of sonobuoys north of Chicago,
probably too far off to hear them. Bearings to the nearest Soviet ships were
steadying down: they were heading right for Chicago.

"Well, that'll keep them off our friends for a while,
XO."

"Super."

"Let's go south some more and see if we can get them to
pass us. Then we'll remind 'em what they're up against."

ICELAND

If I ever get off this rock alive, Edwards thought, I'll
move to Nebraska. He remembered flying over the state many times. It was so
agreeably flat. Even the counties were nice neat squares. Not so in Iceland.
For all that, it was easier going than they had enjoyed since leaving Keflavik.
Edwards and his party kept to the five-hundred-foot elevation line, which kept
them at least two miles from the gravel coast road, with mountains at their
backs and a good long field of view. Up to now they had seen nothing more than
routine activity. They assumed that every vehicle on the move had Russians
aboard. That probably was not true, but since the Soviet troops had
appropriated so many civilian vehicles there was no way to tell the sheep from
the goats. That made them all goats.

"Enjoying your rest, Sarge?" Edwards and his group
caught up with Smith. There was a road half a mile farther ahead, the first
they'd seen in two days.

"See that mountaintop?" Smith pointed. "A
chopper landed on it twenty minutes ago."

"Great." Edwards unfolded his map and sat down.
"Hill 1063-that's thirty-five hundred feet."

"Makes a nice lookout point, don't it? You suppose they
can see us from there?"

"Ten or eleven miles. Depends, skipper. I figure
they're using it to watch the water on both sides. If they have any brains,
they'll keep an eye on the rocks, too."

"Any idea how many people they have there?"
Edwards asked.

"No way. Maybe nobody-hell, they might have been making
a pickup, but I wouldn't bet on it. Maybe a squad, maybe a platoon. You gotta
figure they have a good pair of spotting glasses and a radio."

"And how do we get past them?" Edwards asked. The
ground was mostly open, with only a few bushes in sight.

"That's a real good question, skipper. Pick our routes
carefully, keep low, use dead ground-all the usual stuff. But the map shows a
little bay that comes within four miles of them. We can't detour around the far
side without running into the main road-can't hardly do that."

"What's the problem?" Sergeant Nichols arrived.
Smith explained matters. Edwards got on the radio.

"You just know they're on the hilltop, not strength or
weapons, right?" Doghouse asked.

"Correct."

"Damn. We wanted you on that hill." Now there's a
surprise, Edwards thought. "No chance you can go up that hill?"

"None. Say again no chance at all. I can think of
easier ways to commit suicide,

mister. Let me think this one over and get back to you.
Okay?"

"Very well, we'll be waiting. Out."

Edwards got his sergeants together and they started
exploring the maps.

"Really a question of how many men they have there, and
how alert they are," Nichols thought. "If they have a platoon there,
we can expect some patrol activity. Next question is how much? I wouldn't be
very keen on doing that hill twice a day myself."

"How many men would you put there?" Edwards asked.

"Ivan has a whole paratroop division here, plus other
attachments. Call it ten thousand men total. He can't garrison the entire
island, can he? So, would he have a rifle platoon on this or any other hilltop,
or just a spotting team-artillery observers, that sort of mob. They're looking
for your invasion force, and from up there a man with a decent spyglass can
cover all of this bay to our north, and probably see all the way to bloody
Keflavik the other way. They'll also be looking for aircraft."

"You're trying to make it sound easy?" Smith
wondered.

"I think we can approach the hill safely enough, then
wait for nightfall-what of it we have-and try to pass under them then. They
will have the sun in their eyes, you know."

"You've done this before?" Edwards asked.

Nichols nodded. "Falklands. We were there a week before
the invasion to scout various things. Same thing we're doing now."

"They haven't said anything on the radio about an
invasion."

"Leftenant, this is where your Marines are going to
land. No one's told me as much, but they didn't send us here to find a football
pitch, did they?" Nichols was in his mid-thirties, approaching twenty
years of service. He was by far the oldest member of the party, and the past
few days of serving under a rank amateur had chafed on him. The one nice thing
about this young weatherman, however, was his willingness to listen.

"Okay, they wanted us on this hill to eyeball things,
too. How about this smaller peak to the west of the main summit?"

"We'll have to go far out of our way to be able to
climb without being seen, but yes, we can establish ourselves there, I think.
So long as they are not terribly alert, that is."

"Okay, once we cross this road, we keep together in one
group. You got the point, Sergeant Nichols. I'd suggest we rest up a bit. Looks
like we'll have to be on the move for quite a while once we get moving."

"Eight miles to the foot of the hill. We will want to
be there about sunset."

Edwards checked his watch. "Okay, we start moving in an
hour." He walked over to Vigdis.

"So, Michael, what do we do now?" He explained the
situation to her at length.

"We're going to be close to some Russians. It might be
dangerous."

"You ask if I want to not go with you?"

Say yes and hurt her feelings. Say no and . . . shit!

"I don't want to see you hurt any more."

"I stay with you, Michael. I am safe with you."

SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND

It took several hours to pump out the water that had given
her the false list, an impression that had been reinforced by the ostentatious
activities of divers. The powerful tugs Catcombe and Vecta moved her slowly aft
into the Solent. Her flight deck had been fully repaired by the Vosper
shipwrights though so much of the gray steel showed the slapdash bandage work
of a job done more in haste than in consideration for the ship's proud name.
Two thousand men had done the job. New arresting gear had been flown in from
America, along with electronic equipment that came nowhere near replacing what
the Russian missiles had destroyed. The tugs escorted her to Calshot Castle,
then she moved alone south to Thom Channel, east by the yachts docked at Cowes.
Escorts were waiting at Portsmouth, then the small formation turned south and
west into the English Channel.

Flight operations began at once. The first aircraft to
arrive were the Corsair attack bombers, then the heavier Intruders and the
sub-hunting Vikings. USS Nimitz was back in business.

USS CHICAGO

"-and shoot!" Three hours of excruciating work
distilled down to half a second. The now-familiar shudder of compressed air
ejected a pair of torpedoes into the black water of the Barents Sea.

The Soviet commander had been just a little too eager to
verify Chicago's death and allowed his frigate to run in close behind his two
remaining Grishas. All three ships were pinging at the bottom, looking for a
dead submarine. You didn't expect us to run south, did you? North or east,
maybe, but not south. McCafferty had maneuvered his submarine wide around the
Russian frigate, staying at the fringe of her sonar range, then closed up two
thousand yards behind her. One fish for the Krivak and one running for the
nearest patrol boat.

"No change in target course and speed, sir." The
torpedo raced after the Soviet frigate. "He's still pinging the other way,
sir."

The waterfall display lit up, a bright dot on the contact's
tone line. Simultaneously the thundering explosion echoed through the hull.

"Up scope!" McCafferty met the eyepiece at deck
level and worked it up slowly. "That's a kill. We broke her back. Okay . .
." He turned to the bearing of the near Grisha. Okay, target number two is
turning-wow, there go his engines. Increasing speed and going left."

"Skipper, the wire's cut on the fish."

"How long on the run?"

"Another four minutes, sir." In four minutes at
full speed the Grisha would be outside the torpedo's acquisition radius.

"Damn, it's going to miss. Down scope. Let's get out of
here. We'll go east this time. Make your depth four hundred, all ahead two-thirds.
Come right to zero-five-five."

"Must have been the shock of the explosion, sir. Half a
second later, the control wires let go on the number-two fish." McCafferty
and his weapons officer reexamined the plot.

"You're right. I cut that one too close. Okay."
The captain stepped over to the chart table. "Where do you figure our
friends are?"

"Right about here, sir. Twenty- to twenty-five
miles."

"I think we've taken enough heat off them. Let's see if
we can get back up there while Ivan tries to figure out what's going on."

"We've been lucky, skipper," the exec observed.

"That's true enough. I want to know where their
submarines are. That Victor we got just walked across our sights. Where are the
rest of 'em? They can't just be chasing after us with these." Of course
not, McCafferty realized. The Russians set up hunting preserves, sectors
limited to specific types of ships. Their surface ships and aircraft would be
in one sector, and next to it their submarines would have exclusive hunting
rights . . .

He told himself that he'd done well to date. Three patrol
boats, a fullsized frigate, and a sub, quite a week in anybody's book. But it
wasn't over. Not until they got Providence to the ice.

38 - Stealth on the Rocks

ICELAND

The first leg of the trip was only eight miles in a straight
line, but the line they traveled was straight in no dimension. The terrain here
was volcanic also, littered with rocks large and small. The large ones made
shadows, and whenever possible they stayed in them, but with every step they
had also to detour, uphill and down, left and right, until every yard of
forward travel was accompanied by a yard in another direction, and eight miles
became sixteen.

For the first time, Edwards knew that he was under possible
observation. Even when the hilltop they skirted was hidden by a ridge, who
could say that the Russians did not have another scouting party out? Who could
be sure that they were not being watched, that some Russian sergeant with
binoculars had noticed their rifles and packs, then picked up his portable
radio and sent out a call for an armed helicopter? The effort of the walk made
their hearts beat fast. Fear made their hearts beat faster still, compounding
their fatigue like interest on a usurer's loan.

Sergeant Nichols proved an efficient leader, and a hard one.
The oldest member of the party, his stamina-sore ankle and all-amazed Edwards.

They all kept quiet, no one wanted to make noise, and
Nichols was unable to growl at those too slow to keep up. His contemptuous look
was enough. He's ten years older than me, Edwards told himself, and I'm a track
man. I can keep up with this bastard. Can't I?

Nichols managed to keep them clear of the coast road for
most of their journey, but there was one point where the road looped around a
small cove to within a mile of their path. Here they faced a cruel choice: risk
observation from the road, where the traffic was probably Russian, or from the
mountaintop. They risked the road, slowly and gingerly as they watched traffic
motor along every fifteen minutes or so. The sun was low in the northwestern
sky as they crept up a ravine with steep walls. They found a rockpile to rest
in before their dash below the observation post.

"Well, that was a nice day's walk, wasn't it?" the
sergeant of Royal Marines asked. He wasn't even sweating.

"You trying to prove something, Sergeant?" Edwards
asked. He was.

"Sorry, Leftenant. Your friends told me you were in
proper shape."

"I don't think I'll have a heart attack just yet, if
that's what you mean. Now what?"

"I'd suggest that we wait an hour, until the sun sinks
lower, then press on. Nine more miles. We'll want to move as quick as we
can."

Sweet Jesus! Edwards thought. He kept his face impassive.
"You sure they won't see us?"

"Sure? No, I am not sure, Leftenant. Twilight is the
hardest time to see, however. The eye cannot adjust from the bright sky to the
dark ground."

"Okay, you got us this far. I'm going to go and check
on the lady."

Nichols watched him walk off. "I would not mind seeing
'the lady' myself."

"That wasn't a good thing to say, Nick," Smith
observed quietly.

"Come on, you know what he's-"

"Nick, talk nice about the lady," Smith warned. He
was tired, but not that tired. "She's had a bad time, man. And the
skipper's a gentleman, y'dig? Hey, I thought he was a wimp, too. I was wrong.
Anyway, Miss Vigdis, man, that's one hell of a lady."

Mike found her curled in a fetal position next to a rock.
Rodgers was keeping an eye on her, and moved off when the lieutenant arrived.

"How are you?" Mike asked. She turned her head
fractionally.

"Dead. Michael, I am so tired."

"Me, too, babe." Mike sat down beside her and
stretched his legs out, wondering if the muscle tissue would just fall off the
bones. He was strong enough to stroke her hair. It was matted with sweat, but
Mike was past noticing such things. "Just a little while longer, Hey,
you're the one who wanted to stay with us, remember?"

"I am fool!" There was a note of humor in her
voice. As long as you can laugh, Mike remembered his father saying, you are not
defeated.

"Come on, you better stretch those legs out or they're
gonna knot up. Come on, roll over." Edwards straightened her legs and
massaged her calves briefly. "What we need is some bananas."

"What?" Her head came up.

"Bananas have lots of potassium. Helps to prevent
cramps." Or was it calcium for pregnant women? he wondered.

"What do we do when we get to our new hill?"

"We wait for the good guys."

"They come?" Her voice changed slightly.

"I think so."

"And you leave then?" Mike was quiet for a moment,
measuring his boldness against his shyness. What if she says-

"Not without you, I don't." He hesitated again.
"I mean, if that's-"

"Yes, Michael."

He lay down beside her. Edwards was startled by the fact
that he desired her now. She was no longer the victim of rape, or a girl
pregnant by another man, or a strange person from another culture. He was awed
by her inner strength and other things for which he had no names, and needed
none.

"You're right. I do love you." Son of a bitch. He
held her hand as both rested for the task ahead.

USS CHICAGO

"That's one of 'em, sir. Providence, I think. I got
some funny transients, like metal pieces beating against each other."

They'd been tracking the target-every contact was a
target-for two hours, closing very carefully as the possible noise source
changed into a probable one. The overhead storm degraded their sonar
performance measurably, and the target's stealth prevented their developing a
signature identification for an agonizing period. Might she be a Russian sub
creeping in search of her own target? Finally the faint rattles from the
damaged sail betrayed her. McCafferty ordered his boat to close the target at
eight knots.

Had Providence repaired her sonar systems? Certainly they'd
try, McCafferty thought, and if they then detected a submarine approaching very
cautiously from the rear, would they think this was their old friend Chicago,
or another Victor-III? For that matter, how sure were they that their target
was Providence? That was why American subs were trained to operate alone. Too
many uncertainties attached to cooperative operations.

They'd left the Soviet surface forces behind. McCafferty's
hit-and-run maneuver had fooled them, and before the noise faded out, they
listened to a spirited hunt involving aircraft and surface forces, now thirty
miles astern. That was a positive development, but the absence of any surface
ships in this area made McCafferty uneasy. He might now be in a
submarine-dedicated sector, and submarines were by far the more dangerous opponents.
His earlier success against the Victor had been pure luck. That Soviet skipper
had been too interested in starting his own hunt to check his flanks. It was a
mistake he did not expect to be repeated.

"Range?" McCafferty asked his tracking party.

"About two miles, sir."

That was the fringe of gertrude range, but McCafferty wanted
to get a lot closer than that. Patience, he told himself. Submarining was a
continuous exercise in patience. You spent hours in preparation for a few
seconds of activity. It's a wonder we don't all have ulcers. Twenty minutes
later, they had closed to within a thousand yards of Providence. McCafferty
lifted the gertrude phone.

"Chicago calling Providence, over."

"You took your time about it, Danny."

"Where's Todd?"

"He went off west after something two hours ago. We
lost him. No noise at all from that direction."

"What's your condition?"

"The tail works. Rest of our sonar's shot. We can shoot
fish from the torpedoroom control systems. Still raining in the control room,
but we can live with it as long as we stay above three hundred feet."

"Can you go any faster?"

"We tried going to eight knots. Found out we couldn't
keep it up. The sail's coming apart. The noise just gets worse. I can give you
six, that's it."

"Very well. If you got a working tail, we'll try to
take station a few miles ahead. Call it five miles."

"Thanks, Danny."

McCafferty hung up the phone. "Sonar, you got anything
that even looks like it might be something?"

"No, sir, it's clear right now."

"All ahead two-thirds." So, where the hell is
Boston? the captain asked himself.

"Funny how quiet things have got," the exec
pointed out.

"Tell me about it. I know I'm acting paranoid, but am I
acting paranoid enough!" McCafferty needed the laugh. "Okay. We
sprint and drift north, fifteen minutes sprint, ten drift, until we're five
miles ahead of Providence. Then we settle down to six knots and continue the
mission. I'm going to catch a nap. Wake me in two hours. Talk to the division
officers and chiefs, make sure the troops are getting some rest. We've been
pushing pretty hard. I don't want anybody to fold up." McCafferty grabbed
half a sandwich as he walked forward. It was only eight steps to his stateroom.
The food was swallowed by then.

"Captain to control!" It seemed he had only just
closed his eyes when the speaker over his head went off. McCafferty checked his
watch on the way out the door. He'd been asleep for ninety minutes. It would
have to do.

"What do we got?" he asked the exec.

"Possible submarine contact on the port quarter. Just
picked it up. We got a bearing change already-it's close. No signature
yet."

"Boston?"

"Could be."

I wish Todd hadn't gone off like that, McCafferty told
himself. He found himself wondering if they shouldn't just tell Providence to
go to her best speed and screw the noise. That was fatigue talking, he knew.
Tired people make mistakes, especially judgmental effors. Captains can't afford
those, Danny.

Chicago was making six knots. No noise at all, the captain
thought. Nobody can hear us . . . maybe, probably. You don't really know
anymore, do you? He went into the sonar room.

"How you feeling, Chief?"

"Hangin' in there, skipper. This contact's a beaut. See
how he fades in and out. He's there, all right, but it's a cast-iron bitch to hold
him."

"Boston headed off west a few hours ago."

"Could be him coming back, sir. Lord knows he's quiet
enough. Or it could be a Tango on batteries, sir. I don't have enough signal to
tell the difference. Sorry, sir. I just don't know." The chief rubbed raw
eyes and let out a long breath.

"How long since you had any rest?"

"I don't know that either, sir."

"When we finish up this one, you hit the rack, Chief
" The tracking party officer called forward next.

"I have a working range for you, sir. Five thousand
yards. I think he's on an easterly course. Trying to firm that up."
McCafferty ordered a firecontrol solution to be run on the contact.

"What's this?" the chief asked. "Another
sonar contact behind the first one, bearing two-five-three. He's following the
other guy!"

"I need an ID, Chief."

"I don't have enough data, Captain. Both these guys are
creeping."

Is Boston one of them? If so, which? If the one in front, do
we warn him and reveal our position? Or shoot and risk shooting at the wrong
one? Or just do nothing at all?

McCafferty went aft to the plotting board. "How close
is this one to Providence?"

"Just over four thousand yards, coming in on her port
bow."

"He probably has her then," the captain thought
aloud.

"But who the hell is he?" the tracking officer
asked quietly. "And what's this Sierra-2 contact behind him?"

"Transient! Transient!" the sonar chief called.
"Mechanical transient on Sierra2!"

"Left fifteen degrees rudder," McCafferty ordered
quietly.

"Torpedo in the water, bearing two-four-nine!"

"All ahead two-thirds!" This order was loud.

"Conn, sonar, we got increased machinery noises on
Sierra-l. Okay, the front contact is a two-screw boat, blade count indicates
speed of ten knots and increasing, getting some cavitation. Target Sierra-I is
maneuvering. Classify this target as a Tango-class."

"Boston's the one in back. All ahead one-third."
McCafferty ordered his submarine to slow back down. "Get him, Todd!"

His wish was rewarded with an explosion fifteen seconds
later. Simms had come up with the same tactic as his friend on Chicago. Close
to a few thousand yards of the target, and give him no chance to maneuver
clear. Fifteen minutes later, Boston joined her healthy sister.

"Talk about a tough four hours. That Tango was
good!" Simms called over on the gertrude. "You in good shape?"

"Yes. We have the front guard position. You want to
take the rear for a while?"

"You got it, Danny. See ya'."

ICELAND

"Lead off, Sergeant Nichols."

The Russian outpost was three miles south and three thousand
feet up. They climbed up the walls of the ravine and into relatively open
ground. They were between the sun and the outpost. Edwards found that
intellectually he believed what Nichols said about light conditions, and how
the eye reacted to them-and how easy was it to spot something three miles
away?-but walking like this felt like being naked on the street at rush hour.
They had darkened their faces with camouflage makeup, and their uniforms
blended in well with the color and texture of the land. But the human eye looks
for movement, Edwards told himself, and we're moving. What am I doing here?

One step at a time. Walk softly. Don't raise any dust. Slow,
easy pace. No sudden moves. Heads down. All the things Nichols had said echoed
through his mind. Look at me, I'm invisible.

He commanded himself not to look up, but Edwards would have
been less than human not to sneak an occasional look. The hill-mountain towered
above them. It really got steep near the top. A volcano? he wondered. There was
no sign of activity at the summit. Maybe nobody is there? Right. Do us all a
favor and be blind, or asleep, or eating, or looking for airplanes. He had to
pull his eyes away from it.

The rocks he stepped over and around blended together after
a while. Each member of the party walked alone. No one said anything. Every
face was couched in a neutral expression that might have meant quiet
determination or concealed exhaustion. Just walking the rocks safely required
concentration.

This is the end of it. The last hike. The last hill to
climb. The end, Edwards promised himself. After this I drive a car to get the
morning paper. If I can't have a one-story house I'll damned well have an
elevator installed. I'll get kids to cut the grass for me and sit on the porch
watching them.

Finally the hilltop was behind him. He had to sneak his
looks over his shoulder now. For some reason the helicopter full of Russian
paratroopers didn't come. They were somewhat safer now. So Nichols stepped up
the pace.

Four hours later the mountaintop was behind a knife-edge
ridge of volcanic rock. Nichols called a halt. They'd been moving for seven
hours.

"Well," the sergeant said. "That was easy
enough, wasn't it?"

"Sarge, next time you jump out of an airplane, please
break your ankle," Mike suggested.

"Hard part's behind us. Now all we have left is to
climb this wee hill," Nichols pointed out.

"Might want to get some water first," Smith said.
He pointed to a stream a hundred yards away.

"Good idea. Leftenant, I do think we should be atop the
hill as quick as we can."

"Agreed. This is absolutely the last Goddamned hill I
ever climb!"

Nichols chuckled. "I have said that myself once or
twice, sir."

"I don't believe it."

USS INDEPENDENCE

"Welcome aboard, Toland!" Commander, Strike Fleet
Atlantic was a three-star billet, but Rear Admiral Scott Jacobsen would have to
settle for the job instead of the rank for the moment. The life-long aviator
was the most senior carrier division commander in the Navy, and was the
replacement for the late Admiral Baker. "You have one hell of a letter of
introduction here from Admiral Beattie."

"He made too big a deal of it. All I did was pass along
an idea somebody else came up with."

"Okay. You were on Nimitz when the task force got hit,
right?"

"Yes, sir, I was in CIC."

"The only other guy who got out was Sonny
Svenson?"

"Captain Svenson, yes, sir."

Jacobsen picked up his phone and punched three digits.
"Ask Captain Spaulding to join me. Thank you. Toland, you, me, and my
operations officer are going to relive that experience. I want to see if there
might be something our briefing left out. They're not going to punch any holes
in my carriers, son."

"Admiral, don't underestimate them," Toland
warned.

"I won't underestimate them, Toland. That's why I have
you here.

Your group got caught too far north for the circumstances.
Taking Iceland was a beautiful move on their part. It screwed our plans pretty
well. We are going to fix that, Commander."

"So I gather, sir."

USS REUBEN JAMES

"Ain't she pretty!" O'Malley said. He flipped his
cigarette over the side and crossed his arms, staring at the massive carrier on
the horizon. She was just a dim gray shape, with aircraft landing on the flat
deck.

"My story is supposed to be about the convoy,"
Calloway sniffed.

"Well, they're making port right about now. End of
story." The pilot turned with a wide grin. "Hell, you made me famous,
didn't you?"

"You bloody aviators are all the same!" the
Reuters correspondent snapped angrily. "The captain won't even tell me
where we're going."

"You don't know?" O'Malley asked in surprise.

"Well, where are we going?"

"North."

LE HAVRE, FRANCE

The port had been cleared in expectation of the convoy. The
merchantmen were brought past several wrecks of ships that had died from Soviet
mines, some laid before the war, others dropped from aircraft. The port had
also been bombed six times by long-range fighter-bombers, each time at a
murderous price from French air defense forces.

The first ships in were the big Ro/Ros, the roll-on/roll-off
container ships. Eight of them together carried a full armored division, and
these were taken quickly to the Bassin Theophile Ducrocq. One by one, the ships
lowered their curved stern ramps to the dock and the tanks began to roll off.
They met a continuous taxi-rank of low-loader tractor-trailers, each of which
would carry a tank or other armored fighting vehicle to the front lines.
Loaded, they rolled off one by one to the assembly point at the Renault
facility adjacent to the port. It would take hours to unload the division, but
it had been decided nevertheless to move everything in a body to the fighting
front, less than five hundred kilometers away.

After what had seemed an endless, tense voyage, arrival was
a culture shock for the American troops, many of them National Guardsmen who
rarely went overseas. The dock workers and traffic police were too exhausted
from weeks of frantic work to show any human emotion, but ordinary people who
had learned, despite heavy security, that reinforcing troops were landing came
out, first in small groups, soon in small mobs, to watch the new arrivals. The
American troops were not allowed to leave their company areas. After some
informal negotiations, it was decided small delegations would be allowed to
meet briefly with some of the troops. The security risk was minor-the telephone
lines in and out of all NATO ports were under tight control-and there was an
unexpected result to this exercise in simple courtesy. Like their fathers and
grandfathers, the arriving troops saw that Europe was worth fighting for. The
people who were often seen merely as threats to American jobs had faces and
hopes and dreams, all of which were in danger. They were not fighting for a
principle, or a political decision, or a treaty made of paper. They were here
for these people and others not the least different from those they'd left at
home.

It took two hours longer than they'd hoped. Some vehicles
were broken down, but the port and police officials had organized the assembly
points with skill. The division moved off in the early afternoon at a steady
fifty kilometers per hour, driving down a multilane highway cleared for its
path. Every few yards, someone stood to wave while the troops made final checks
on their gear. The easy part of their journey was about to end.

ICELAND

It was four in the morning when they reached the top, only
to find that this mountain had a number of "tops." The Russians had
the highest one, three miles away. Edwards's group had a choice of two
subsidiary peaks, each a few hundred feet lower than the adjacent
thousand-meter summit. They picked the higher of the two, overlooking the small
fishing port of Stykkisholmur, almost due north, and the large rock-filled bay
that the map called Hvammsfj”rdur.

"Looks like a fine observation point, Leftenant
Edwards," Nichols judged.

"That's good, Sarge, 'cause I am not going another
foot." Edwards already had his binoculars on the eastern peak. "I
don't see any movement."

"They're there," Nichols said.

"Yeah," Smith agreed. "Sure as hell."

Edwards slid down from the crestline and unpacked his radio.

"Doghouse, this is Beagle, and we are where you want
us, over."

"Give me your exact position."

Edwards opened his map and read off the coordinates.
"We believe there's a Russian observation post on the next peak over.
They're about five klicks away, according to this map. We're well concealed
here and we have food and water for two days. We can see the roads leading into
Stykkisholmur. Matter of fact, it's nice and clear now, and we can see all the
way to Keflavik. We can't pick anything out, but we can see the
peninsula."

"Very well. I want you to look north and tell us what
you see in detail."

Edwards handed the radio antenna to Smith, then turned and
put his field glasses on the town.

"Okay. The land is pretty flat, but higher than the
water, on a shelf, like. The town is fairly small, maybe eight square blocks.
There are some little fishing boats tied up to the docks . . . I count nine of
them. The harbor north and east of the port is wall-to-wall rocks that go on
for miles. I do not see any armored vehicles, no obvious signs of Russian
troops-wait. I do see two four-by-fours parked in the middle of the street,
like, but nobody around 'em. The sun's still low, and there's lots of shadows.
Nothing moving on the roads. I guess that's about it."

"Very well, Beagle. Good report. Let us know if you see
any Soviet personnel at all. Even one, we want to know about him. Stay
put."

"Somebody coming to get us?"

"Beagle, I don't know what you're talking about."

USS INDEPENDENCE

Toland stood in the Combat Information Center, watching the
displays. Submarines concerned him the most. Eight allied subs were in the
Denmark Strait, west of Iceland, forming a barrier that few submarines would be
able to pass. They were supported by Navy Orions operating out of Sondrestrom,
Greenland, something impossible until the Russian fighters at Keflavik had been
whittled down. That closed off one possible avenue of access to Strike Fleet
Atlantic. More submarines formed a line parallel to the fleet's line of
advance, and those were supported by the carrier-borne S-3A Vikings that operated
continuously off the flight decks.

The Pentagon had leaked to the press that this Marine
division was enroute to Germany, where the battle hung in the balance. In fact,
the tight formation of amphibs was twenty miles from his carrier on a course of
zero-three-nine, four hundred miles from its real objective.

USS REUBEN JAMES

"We're not heading north any longer," Calloway
said. Dinner was being served in the wardroom. The officers were plowing
through the last fresh lettuce aboard.

"I believe you're right," O'Malley agreed. "I
think we're heading west now."

"You might as well tell me what the devil we're up to.
I've been shut off from your satellite transmitters."

"We're screening the Nimitz battle group, except that
when you're motoring along at twenty-five knots, it's not all that easy."
O'Malley didn't like this. They were running a risk. It was part of war, but
the pilot didn't like any part of war. Especially risks. They pay me to do it,
not to like it

"The escort is mostly British, isn't it?"

"Yeah, so?"

"That's a story I can use to tell the people at home
how important-"

"Look, Mr. Calloway, let's say you file your story, and
it got published in the local papers. Then let's say a Soviet agent reads the
story and passes it along to-"

"How would he do that? The government has undoubtedly
put severe restrictions on all forms of communication."

"Ivan has lots of communications satellites, same as
us. We have two satellite transmitters on this dinky little frigate. You've
seen 'em. How expensive do they look? Think maybe you could have one in your
backyard, inside a bush maybe? Besides, the whole group is blacked out. Total
EMCON. Nobody is transmitting anything at the moment."

Morris arrived and took his seat at the head of the table.

"Captain, where are we going?" Calloway asked.

"I just found out. Sorry I can't tell you. Battleaxe
and we will continue to work together for a while as stem guard for the Nimitz
group. We are now designated 'Mike Force.'"

"We getting any more help?" O'Malley asked.

"Bunker Hill is heading this way. She had to reload her
magazines and join up with HMS Illustrious. They'll operate in close when they
catch up. We're going to outside picket again. We start doing real ASW work in
another four hours. Still going to be a bastard trying to keep up with the
carrier, though."

USS CHICAGO

There were three contacts. All arrived within ten minutes.
Two were ahead of Chicago, left and right of her bow. The third was on her port
beam. Somehow, McCafferty realized, the Russians knew of the submarines they
had killed. Probably some sort of radio buoy, he was sure. That meant all that
his tactical successes had really accomplished was to draw more dangers in on
the trio of American submarines.

"Conn, sonar. We have some sonobuoy signals at
two-six-six. Count three buoys-four, make it four."

More Bears? McCafferty wondered. A cooperative hunt?

"Skipper, you better come forward," the sonar
chief called.

"What's happening?" The waterfall display screen
was suddenly crowded.

"Sir, we have three lines on sonobuoys forming up right
now. Gotta be at least three aircraft up there. This one's fairly close, looks
like it'll extend aft of us, maybe right on our friends."

McCafferty watched the new signal lines appear at the rate
of one per minute. Each was a Russian sonobuoy, and the line marched east as
two others grew on different azimuths.

"They're trying to box us in, Chief."

"Looks that way, sir."

Every time we destroyed a Russian ship we gave them a
location reference. They've confirmed our course and speed of advance many
times over. McCafferty had gotten his submarine back to the Svyataya Anna
Trough. His path to the icepack was a hundred miles wide and three hundred
fathoms deep. But how many Russian subs were there? The sonar crew continued to
call off bearings to the submarine contacts while the captain watched the buoy
lines extend.

"I think this is Providence, sir. She just increased
speed-yeah, look at the noise now, she's really increased speed. This buoy must
be right near her. Still can't find Boston, though."

Bearing was constant to the two forward submarine contacts.
He couldn't develop a range figure unless he or they maneuvered. If he turned
left, he'd then close on a third contact, which might not be a good idea. If he
turned right, he'd run away from the submarine that might then close on
Providence. If he did nothing, he'd accomplish nothing, but McCafferty didn't
know what to do.

"There's another buoy, sir." The new one was
between the bearings of two existing contacts. They were trying to localize
Providence.

"There's Boston. She's-yeah, she's running past a
buoy." A new contact line appeared suddenly bright where nothing had been
before. Todd just increased power and he's going to allow himself to be picked
up, McCafferty thought. Then he'll dive deep to evade.

Look at it from the Russian side, the captain told himself.
They don't really know what they're up against, do they? They probably figure
they're up against more than one, but how many more? They can't know that. So
they'll want to flush the game before they shoot, just to see what's here.

"Torpedo in the water, bearing one-nine-three!"

A Russian Bear had dropped on Boston. McCafferty watched the
sonar display as Simms took his boat deep with the torpedo in pursuit. He'd
change depth and make a few radical changes in course and speed, trying to
evade the fish. The bright line of a noisemaker appeared, holding a constant
bearing as Boston maneuvered further. The torpedo chased the noisemaker,
running another three minutes before it ran out of fuel.

The screen was relatively clear again. The sonobuoy signals
remained. Boston and Providence had reduced power and disappeared-but so had
the Russian sub signals.

What are they doing? What is their plan? the captain asked
himself. What submarines are out there?

Tangos, has to be Tangos. They cut their electric motors
back, slowed to steerageway, and that's why they disappeared off the scopes.
Okay, they're not coming in after us anymore. They stopped moving when the
aircraft detected Providence and Boston. They're coordinating with the Bears!
That means they have to be at shallow depth, and their sonar performance is
down because they're close to the surface.

"Chief, assume that these two contacts you had were
Tangos doing about ten knots. The figure of merit gives us a detection range of
what?"

"These water conditions . . . ten to twelve miles. I'd
be real careful using that number, sir."

Three more sonobuoy lines began to appear north of Chicago.
McCafferty went aft to see how they were plotted out. They assumed about a
two-mile spacing on the sonobuoy lines, and that gave them range figures.

"Not being very subtle, are they?" the exec
observed.

"Why bother when you don't have to? Let's see if we can
pick our way through the buoys."

"What are our friends doing?"

"They'd better be coming north, too. I don't want to
think about what other assets they have moving in on us. Let's head right
through here."

The executive officer gave the orders. Chicago began to move
forward again. Now they'd really find out if the rubber tiles on the hull
absorbed sonar waves or not. The last bearings to the Russian submarines were
plotted also. McCafferty knew that they too could be moving behind that wall of
noise. When he detected them again it would be at perilously close range. They
went deep. The submarine dove to a thousand feet and cruised toward the precise
midpoint between a pair of pinging buoys.

Another torpedo appeared in the water aft, and McCafferty
maneuvered quickly to evade, only to realize that it was aimed at someone else,
or nothing at all. They listened to it run for several minutes, then fade out.
A perfect way to break a man's concentration, McCafferty thought, bringing his
sub back to a northerly course.

Bearings to the sonobuoys changed as they got closer. They
were almost exactly two miles apart, a mile on either beam, as Chicago went
through the first line, crawling just above the bottom. They were set on a
frequency that could be heard clearly through the hull. Just like the movies,
the captain thought, as the crewmen not directly involved in navigating the
boat looked up and outward at the hull as though it were being caressed by the
noise. Some caress. The second line was three miles beyond the first. Chicago
turned slightly left to head for another gap.

Speed was down to four knots now. Sonar called out a
possible contact to the north that immediately faded away. Maybe a Tango, maybe
nothing. It was plotted anyway, as the submarine took nearly an hour to reach
the second line of pinging buoys.

"Torpedo in the water, port side!" sonar screamed
out.

"Right full rudder, all ahead flank!"

Chicago's propeller thrashed at the water, creating a
bonanza of noise for the Russian aircraft who'd dropped a fish on a possible
contact. They ran for three minutes while waiting for additional data on the
torpedo.

"Where's the torpedo?"

"It's pinging sir-but it's pinging the other way,
bearing changing south, left to right, and weakening."

"All ahead one-third, rudder amidships,"
McCafferty ordered.

"Another one-torpedo in the water bearing
zero-four-six."

"Right full rudder, all ahead flank," McCafferty
ordered yet again. He turned to the exec. "You know what they just did?
They dropped a fish to spook us into moving! Damn!" Beautiful tactic,
whoever you are. You know we can't afford to ignore a torpedo.

"But how'd they know we were here?"

"Maybe they just guessed well, maybe they got a twitch.
Then we gave 'em the contact."

"Torpedo bearing zero-four-one. The torpedo is pinging
at us, don't know if it has us, sir. Captain, I got a new contact bearing
zero-nine-five. Sounds like machinery noises-possible submarine."

"Now what?" McCafferty whispered. He put the
Russian torpedo on his stem and hugged the bottom. Sonar performance dropped to
zero as Chicago accelerated past twenty knots. Their instruments could still
hear the ultrasonic pings of the torpedo, however, and McCafferty maneuvered to
keep the weapon behind him as it dove down after the American sub.

"Bring her up! Make your depth one hundred feet. Shoot
off a noisemaker."

"Full rise on the planes!" The diving officer
ordered a short blow on the forward trim tanks to effect the maneuver. Along
with the noisemaker, it created an enormous disturbance in the water. The
torpedo raced in after it, missing below Chicago. A good maneuver, it was also
a desperate one. The submarine rose quickly, her elastic hull popping as the
pressure on the steel diminished. There was an enemy sub out there, and he now
had all sorts of noise from Chicago. All McCafferty could do was run. He was
confident that the other sub would chase after him with a homing torpedo
circling below, but didn't understand why the other sub was there at all. He slowed
Chicago to five knots and turned as the torpedo ran out of fuel below him. Next
problem: there was a Soviet submarine close by.

"He's gotta know about where we are, skipper."

"You got that one right, XO. Sonar, Conn,
Yankee-search!" Both sides could use unusual tactics. "Fire-control
party, stand by, this one's going to be a snapshot."

The powerful but seldom-used active sonar installed in
Chicago's bow blasted the water with low-frequency energy.

"Contact, bearing zero-eight-six, range four six
hundred!"

"Set it up!"

Chicago's steel hull reverberated three seconds later with
Soviet sonar waves.

"Set! Ready for tubes three and two."

"Match bearings and shoot!" The torpedoes were
fired within seconds of one another. "Cut the wires. Take her down! Make
your depth one thousand feet, all ahead flank, left full rudder, come to new
course two-six-five!" The submarine wheeled and sped west as her torpedoes
raced toward their target.

"Transients-torpedoes in the water aft, bearing
zero-eight-five."

"Patience," McCafferty said. You didn't expect us
to do that, did you? "Nice job, fire-control! We got our shots off a
minute faster than the other guy. Speed?"

"Twenty-four knots and increasing, sir," the
helmsman answered. "Passing four hundred feet, sir."

"Sonar, how many fish we got chasing us?"

"At least three, sir. Sir, our units are pinging. I
believe they have the target."

"XO, in a few seconds we're going to turn and change
depth. When we do, I want you to fire off four noisemakers at fifteen-second
intervals."

"Aye, Cap'n."

McCafferty went over to stand behind the helmsman. He'd just
turned twenty the day before. The rudder indicator was amidships, with ten
degrees of down angle on the planes, and the submarine was just passing through
five hundred feet and hurtling down. The speed log now showed thirty knots. The
rate of acceleration slowed as Chicago neared her maximum speed. He patted the
boy on the shoulder.

"Now. Ten degrees rise on the planes and come right
twenty degrees rudder."

"Yes, sir!"

The hull thundered with the news that their fish had found
their target. Everyone jumped or cringed-they had their own problems chasing
after them. Chicago's maneuver left a massive knuckle in the water that the
executive officer punctuated with four noisemakers. The small gas canisters
filled the disturbance with bubbles that made excellent sonar targets while
Chicago sped north. She raced right under a sonobuoy, but the Russians could
not put another torpedo down for fear of interfering with those already
running.

"Bearing is changing on all contacts, sir," sonar
reported.

McCafferty started to breathe again. "Ahead
one-third."

The helmsman dialed the annunciator handle. The engineers
responded at once, and again Chicago slowed.

"We'll try to disappear again. They probably aren't
sure yet who killed who. We'll use that time to get back down to the bottom and
crawl northeast. Well done, people, that was sorta hairy."

The helmsman looked up. "Skipper, the south side of
Chicago ain't the baddest part of town anymore!"

Sure as hell is the tiredest, though, the captain thought.
They can't keep coming at us this way. They have to back off and rethink, don't
they? He had the chart memorized. Another hundred fifty miles to the icepack.

39 - The Shores of Stykklisholmur

HUNZEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

They'd finally defeated the counterattack. No, Alekseyev
told himself, we didn't defeat it, we drove it off. The Germans had withdrawn
of their own accord after blunting half of the Russian attack. There was more
to victory than being in possession of the battlefield.

It only got harder. Beregovoy had been right when he'd said
that coordinating a large battle on the move was much harder than doing it from
a fixed command post. Just the effort of getting the right map opened inside a
cramped command vehicle was a battle against time and space, and eighty
kilometers of front made for too many tactical maps. The counterattack had
forced the generals to move one of their precious A reserve formations north,
just in time to watch the Germans withdraw after savaging the rear areas of
three B motor-rifle divisions, and spreading panic throughout the thousands of
reservists who were trying to cope with old equipment and barely remembered
training.

"Why did they pull back?" Sergetov asked his
general.

Alekseyev did not respond. There was a fine question that he
had already asked half a dozen times. There were probably two reasons, he told
himself. First, they'd lacked the strength to pursue the effort and had had to
settle for a spoiling attack to unbalance our operation. Second, the central
axis of our attack was on the verge of reaching the Weser, and they might have
been called back to deal with this possible crisis. The Army group intelligence
officer approached.

"Comrade General, we have a disturbing report from one
of our reconnaissance aircraft." The officer related the sketchy radio
message from a low-flying recce aircraft. NATO's control of the air had brought
particularly grim losses to those all-important units. The pilot of this MiG-21
had seen and reported a massive column of allied armor on the E8 highway south
of Osnabruck before disappearing. The General immediately lifted the radiophone
to Stendal.

"Why were we not informed of this as soon as you
received it?" Alekseyev demanded of his superior.

"It is an unconfirmed report," CINC-West replied.

"Dammit, we know the Americans landed reinforcements at
Le Havre!"

"And they can't be at the front for at least another
day. How soon will you have a bridgehead on the Weser?"

"We have units on the river now at Ruhle-"

"Then move your bridging units there and get them
across!"

"Comrade, my right flank is still in disarray, and now
we have this report of a possible enemy division forming up there!"

"You worry about crossing the Weser and let me worry
about this phantom division! That's an order, Pavel Leonidovich!"

Alekseyev set the phone back in its place. He has a better
overall picture of what's going on, Pasha told himself. After we bridge the
Weser, we have no really serious obstacle in front of us for over a hundred
kilometers. After the river Weser, we can race into the Ruhr, Germany's
industrial heart. If we destroy that, or even threaten it, then perhaps the
Germans will seek their political solution and the war is won. That is what he
is telling me.

The General looked at his maps. Soon the lead regiment would
try to force men across the river at Ruhle. A bridging regiment was already en
route. And he had his orders.

"Start moving the OMG troops."

"But our right flank!" Beregovoy protested.

"Will have to look after itself."

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

SACEUR was still worried about his supplies. He'd also been
forced to gamble in giving highest transport priority to the armored division
now approaching Springe. The container ships loaded with munitions, spare
parts, and the millions of other specialty items were just now sending their
cargoes to the front. His largest reserve formation, the tank force, was about
to team up with two German brigades, and what was left of the 11th Armored Cavalry
Regiment, once a brigade in all but name, now only two battalions of weary men.

His supply situation was still tenuous. Many of his line
units were down to four days of consumable stores, and the resupply effort
would take two days, even if things went perfectly: a thin margin that in a
prewar exercise might have seemed equitable enough, but not now, when men and
nations were at stake. Yet what choice did he have?

"General, we have a report here of a regiment-sized
attack on the Weser. It looks like Ivan's trying to put troops on the left
bank."

"What do we have there?"

"One battalion of Landwehr, and they're pretty beat up.
There are two companies of tanks on the way, ought to be there in a little over
an hour. There are preliminary indications that Soviet reinforcements are
heading that way. This might be the main axis of their attack, at least it
seems that they're orienting in that direction."

SACEUR rocked back in his chair, looking up at the map
display. He had one reserve regiment within three hours of Ruhle. The General
was a man who loved to gamble. He was never happier than when sitting at a
table with a deck of cards and a few hundred dollars' worth of chips. He
usually won. If he attacked south from Springe and failed . . . the Russians
would put two or three divisions across the Weser, and he had precisely one regiment
in reserve to stand in their way. If he moved his new tank division there, and
by some miracle they got there in time, he would have frittered away his best
chance for a counterattack by reacting to a Soviet move again. No, he couldn't
just react anymore. He pointed to Springe.

"How long before they're ready to move?"

"The whole division-six hours at best. We can divert
the units still on the road south to-"

"No."

"Then we go south from Springe with what's ready
now?"

"No." SACEUR shook his head and outlined his plan
. . .

ICELAND

"I see one," Garcia called. Edwards and Nichols
were beside him in a moment.

"Hello, Ivan," Nichols said quietly.

Even with binoculars, the distance was still a little over
three miles. Edwards saw a tiny figure walking along the crest of the
mountaintop. He carried a rifle and appeared to be wearing a soft hat-perhaps a
beret-instead of a helmet. The figure stopped and brought his hands up to his
face. He had binoculars, too, Edwards saw. He looked north, slightly downward,
training his field glasses left to right and back again. Then he turned and
looked off in the direction of Keflavik.

Another man appeared, approaching the first. Perhaps they
were talking, but it was impossible to tell at this distance. The one with binoculars
pointed at something to the south.

"What do you suppose this is all about?" Edwards
asked.

"Talking about the weather, girls, sports, food-who
knows?" Nichols replied. "Another one!"

The third figure appeared, and the trio of Russian
paratroopers stood together doing whatever it was that they were doing. One had
to be an officer, Edwards decided. He said something, and the others moved off
quickly, dropping out of sight below the crest. What order did you just give?

Presently a group of men appeared. The light was bad, and
they shuffled around too much to get an accurate count, but there had to be at
least ten. About half of them were carrying their personal weapons, and these
started moving downhill. To the west.

"Right, he's a smart soldier," Nichols announced.
"He's sending out a patrol to make certain the area's secure."

"What do we do about it?" Edwards asked.

"What do you think, Leftenant?"

"Our orders are to sit tight. So we sit tight and hope
they don't see us."

"Not likely they will, you know. I shouldn't think
they'd climb down-must be eight hundred feet-then cross that rock yard, then
climb up here just to see if any Yanks are about. Remember, the only reason we
know they're there is that we saw their helicopter."

Otherwise we might have walked right into them, and that
would have been that, Edwards reminded himself. I won't be safe until I'm back
home in Maine. "Is that more of them?"

"Must be at least a platoon over there. That is rather
clever of our friends, isn't it?"

Edwards got on the radio to report this development to
Doghouse while the Marines kept track of the Russians.

"A platoon?"

"That's Sergeant Nichols's estimate. Kinda hard to
count heads from three miles away, fella."

"Okay, we'll pass that one along. Any air
activity.?"

"Haven't seen any aircraft at all since
yesterday."

"How about Stykkisholmur?"

"Too far to make anything out. We still can see those
four-by-fours sitting in the street, but no armored vehicles. I'd say they had
a small garrison force there to keep an eye on the port. The fishing boats
aren't going anywhere."

"Very well. Good report, Beagle. Hang in there."
The major switched off and turned to his neighbor at the communications
console. "It's a shame to keep them in the dark like this, isn't it?"

The SOE man sipped at his tea. "It would be a greater
shame to blow the operation."

Edwards didn't take the radio apart, but left it leaning
against a rock. Vigdis was still asleep on a flat ledge twenty feet below the
top. Sleep was about the most attractive thing Edwards could think of at the
moment.

"They're heading in this direction," Garcia said.
He handed the glasses to Edwards. Smith and Nichols were conferring a few yards
away.

Mike trained the binoculars on the Russians. He told himself
that to have them come right to his position was a very low order of
probability. Keep telling yourself that. He shifted his glasses to the Russian
observation post.

"There it is again," the sergeant told his
lieutenant.

"What's that?"

"I saw a flash from that hilltop, sun reflected off
something."

"A shiny rock," the lieutenant snorted, not taking
the time to look. "Comrade Lieutenant!" The officer turned at the
sharp tone to see a rock flying through the air at his face. He caught it, and
was too surprised to be angry. "How shiny does that rock look?"

"An old can, then! We've found enough trash here from
tourists and mountain climbers, haven't we?"

"Then why does it come and go and come back?"

The lieutenant got visibly angry at last. "Sergeant, I
know you have a year's combat experience in Afghanistan. I know I am a new
officer. But I am a Goddamned officer and you are a Goddamned sergeant!"

The wonders of our classless society, the sergeant thought,
continuing to look at his officer. Few officers could bear his look.

"Very well, Sergeant. You tell them." The
lieutenant pointed at the radio.

"Markhovskiy, before you come back, check out the
hilltop to your right."

"But it's two hundred meters high!" the squad
leader shot back.

"Correct. It shouldn't take long at all," the
platoon sergeant said comfortingly.

USS INDEPENDENCE

Toland switched viewgraphs, in the projector. "Okay,
these satellite shots are less than three hours old. Ivan has three mobile
radars, here, here, and here. He moves them about daily-meaning that one's
probably been moved already-and usually has two operating around the clock. At
Keflavik we have five SA-11 launch vehicles, four birds per vehicle. This SAM
is very bad news. You've all been briefed on its known capabilities, and you'd
better figure on a few hundred hand-held SAMs, too. The photo shows six mobile
antiaircraft guns. We don't see any fixed ones. They're there, gentlemen,
they're just camouflaged. At least five, perhaps as many as ten MiG-29 fighter
interceptors. This used to be a regiment until the guys from Nimitz cut them
down to size. Remember that the ones who're left are the ones who survived two
squadrons of Tomcats. That is the opposition at Keflavik."

Toland stepped aside while the wing operations officer went
over the mission profile. It sounded impressive to Toland. He hoped it would be
so for the Russians.

The curtain went up fifty minutes later. The first aircraft
launched for the strike were the E-2C Hawkeyes. Accompanied by fighters, they
flew to within eighty miles of the Icelandic coast and radiated their own radar
coverage all over the formation. More Hawkeyes reached farther out to cover the
formation from possible air-and submarine-launched missile attack.

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

Ground-based Soviet radar detected the Hawkeyes even before
their powerful systems went active. They could see two of the slow propeller-driven
aircraft hovering beyond SAM range, each accompanied by two other aircraft
whose extended figure-eight-course tracks denoted them as Tomcat interceptors
guarding the Hawkeyes. The alarm was sounded. Fighter pilots boarded their
aircraft while missile and gun crews raced to their stations.

The fighter-force commander was a major with three kills to
his credit-but who had learned the virtue of caution the hard way. He'd been
shot down once already. The Americans had sprung one trap on his regiment and
he had no wish to participate in a second. If this was an attack and not a
feint to draw out what fighters remained on Iceland-how would he know? He
reached his decision. On the major's command, the fighters lifted off, climbed
to twenty thousand feet, and orbited over the peninsula, conserving their fuel
and remaining over land, where they could be supported by friendly SAMs. They
had exercised carefully the previous few days with these tactics, and were as
confident as they could be that the missile crews could distinguish between
friendly and unfriendly aircraft. When they got to altitude, their radar threat
receivers told them of more American Hawkeyes to the east and west. The
information was relayed home with a request for a strike by the Backfires. What
they got back was a request to identify the American fleet's location and
composition. The air-base commander didn't bother forwarding that. The Soviet
fighter commander swore under his breath. The American radar aircraft were
prime targets, and tantalizingly within reach. With a full regiment, he'd
streak after them and risk losses from their fighter escorts, but he was sure
that that was precisely what the Americans were hoping he'd do.

The Intruders went in first, skimming above the wavetops
from the south at five hundred knots, Standard-ARM missiles hanging from their
wings. More Tomcat fighters were behind them at high altitude. When the
fighters, passed the radar aircraft, they illuminated the circling MiGs with
their radars and began to fire off Phoenix missiles.

The MiGs couldn't ignore them. The Soviet fighters separated
into two-plane elements and scattered, coached from their ground-based radar
controllers.

The Intruders popped up at a range of thirty miles, just
outside range of the SAMs, and loosed four Standard-ARM missiles each, which
homed in on the Russian search radars. The Russian radar operators faced a
cruel choice. They could leave their search radars on and almost certainly have
them destroyed or turn them off and lessen the chance-and completely lose track
of the overhead air battle. They chose a middle ground. The Soviet SAM
commander ordered his men to flip their systems on and off at random intervals,
hoping to confuse the incoming missiles while keeping tenuous coverage of the
incoming strike. The missile flight time was just over a minute, and most of
the radar crews took the time to switch their systems off and leave them
off-each misunderstanding the order in the most advantageous manner.

The Phoenixes arrived first. The MiG pilots suddenly lost
their ground-control guidance, but kept maneuvering. One aircraft had four
missiles targeted, and evaded two missiles only to blunder into another one.
The major in command swore at his inability to hit back as he tried to think of
something that would work.

Next came the Standard-ARMs. The Russians had three
air-search radars and three more for missile-acquisition. All had been turned
on when the first alarm sounded, then all had gone black after the missiles had
been detected in the air. The Standards were only partially confused. Their
guidance systems had been designed to record the position of a radar in case it
did go off the air, and they homed in on those positions now. The missiles
killed two transmitters entirely and damaged two others.

The American mission commander was annoyed. The Russian
fighters were not cooperating. They hadn't come out even when the Intruders had
popped up-he'd had more fighters waiting low for that eventuality. But the
Soviet radars were down. He gave the next order. Three squadrons of F/A-18
Hornets streaked in low from the north.

The Russian air-defense commander ordered his radars back
on, saw that no more missiles were in the air, and soon picked up the
low-flying Hornets. The MiG commander saw the American attack aircraft next,
and with them, his chance. The MiG-29 was a virtual twin to the new American
aircraft.

The Hornets sought out the Russian SAM launchers and began
to launch their guided weapons at them. Missiles crisscrossed the sky. Two
Hornets fell to missiles, two more to guns, as the American fighter-bombers
scoured the ground with bombs and gunfire. Then the MiGs arrived.

The American pilots were warned, but were too close to their
bombing targets to react at once. Once free of their heavy ordnance, they were
fighters again, and climbed into the sky-they feared MiGs more than missiles.
The resulting air battle was a masterpiece of confusion. The two aircraft would
have been hard to distinguish sitting side by side on the ground. At six
hundred knots, in the middle of battle, the task was almost impossible, and the
Americans, with their greater numbers, had to hold fire until they were sure of
their targets. The Russians knew what they were attacking, but they too shrank
from shooting with abandon at a target that looked too much like a comrade's
aircraft. The result was a swarming mix of fighters closing to a range too
short for missiles, as pilots sought positive target identification, an
anachronistic gun duel punctuated by surface-to-air missiles from the two
surviving Russian launchers. Controllers on the American aircraft and the
Russian ground station never had a chance to direct matters. It was entirely in
the hands of the pilots. The fighters went to afterburner and swept into
punishing high-g turns while heads swiveled and eyes squinted at familiar
shapes while trying to decide if the paint scheme was friendly or not. That
part of the task was fairly even. The American planes were haze-gray and harder
to spot, allowing easier target identification at long range than at short. Two
Hornets died first, followed by a MiG. Then another MiG fell to cannon fire,
and a Hornet to a snap-shot missile. An errant SAM exploded a MiG and a Hornet
together.

The Soviet major saw that and screamed for the SAMs to hold
fire; then he fired his cannon at a Hornet blazing across his nose, missed, and
turned to follow him. He watched the American close for a high-deflection shot
on a MiG-29 and damage its engine. The major didn't know how many of his
aircraft were left. It was beyond that. He was engaged in a struggle for
personal survival-which he expected to lose. Caution faded to nothing as he
closed on afterburner and ignored his low-fuelstate light. His target turned
north and led him over the water. The major fired his last missile and then
watched it track right into the Hornet's right engine as his own engines flamed
out. The Hornet's tail fragmented and the major screamed with delight as he and
the American pilot ejected a few hundred meters apart. Four kills, the major
thought. At least I have done my duty. He was in the water thirty seconds
later.

Commander Davies crawled into his raft despite a broken
wrist, cursing and blessing his luck at the same time. His first considered
action was to activate his rescue radio. He looked around and saw another
yellow raft a short distance away. It wasn't easy paddling with one arm, but
the other guy was paddling toward him. What came next was quite a surprise.

"You are prisoner!" The man was pointing a gun at
him. Davies's revolver was at the bottom of the sea.

"Who the hell are you?"

"I am Major Alexandr Georgiyevich Chapayev-Soviet Air
Force."

"Howdy. I'm Commander Gus Davies, U.S. Navy. Who got
you?"

"No one get me! I run out of fuel!" He waved the
gun. "And you are my prisoner."

"Oh, horseshit!"

Major Chapayev shook his head. Like Davies, he was in a
near-state of shock from the stress of combat and his close escape from death.

"Hold on to that gun, though, Major. I don't know if
there're sharks around here or not."

"Sharks?"

Davies had to think for a moment. The code name for that new
Russian sub. "Akula. Akula in the water."

Chapayev went pale. "Akula?"

Davies unzipped his flight suit and tucked in his injured
arm. "Yeah, Major. This is the third time I've had to go swimming. Last
time I was on the raft for twelve hours, and I saw a couple of the Goddamned
things. You got any repellant on your raft?"

"What?" Chapayev was really confused now.

"This stuff." Davies dipped the plastic envelope
in the water. "Let's rope your raft to mine. Safer that way. This
repellant stuffs supposed to keep the akula away."

Davies tried to secure the rafts one-handed and failed.
Chapayev set the gun down to help. After being shot down once, then surviving
an air battle, the major was suddenly obsessed with the idea of being alive.
The idea of being eaten by a carnivorous fish horrified him. He looked over the
side of the raft into the water.

"Christ, what a morning," Davies groaned. His
wrist was really hurting now.

Chapayev grunted agreement. He looked around for the first
time and realized he couldn't see land. Next he reached for his rescue radio
and found that his leg was lacerated, the radio pocket on his flight suit
ripped away in the ejection.

"Aren't we two sorry sons of bitches," he said in
Russian.

"What's that?"

"Where is land?" The sea had never looked so vast.

"About twenty-five miles that way, I think. That leg
doesn't look too good, Major." Davies laughed coldly. "We must have
the same kind of ejector seats. Oh, shit! This arm hurts."

"Damn, what do you suppose that's all about?"
Edwards wondered aloud. They were too far away to hear anything, but they could
not miss the smoke rising from Keflavik.

A more immediate concern was the squad of Russians now at
the base of their hill. Nichols, Smith, and the four privates were spread out
across a front of a hundred yards centered on Edwards, faces darkened, mainly
squatting behind rocks and watching the Russians half a mile away.

"Doghouse, this is Beagle, and we got trouble here,
over." He had to call twice more to get an answer.

"What's the problem, Beagle?"

"We got five or six Russians climbing our hill. They're
about six hundred feet below us, half a mile away. Also, what's going on at
Keflavik?"

"We have an air attack under way there, that's all I
know at the moment. Keep us posted, Beagle. I'll see if I can send you some
help."

"Thank you. Out."

"Michael?"

"Good morning. Glad one of us got a decent night's
sleep." She sat down beside him, resting her hand on his leg, and the fear
subsided for a moment.

"I'd swear I just saw some movement on the top
there," the platoon sergeant said.

"Let me see." The lieutenant moved his powerful
spotting glasses on the peak. "Nothing. Nothing at all. Maybe you saw a
bird. Those little puffin things are all over the place."

"Possibly," the sergeant allowed. He was starting
to feel guilty for sending Markhovskiy up there. If this lieutenant had half a
brain, he thought, he'd have sent a larger force, maybe led it himself, like an
officer should.

"The air base is being heavily attacked."

"Have you radioed in?"

"Tried to. They're off the air at the moment."
There was concern in his voice. Sixty miles was too far for the small tactical
radios. Their heavy VHF set reported into the air base. As much as he wanted to
be with the patrol, the lieutenant knew his proper place was here. "Warn Markhovskiy."

Edwards saw one of the Russians stop and fiddle with his
walkie-talkie. Tell him he's climbing the wrong hill-tell him to come home to
Mama.

"Keep your head down, babe."

"What is it, Michael?"

"We got some people climbing this hill."

"Who?" There was concern in her voice.

"Guess."

"Skipper, they're coming up for sure," Smith
warned over the radio.

"Yeah, I see that. Everybody got a good place?"

"Leftenant, I strongly recommend that we let them get
in very close before opening fire," Nichols called.

"Makes sense, skipper," Smith agreed on the same
circuit.

"Okay. You got ideas, gentlemen, I want to hear them
right away. Oh, yeah, I've called in for some help. Maybe we can get some air
support."

Mike pulled back on the charging handle of his rifle to make
sure a round was chambered, set it on safe, then put the M-16 down. The Marines
had all the hand grenades. Edwards had never been taught how to use them, and
they frightened him.

Come on, fellows, just go the hell away and we'll be glad to
leave you alone. They kept coming. Each paratrooper climbed slowly, rifle in
one hand and the other hand grabbing or fending off rocks. They spent their
time evenly looking up toward Edwards and down at their footing. Mike was truly
frightened. These Russians were elite soldiers. So were his Marines-but he was
not. He didn't belong here. The other times he'd faced Russians, in Vigdis's
house, the terrifying incident with the helicopter, all those were behind him and
for the moment forgotten. He wanted to run away-but what if he did? He'd earned
the respect of his Marines, and could he throw that away and still live with
himself? What of Vigdis -could he run away in front of her? What are you most
afraid of, Mike?

"Stay cool," he muttered to himself.

"What?" Vigdis asked. She too was afraid, just
from seeing his face.

"Nothing." He tried to smile and half succeeded.
You can't let her down, can you?

The Russians were now five hundred yards away and still well
below them. Their approach became more cautious. There were six of them, and
they moved two at a time, fanning out and no longer taking what looked to be
the easy route to the top.

"Skipper, we got a problem," Smith called. "I
think they know we're here."

"Nichols, I want to hear you."

"We wait until they get within one hundred yards, and
for Christ's good sake, keep heads down! If you can get some support, I would
suggest you do so."

Edwards switched radios. "Doghouse, this is Beagle, and
we need some help here."

"We're working on that. We're trying to get-to get some
friends to listen in on this frequency. It takes time, Lieutenant."

"I got about another five minutes-tops-before the
shooting starts."

"Keep this channel open."

"Where are they? Edwards asked himself. He couldn't see
anyone now. The rocks and cover that had so often worked for them were now
working against them. He stopped bobbing his head up and down. He was the
officer, he was in command, he had the best vantage point, and he had to see
what was happening. Edwards moved slightly to get a decent view of the events
below him.

"There is somebody there!" the platoon sergeant
said, grabbing for the radio. "Markhovskiy, you're heading into a trap! I
see a man with a helmet atop the hill."

"You're right," the lieutenant said. He turned.
"Get the mortar set up!" The officer ran over to the big VHF radio
and tried to raise Keflavik. Armed troops on this hill could only mean one
thing-but Keflavik was still off the air.

Edwards saw one Russian rise up, then drop back down on a
shout from someone else. When the shape reappeared, it was behind a rifle. He
heard a whistling sound, then there was an explosion fifty yards away.

"Oh, shit!" Edwards fell to his face and cowered
next to his rock. Bits of other rocks fell around him. He looked at Vigdis, who
seemed all right, then over at the far peak, where men were racing downhill.
Another mortar round fell to his right, and was followed by automatic-rifle
fire. He grabbed his satellite radio.

"Doghouse, this is Beagle. We are under attack."

"Beagle, we are now in contact with a Navy carrier.
Stand by." The ground shook again. The round fell less than thirty feet in
front of his position, but he was well shielded. "Beagle, the Navy carrier
is now on your frequency. Go ahead and transmit. Their call sign is Starbase,
and they know where you are."

"Starbase, this is Beagle, over!"

"Roger, Beagle, we show your position five klicks west
of hill 1064. Tell me what's happening."

"Starbase, we are under attack by a squad of Russian
infantrymen, with reinforcements on the way. Their observation post on 1064 has
a mortar and we're getting fire from that. We need help fast."

"Roger, copy, Beagle. Stand by . . . Beagle, be advised
we're diverting some help your way, ETA two-five minutes. Can you mark your
position?"

"Negative, we don't have anything to do it with."

"Roger, understand. Hang in there, Beagle. We'll be
back. Out."

Edwards heard a scream to his left. He stuck his head up and
saw mortar rounds falling near Nichols's position-and Russians less than a
hundred yards to his front. Mike grabbed his rifle and sighted it on a moving
shape, only to have it drop out of sight again. He picked his walkie-talkie up
with his free hand.

"Nichols, Smith, this is Edwards, report in."

"Nichols here. Whoever has that mortar knows what he's
about. I have two wounded men here."

"We're okay, skipper. We seen two Russians go down
hard. I sent Garcia to cover you."

"Okay, guys, we have air cover on the way in. I-"
The shape came up again. Edwards dropped the radio, aimed his rifle, and fired
three rounds, missing the shape that dodged out of sight. Back to the radio.
"Nichols, you need help?"

"Two of us can still shoot. I'm afraid your Rodgers is
dead. There-" The radio went dead for a moment. "All right, all
right. We killed one, and the other is backing away. Look out, Leftenant, there
are two fifty yards to your left front."

Mike looked around his rock and got shot at for his trouble.
He shot back without hitting anything.

"Hi, skipper!" Garcia crashed down next to him.

"Two bad guys, that way." Edwards pointed. The
private nodded and moved left behind cover of the hill crest. He got thirty
feet when another mortar round exploded four strides behind him. The private
fell hard and didn't move.

It's not fair, it's not fair. I got them this far, and it's
not fair!

"Smith, Garcia's down. Get back up here. Nichols, if
you can get to my position, move!" He switched radios. "Starbase,
this is Beagle. Tell your birds to hurry."

"Two-zero minutes out, Beagle. Four A-7s. We have some
other help coming, but they'll get to you first."

Edwards took his rifle and moved over to Garcia. The private
was still breathing, but his back and legs were peppered with fragments. The
lieutenant crawled to the crest and saw a Russian crouched thirty feet away. He
aimed his rifle and fired two bursts. The Russian went down, firing his own
weapon in a wide arc that missed Edwards by a scant yard. Where was the other
one? Mike stuck his head up and saw something the size of a baseball flying
through the air. He scrambled backwards as the grenade went off ten feet from
where he'd been. Mike rolled to his right and went back uphill.

The Russian had disappeared again, but Edwards saw the
others had reached the foot of his hill on a dead run and were starting up to
his position. He strained to look and keep his head down at the same time. The
other one-there! He was clambering down the hill, apparently dragging a wounded
man with him. Mortar fire started to drop behind him, covering the man's
retreat.

"You okay, Lieutenant?" It was Smith. He was
wounded in the arm. "Whoever's working that Goddamned mortar must be the
Russian Davy Crockett!"

Nichols arrived three minutes later. He was unhurt, but the
Royal Marine private with him was bleeding from the abdomen. Edwards looked at
his watch.

"We got air support coming in about ten minutes. If we
stay here at the top in one place, they can drop all around us."

The men took position within fifty feet of Edwards. Mike
grabbed Vigdis by the arm and set her between two boulders.

"Michael, I'm-"

"I'm scared, too. Stay here no matter what happens,
stay here! You can-" The whistling sound came again, and this one was
close. Mike stumbled and fell right on top of her. A hot needle seemed to penetrate
his lower leg.

"Shit!" The wound was just above his boot. He
tried to rise, but the leg wouldn't take any weight. He looked around for the
radio and hopped over to it, cursing all the way. "Starbase, this is
Beagle, over."

"Nine minutes out, Beagle," the voice said
patiently.

"Starbase, we're all on top of this hilltop, okay?
We're all within fifty feet of the summit." He stuck his head up. "We
have about fifteen bad guys coming towards us, maybe seven hundred yards away.
We beat off the first attack, but we're down to-four, I guess, and three of us
are wounded. For God's sake, get that mortar first, it's murdering us."

"Roger that. Hold it together, son. Help is
coming."

"You're wounded, Leftenant," Nichols said.

"I noticed. The planes are eight or nine minutes out. I
told them to take the mortar position out first."

"Very good. Ivan's in love with the bloody
things." Nichols cut the pants away from the wound and tied a bandage on.
"You won't be doing much dancing for a while."

"What can we do to slow them down?"

"We'll open fire at five hundred. That will make them
more cautious, I think. Come on." Nichols grabbed his arm and pulled him
to a position on the crest.

The Russians were moving forward with great skill. Men
alternated brief rushes with dives behind whatever cover was available. The
mortar was quiet at the moment, but that would change as soon as the
paratroopers got close enough for their final assault. Nichols had discarded
his submachine gun, and was aiming a semiautomatic rifle. When he figured the
range at five hundred yards, the sergeant took careful aim and squeezed the
trigger. He missed, but every Russian on the hill dropped.

"You know what you just did?" Edwards asked.

"Yes, I just invited more mortar fire on us."
Nichols turned to look at his lieutenant. "Bloody poor choice we have,
isn't it?"

"Michael, you need this." Vigdis came down beside
him.

"I told you to stay-"

"Here is your radio. I go-"

"Down!" Mike yanked her beside him as a mortar
round dropped thirty feet away. A series of five dropped across their position.

"Here they come!" Smith yelled.

The Marines opened fire, and the Russians returned it,
dashing from one piece of cover to another in a two-pronged advance that
threatened to envelop the hilltop. Mike got back on the radio.

"Starbase, this is Beagle, over."

"Roger, Beagle."

"They're coming in on us now."

"Beagle, our A-7s have you in sight. I want to know
exactly where you and your people are-say again exactly."

"Starbase, there are two secondary summits on this
hill, about three miles west of hill 1064. We are on the northern one, repeat
northern one. My group is all within five-zero feet of the top of that hill.
Anything that moves is the enemy, we are all sitting tight. The mortar is on
hill 1064, and we need that taken out quick."

There was a long pause. "Okay, Beagle, they've been
told where you are. Get your head down, they're one minute away, approaching
from the south. Good luck. Out."

"Two hundred yards," Nichols said. Edwards joined
him and leveled his M-16. Three men rose at once, both men fired, but Edwards
couldn't tell if he'd hit anyone or not. Bullets kicked up dirt and stone chips
a few feet away, and the whistle of more mortar rounds came down again. The
group of five landed right on the crest as Edwards caught the shape of a
haze-gray fighter-bomber diving from his right.

The stubby A-7E Corsair pulled out a thousand feet above the
mountaintop three miles away. Four canisters of cluster bombs fell, splitting
open in the air. A small cloud of bomblets cascaded on the Russian observation
post. From three miles, it sounded like a loud string of firecrackers as the
hilltop disappeared in a cloud of dust and sparks. A second aircraft repeated
the maneuver twenty seconds later. There could be nothing left alive on the
hilltop.

The attacking Russians stopped cold in their tracks and
turned to see what had happened to their base camp. Then they saw that more
aircraft were circling only two thousand yards away. It was clear to everyone
that their best chance to stay alive another five minutes was to get as close
to the Americans as they could. As one man, the Russian squads rose firing
their weapons and ran up the hill. Two more Corsairs wheeled in the sky and
darted in, their pilots drawn by the movement. They swept in level only a
hundred feet above the slopes and loosed pairs of cluster bombs. Edwards heard
the screams over the thunder of the explosives, but could see nothing through
the cloud of dust that rose before his eyes.

"Christ, they can't drop much closer than that."

"They can't drop any closer than that," Nichols
said, wiping blood from his face.

They could still hear rifle fire from within the dust. The
wind blew it way, and at least five Russians were still up and moving toward
them. The Navy Corsairs made another run in but broke off, unable to drop so
close to friendly troops. They curved back in seconds, firing their cannon. The
shells scattered wildly, with some exploding ten yards from Edwards's face.

"Where'd they go?"

"The left, I think," Nichols answered. "You
can't talk directly to the fighters?"

Edwards shook his head. "Not that kind of radio,
Sarge."

The A-7s circled overhead while their pilots watched the
ground for movement. Edwards tried to wave at them, but couldn't tell if they
recognized the gesture or not. One of them dove to his left and fired a cannon
burst into the rocks. Edwards heard a scream, but saw nothing.

"Stalemate." Edwards turned to look at his
satellite radio. The last set of mortar rounds had sent a fragment through the
backpack.

"Down!" Nichols grabbed the lieutenant as a
grenade arced through the air. It exploded a few feet away. "Here they
come again."

Edwards turned and put a fresh magazine in his rifle. He saw
two Russians fifty feet away and fired a long burst. One went down on his face.
The other returned fire and dodged left. He felt a weight on his legs and saw
Nichols down on his back with a trio of red holes in his shoulder. Edwards put
the last magazine in his rifle and moved awkwardly across the hill to the left,
unable to put much weight on his right leg.

"Michael . . ."

"Go the other way," Edwards replied. "Look
out!"

He saw a face and a rifle-and a flash. Edwards dove right,
too late to keep from being hit in the chest. Only shock kept the pain from
becoming unbearable. He fired a few rounds into the air to keep the man's head
down as he backpedaled his feet to get away. Where was everyone? There was
rifle fire to his right. Why wasn't anybody helping him? He heard the roar of
jet engines as the A-7s continued to circle, unable to do anything but watch in
frustration. He cursed them as he bled. His wounded leg revolted at being used
this way, and his left arm was useless. Edwards held the rifle like an
oversized handgun as he waited for the Russian to appear. He felt hands under
his arms dragging him backwards.

"Drop me, Vigdis, for Christ's sake, drop me and
run."

She said nothing. Her breathing was heavy as she struggled,
stumbling, to pull him over the rocks. He was losing consciousness from the
blood loss, and looked up to see the A-7s drawing off. There was another sound
that didn't seem to make much sense. Dust rose around him with a sudden wind
and there was another long burst of machine-gun fire as a huge green-black
shape appeared overhead. Men jumped out, and it was all over. He closed his
eyes. The Russian commander had gotten through to Keflavik. Here was the Mi-24
to reinforce the outpost . . . Edwards was too drained to react. He'd run a
good race and lost. There was more chattering rifle fire, then silence as the
helicopter moved off. How did the Russians treat prisoners who'd killed
helpless men?

"Your name Beagle?"

It required the greatest effort of his life to open his
eyes. He saw a black man standing over him.

"Who're you?"

"Sam Potter. I'm a lieutenant with Second Force Recon.
You're Beagle, right?" He turned. "We need a corpsman over
here!"

"My people are all hurt."

"We're working on it. We'll have you outa here in five
minutes. Hang in there, Beagle. I gotta go do some work. Okay, people," he
called loudly. "Let's get those Russians checked out. If we got any live
ones, we wanna move them the hell off this rock right now!"

"Michael?" Edwards was still confused. Her face
was right above his when he lost consciousness.

"Just who the hell is this guy?" Lieutenant Potter
asked five minutes later.

"Wing-wiper. He done good," Smith said, wincing
with his own injuries.

"How'd you get here?" Potter waved for his radio
operator.

"We fucking walked all the way from Keflavik,
sir."

"Quite a trip, Sarge." Potter was impressed. He
gave a short radio order. "Chopper's on the way in now. I guess the lady
goes out too."

"Yes, sir. Welcome to Iceland, sir. We been waiting for
you."

"Take a look, Sarge." Potter's arm swept to the
west. A series of gray bumps on the horizon headed east toward Stykkisholmur.

USS CHICAGO

They were still out there, McCafferty was sure-but where?
After killing the last Tango, contact had never been reestablished with the
other two Russian submarines. Eight hours of relative peace rewarded his
evasive maneuvering. The Russian ASW aircraft were still overhead, still
dropping sonobuoys, but something had gone wrong for them. They weren't coming
very close now. He'd had to maneuver clear only four times. That would have
been a lot in peacetime, but after the past few days it seemed like a vacation.

The captain had taken the chance to rest himself and his
crew. Though they would all have gratefully accepted a month in bed, the four
or six hours of sleep they'd all had were like a cup of water for a man in the
desert, enough to get them a little farther. And there was only a little
farther to go: exactly one hundred miles to the jagged edge of the arctic ice.
Sixteen hours or so.

Chicago was about five miles ahead of her sisters. Every
hour, McCafferty would maneuver his sub to an easterly course and allow his
towed array sonar to get a precise fix on them. That was hard enough: Boston
and Providence were difficult to pick up even at this distance.

He wondered what the Russians were thinking. The mobbing
tactics of the Krivak-Grisha teams had failed. They'd learned that it was one
thing to use those ships for barrier operations against the Keypunch team, but
something very different to rush after a submarine with long-range weapons and
computerized fire-control. Their dependence on active sonobuoys had reduced the
effectiveness of their ASW patrol aircraft, and the one thing that had nearly
worked-placing a diesel sub between two sonobuoy lines, then spooking their
target into moving with a randomly dropped torpedo-had failed also. Thank God
they didn't know how close they came with that, McCafferty thought to himself.
Their Tango-class subs were formidable opponents, quiet and hard to locate, but
the Russians were still paying for their unsophisticated sonars. All in all,
McCafferty was more confident now than he'd been in weeks.

"Well?" he asked his plotting officer.

"Looks like they're steaming as before, sir, about ten
thousand yards behind us. I think this one's Boston. She's maneuvering a lot
more. Providence here is plodding along pretty straight. We got a good fix on
her."

"Left ten degrees rudder, come to new course
three-five-five," McCafferty ordered.

"Left ten degrees rudder, aye, coming to new course
three-five-five. Sir, my rudder is left ten degrees."

"Very well." The captain sipped at a cup of hot
cocoa. It made a nice change of pace from coffee. Chicago turned slowly north.
In the engine spaces aft, the submarine's engineer crew kept watch on their
instruments as the reactor plant turned out an even 10-percent power.

About the only bad news was the storm on the surface. For
some reason a series of squalls was parading around the top of the world, and
this one was a real growler. The sonar crew estimated fifteen-foot waves and
forty-knot winds, unusual for the arctic summer. It knocked 10 to 20 percent
off their sonar performance, but would make for ideal conditions as they
approached the icepack. The sea conditions would be grinding acre-sized ice
floes into ice chips, and that much noise would make the American subs very
hard to detect in the ice. Sixteen hours, McCafferty told himself. Sixteen
hours and we're out of here.

"Conn, sonar, we have a contact bearing
three-four-zero. Not enough data to classify at this time."

McCafferty went forward to sonar.

"Show me."

"Right here, skipper." The chief tapped the
display. "I can't give you a bladecount yet, too sketchy for anything,
Well, it smells like a nuclear boat," the chief allowed.

"Put up your model."

The chief pushed a button and a secondary screen displayed
the predicted sonar range, generated by computer from known local water
conditions. Their direct-path sonar range was just over thirty thousand yards.
The water was not deep enough yet for convergence zones, and they were
beginning to get low-frequency background noise from the icepack. It would
impede their ability to discriminate sonar contacts in the same way bright
sunlight lessens the apparent intensity of an electric light.

"Getting a slow bearing change here. Going
left-to-right, bearing to target is now three-four-two . . . fading out a
little bit. What's this?" The chief looked at a new fuzzy line on the
bottom of the display. "Possible new contact bearing zero-zero-four."
The line faded out and stayed out for two minutes, then came back on bearing
zero-zero-six.

McCafferty debated whether to go to battle stations. On one
hand he might need to engage a target very soon . . . but probably not.
Wouldn't it be better to give his crew a few more minutes' rest? He decided to
wait.

"Firming up. We now have two possible submarine
contacts, bearing three-four-zero and zero-zero-four."

McCafferty went back to control and ordered a turn east,
which would track his towed array on the new targets, plus give a cross bearing
on each from which to compute range. It gave him more than he bargained for.

"Boston is maneuvering west, sir. I can't detect
anything out that way, but she's definitely heading west."

"Sound general quarters," McCafferty ordered.

It was no way to wake up from needed sleep, the captain
knew. In berthing spaces all over the boat, men snapped instantly awake and
rolled out of their bunks, some dropping to the deck, other climbing upright in
the crowded spaces. They ran to stations, relieving the routine watch-standers
to head for their own battle stations.

"All stations report manned and ready, sir."

Back to work. The captain stood over the plotting table and
considered the tactical situation. Two possible enemy submarines were astride
his course to the ice. If Boston was moving, Simms probably had something also,
maybe to the west, maybe aft. In twenty short minutes, McCafferty had gone from
coolly confident to paranoid again. What were they doing? Why were two subs
almost directly in his path?

"Take her up to periscope depth." Chicago rose
slowly from her cruising depth of seven hundred feet. It took five minutes.
"Raise the ESM."

The slender mast went up on hydraulic power, feeding
information to the electronic-warfare technician.

"Skipper, I got three J-band aircraft search
sets." He read off the bearings. Bears or Mays, McCafferty thought.

"Look around. Up scope." He had to let the
periscope go all the way up to see over the wave tops. "Okay, I got a May
bearing one-seven-one, low on the horizon, heading west--she's dropping buoys!
Down scope. Sonar, you have anything to the south?"

"Nothing but the two friendly contacts. Boston is
fading out on us, sir."

"Take her back down to six hundred." The Russians
are supposed to depend almost exclusively on active sonobuoys, dammit. He
ordered a turn back to the north once they reached the ordered depth, and
slowed to five knots. So they're trying to track us passively now. They must
have gotten a twitch somewhere . . . or maybe nowhere. Passive sonar tracking
was technically very demanding, and even the sophisticated signal-processing
equipment in Western navies made for many false contacts . . . On the other
hand, we've pretty well telegraphed our course. They could flood the area Why
didn't we try something different? But what? The only other passage north was
even narrower than this. The western route between Bear Island and the North
Cape of Norway was wider, but half of the Soviet Northern Fleet had a barrier
there. He wondered if Pittsburgh and the rest had escaped safely. Probably.
They should have been able to run faster than Ivan was able to hunt. As opposed
to us.

This is how we hunt the Russians, McCafferty thought. They
can't hear our passive buoys, and they never know when they're being tracked or
not. The captain leaned against the rail surrounding the periscope pedestal.
The good news, he told himself, is that we're damned hard to hear. Maybe Ivan
got a twitch, maybe not. Probably not. If they heard us for sure, we'd have a
torpedo in the water after us right now. But we don't, so they don't.

"Bearings are firming up on both forward
contacts."

In open ocean water, they'd have a layer to fool with, but
there was none here. The combination of fairly shallow water and the overhead
storm eliminated any chance of that. Good news and bad news, McCafferty thought.

"Conn, sonar, new contact, bearing two-eight-six,
probable submarine. Trying to get a blade count now."

"Come left to three-four-eight. Belay that!"
McCafferty changed his mind. Better to be cautious than bold here. "Come
right to zero-one-five." Then he ordered Chicago down to one thousand
feet. The farther he got from the surface, the better the sonar conditions he
would have. If the Russians were near the surface to communicate with their
aircraft, their sonar performance would suffer accordingly. He'd play every
card he had before committing to battle. But what if-

He faced the possibility that one or more of the contacts
were friendly. What if Sceptre and Superb had received new orders because of
the damage to Providence? The new contact at two-eight-six could be friendly,
too, for that matter.

Damn! No provision had been made for that. The Brits said
they'd leave as soon as the boats reached the pack, that they had other things
to do-but how often had his orders been changed since May? McCafferty asked
himself.

Come on, Danny! You're the captain, you're supposed to know
what to do . . . even when you don't.

The only thing he could do was try to establish the range to
and identity of his three contacts. It took another ten minutes for sonar to
work on the contacts.

"They're all three single-screw boats," the chief
said finally.

McCafferty grimaced. That told him more about what they
weren't than what they were. The British submarines were all of a
single-propeller design. So were the Russian Victor and Alfa classes.

"Machinery signatures?"

"They're all running at very low power settings,
skipper. Not enough for a classification. I got steam noises on all three, that
makes 'em nucs, but if you look here you can see that we're just not getting
enough signal for anything else. Sorry, sir, that's the best I got."

The farther we go east, McCafferty knew, the less signal his
sonar would have to work on. He ordered a turn to reverse course, coming to a
southwesterly heading.

At least he had range. The northerly targets were eleven and
thirteen miles away respectively. The western one was nine miles off. All were
within range of his torpedoes.

"Conn, sonar, we have an explosion bearing
one-nine-eight . . . something else, a possible torpedo at two-zero-five, very
faint, comes in and out. Nothing else in that area, sir. Maybe some breaking-up
noises at one-nine-eight. Sorry, sir, these signals are very weak. Only thing
I'm really sure of is the explosion." The captain was back in sonar yet
again.

"Okay, Chief. If it was easy, I wouldn't need
you." McCafferty watched the screen. The torpedo was still running, with a
slowly changing bearing. It was no danger to Chicago. "Concentrate on the
three submarine contacts."

"Aye, Cap'n."

You'd think with all the practice I've had that I would have
learned patience by now.

Chicago continued southwest. McCafferty was stalking his
western target now. He thought it the least likely to be friendly. The range
closed to eight miles, then seven..

"Captain, classify the target at two-eight-zero as an
Alfa-class!"

"You sure?"

"Yes, sir. That is an Alfa-type engine plant. I have it
clearly now."

"Set it up! We'll run one fish in deep, dogleg it at
low speed, then pop it up right underneath him."

His fire-control crew was getting better by the day. It
almost seemed that they were working faster than the computer support.

"Skipper, if we shoot from this deep, it'll take a lot
of our reserve highpressure air," the exec warned.

"You're right. Take her to one hundred feet."
McCafferty winced. How the hell did you let yourself forget that?

"Fifteen-degree rise on the planes!"

"Set-solution set, sir."

"Stand by." The captain watched the depth-gauge
needle turn counterclockwise."

"One hundred feet, sir."

"Fire-control?"

"Set!"

"Match generated bearings and shoot!"

"Two fired, sir."

The Alfa might hear the air blast or he might not,
McCafferty knew. The torpedo moved off at forty knots on a heading of
three-five-zero, well off the bearing to the target. Three thousand yards out,
a command sent down the control wires told the torpedo to turn and go deep.
McCafferty was being very cagey with this shot, more than he would have
preferred. When the Alfa detected the incoming fish, it would be from a bearing
that Chicago wasn't at-if he fired a return shot, it would not come toward
them. The disadvantage of this was the increased chance of losing the control
wires and getting a clean miss. The torpedo was running deep to take advantage
of the water pressure that reduced cavitation noise, hence reducing the range
at which the Alfa could detect it. They had to play some extra angles on this
because the Soviet sub had a top speed of more than forty knots and was almost
as fast as the torpedo itself. Chicago continued to move southwest, putting as
much distance as possible between herself and the torpedo.

"Torpedo continues to run normal, sir," sonar
reported.

"Range to target?" McCafferty asked.

"About six thousand yards, sir. Recommend that we bring
her up at four thousand and go to high-speed," the weapons officer
suggested.

"Very well."

The tracking party plotted the course of the torpedo and its
target. "Conn, sonar, the Alfa just increased engine power."

"He hears it. Bring the fish up now, full speed, switch
on the sonar."

"Hull-popping noises, sir. The Alfa is changing
depth," the sonar chief called, excitement in his voice. "I have the
torpedo sonar on my scope. Our unit is pinging. The target seems to be pinging
also."

"Sir, we lost the wires, the fish has lost the
wires."

"Shouldn't matter now. Sonar, give me a blade count on
the Alfa."

"Doing turns for forty-two knots, sir, lots of
cavitation noise. Seems to be turning. He may have just deployed a
noisemaker."

"Anybody ever shoot at an Alfa before?" the
executive officer asked.

"Not that I know about."

"Miss! Conn, sonar, the fish has passed aft of the
target. Target appears to be heading east. The fish is still-no, it's turning
now. The torpedo is still pinging, sir. Torpedo also heading east-turning
again, I have a bearing change on the fish. Skipper, I think it's chasing after
the noisemaker. I show an opening bearing between the fish and target."

"Damn, I thought we had that one locked in," the
weapons officer growled.

"How far are we from launch point?"

"About seven thousand yards, sir."

"Bearing to the Alfa?"

"Three-four-eight, target bearing is moving east,
machinery noises are down, blade count shows about twenty knots."

"He'll keep putting distance between himself and the
torpedo," McCafferty said. As long as it was running and pinging, nobody
wanted to get near it. The fish would circle until it ran out of fuel, but
anything that came within its four-thousand-yard sonar radius risked detection.
"What about the other two contacts?"

"No change, sir," the plotting officer said.
"They seem to be pretty much holding their positions."

"That means they're Russians." McCafferty looked
down at the plot. If they were Brits, they would have maneuvered and fired
their own fish as soon as they'd heard the Alfa, and probably everyone in
twenty miles had heard the Alfa.

Three to one, and they're alerted now. McCafferty shrugged.
At least I know what I'm up against. Sonar reported another contact to the
south. It should be Boston, Danny thought. If it wasn't, Providence would have
done something. He ordered Chicago south. If he had to blast a hole through
three submarines, he wanted help. He rendezvoused with Boston an hour later.

"I heard an Alfa."

"We missed. What did you get?"

"It had twin screws, and it's dead," Simms
answered. Their gertrude phones were on a very low power setting.

"Three boats ahead about fourteen miles. One's the
Alfa. I don't know about the others." McCafferty outlined his plan
quickly. The submarines would proceed north, ten miles apart, and would try to
engage the targets from their flanks. Even if they missed, Providence should be
able to go straight through when the Russians split to pursue. Simms agreed,
and the boats split up yet again.

McCafferty noted that he was still about sixteen hours from
the ice. There were probably still Soviet patrol aircraft overhead. He'd wasted
a torpedo-no, he told himself, that was a well-planned attack It just hadn't
worked, as sometimes happened.

A line of sonobuoys appeared-active ones this time-to his
northeast. He wished angrily that the Russians would select one set of tactics
and stick to it. Hell, all he wanted to do was leave! Of course he had launched
missiles at the Soviet homeland and they were probably still angry about that.
Nobody had ever told him whether the mission was successful or not. McCafferty
commanded himself to stop this random thinking. He had trouble enough right
here.

Chicago moved northwest. As she did so, the bearing to all
of her sonar contacts changed to the right. The Alfa was still there, her
machinery noise fading in and out. Technically speaking, he could shoot at her,
but he'd just seen that her speed and maneuverability were enough to beat a
Mark-48 torpedo. He wondered what the Alfa's skipper had done. Surprisingly, he
hadn't fired a torpedo of his own down the bearing of the incoming fish. What
did that mean? It was an American tactic, and was supposed to be a Soviet
tactic also. Was it because he knew that "friendly" boats were in the
area? McCafferty filed it away, yet another case where the Russians were not
acting the way they were expected to act.

The northwest course closed the distance markedly to one of
the contacts. The Alfa and the other unknown maneuvered east themselves,
maintaining the ten-plus mile range-unknowingly, the captain thought. He stood
over the plot. A fire-control solution was already set on the nearest contact.
Range was down to eight miles. McCafferty went to the sonar room again.

"What can you tell me about this one?"

"Starting to look like a Type-2 reactor plant, the new
version. He may be a Victor-III. Give me five more minutes and I'll know for
sure, sir. The closer we get, the clearer he looks."

"Power output?"

"Pretty low, sir. I thought I might have a blade count a
few minutes ago, but it didn't work out. He's probably just making
steerage."

McCafferty leaned back against the bulkhead separating the
room from the monstrous computer used to process signals. The line on the
waterfall display that would show the unique frequency pattern of the machinery
on the Victor-III was fuzzy but narrowing. Three minutes later it was a fairly
sharp vertical stroke of light.

"Captain, I can now call target Sierra-2 a
Victor-III-class Russian sub."

McCafferty went aft to control. "Range to target
Sierra-2?"

"Fourteen thousand five hundred yards, sir."

"Solution is set, sir," the weapons officer
reported. "Ready for tube one. Tube one is flooded, outer door is
closed."

"Right ten degrees rudder," McCafferty said.
Chicago turned to unmask her ready torpedo. He checked depth: two hundred feet.
On firing, he'd run east rapidly and dive to a thousand feet. The submarine
turned slowly at six knots; bearing to the target was three-five-one, and
Chicago's midship torpedo tubes were angled slightly outward from her center
line. "Solution?"

"Set!"

"Open outer door." The petty officer on the
torpedo board pushed the proper button and waited for the status light to
change.

"Outer door is open, sir."

"Match bearings and shoot!" The seven thousand tons
of USS Chicago shuddered again with the torpedo launch.

"One fired, sir."

McCafferty gave orders to change course and depth,
increasing speed to ten knots.

Another exercise in patience. How soon will he hear the fish
coming in? This one ran in at shallow depth. McCafferty hoped that its
propulsion sounds might be lost in the surface noise. How good is Victor's
sonar? he wondered.

"One minute." The weapons officer held a
stopwatch. The Mark-48 ran thirteen hundred yards per minute at this speed
setting. About ten minutes to go. It was like watching some perverse sports
event, McCafferty thought, a two-minute drill in a football game, two minutes
of playing time that could stretch to half an hour if the quarterback knew his
stuff. Except that they weren't trying to score points. "Three minutes.
Seven minutes to go."

Chicago leveled out at one thousand feet and the captain
ordered speed cut back to six knots again. Already he had fire-control
solutions set on the other two targets. But they'd have to wait.

"Five minutes. Five to go."

"Conn, sonar, target Sierra-2 has just increased power.
Cavitation sounds, blade count shows twenty knots and increasing."

"Kick the fish to full speed," McCafferty ordered.
The Mark-48 accelerated to a speed of forty-eight knots: sixteen hundred yards
per minute.

"Target is turning east, her blade count shows
thirty-one knots. Sir, I'm getting a funny signal slightly aft of the target.
Target bearing is now three-five-eight. The new signal is three-five-six."

"Noisemaker?"

"Doesn't sound like that. Sounds like something
different . . . not a nixie, but something like that, sir. Target is continuing
to turn, sir, bearing now three-five-seven. I believe she may be reversing
course."

"Take her up to two hundred feet," the captain said.

"What the hell's he doing?" the exec wondered as
the submarine rose again.

"Sir, that new signal has masked the target,"
sonar announced.

"The fish is now pinging, sir."

"If he has a decoy deployed-he put it between himself
and the fish," the captain said quietly. "Fire-control, I want
another fish on target Sierra-2, and update the solution for Sierra-l."

Range and bearing figures were re-input into the computer.

"Set for tube three on target Sierra-2 and tube two for
target Sierra-I." The submarine passed through three hundred feet.

"Match bearings and shoot." McCafferty gave the
order quietly, then took his submarine down again. "That pod on the
Victor-III that we thought was a towed-array housing, what if it's a decoy like
our nixie?" We don't use them on submarines, McCafferty thought, but Ivan
does things his own way.

"The fish might still ignore it."

"He doesn't think so. He thinks it'll work-then he can
turn behind the noise of the explosion and get one off at us." McCafferty
walked over to the plot. The other new fish was running toward what was
probably another Victor-class. The second target was maneuvering east now. The
Alfa was also. The obvious tactical move: clear the danger area, turn, and
begin your own stalk. While both were turned away, their sonar would be
ineffective along the route of the advancing torpedo. Sonar called out.

"Captain, I have an explosion bearing three-five-four.
We have lost contact with target Sierra-2. I don't know if the fish hit her or
not. The other two fish seem to be running normally."

"Patience," the captain breathed.

"Conn, sonar, we show some sonobuoys dropping
aft." The bearings were plotted. They were in a north-south line two miles
aft of Chicago.

"One of the other boats got a message out to his
friends," the exec suggested.

"Good bet. These cooperative tactics'll be a cast-iron
bitch if they ever figure out how to do it right."

"Sierra-2 is back, sir. I have a Type-2 machinery
signature at three-four-nine. Some possible hull-popping noises. Sierra-2 is
changing depth."

The weapons officer commanded one of the running torpedoes
to turn left a few degrees. McCafferty picked up a pen and started chewing on
it.

"Okay, probably his sonar is a little messed up. I'll
bet he's trying to get an antenna up to tell his friends where we fired from.
All ahead two-thirds."

"Torpedoes in the water bearing zero-three-one!"

"Do we have anything else on that bearing?"

"No, sir, I show nothing else."

McCafferty checked his plot. It was working, by God. He'd
spooked the Russians into moving east toward Todd Simms in the Boston!

"Conn, sonar, torpedo in the water aft, bearing
two-eight-six!"

"Make your depth twelve hundred feet," the captain
said instantly. "Right full rudder, come to new course one-six-five. Our
friend the Victor got word out to his airedale friends."

"Sir, we lost the wires to both fish," Weapons
reported.

"Estimated range to Sierra-2

"The fish should be about six thousand yards out; it's
programmed to start pinging in another minute."

"Mr. Victor made a mistake this time. He should have
covered his ass before he went topside to radio the airplanes. Sonar, what's
the position of the torpedo on our stem?"

"Bearing changing---sir, I'm losing sonar performance
due to flow noise. Last bearing on the Russian fish is two-seven-eight."

"All ahead one-third!" McCafferty brought his
submarine back to slow, quiet speed. In two minutes they realized that the
air-dropped torpedo was well clear of them, and that their second shot at the
Victor was close to its target.

By this time the sonar display was totally confused. Target
Sierra-2 had picked up the incoming fish late, but was racing directly away
from it at full speed now. Their shot at the other Victor was still running,
but that target was maneuvering to avoid another fish from Boston. The Alfa was
at full power heading due north, another Mark-48 in pursuit. Two more Russian
torpedoes were in the water to the east, probably heading after Boston, but
Chicago didn't have her sister ship on sonar. Five submarines were racing
around, four of them chased by smart-weapons.

"Sir, I have another decoy deployed on Sierra-2.
Sierra-I has one deployed also. Our fish is pinging on -2. Somebody's fish is
pinging on -1, and one of the Russian fish is pinging at zero-three-five-sir, I
have an explosion at bearing three-three-nine."

Dad wanted me to be an accountant, McCafferty thought. Maybe
then I could keep all these damned numbers straight. He walked over to the
plot.

The paper plot wasn't much clearer. The pencil lines that
designated sonar contacts and running torpedoes looked like electrical wire
dropped at random on the chart.

"Captain, I have very loud machinery noises at bearing
three-three-nine. Sounds like something's broke, sir, lots of metallic noise.
Getting some air noise now, he's blowing tanks. No breakup noises yet."

"Left full rudder, come to new course zero-one-zero."

"We didn't kill the Victor?"

"I'll settle for a small piece of him, if it sends him
home. We'll score that one as a damage. What's going on with the other
two?"

"The fish after Sierra- I is pinging, and so's
Boston's-I guess it's from Boston. "

The slight abatement of the confusion lasted ten minutes.
The second target put her stem on both torpedoes and ran northwest. More
sonobuoy lines appeared across Chicago's path. Another air-dropped torpedo was
detected to the west, but they didn't know what it had been dropped on-just
that it wasn't close enough to worry about. The torpedo they'd put in pursuit
of the second Victor-class sub was struggling to catch a target running
directly away as fast as it could go, and another fish was angling in from the
opposite direction. Possibly Boston had fired at the Alfa too, but the Alfa was
racing away at a speed almost as great as the torpedo's. McCafferty
reestablished sonar contact with Providence and continued north. Chaos worked
in his favor, and he took maximum advantage of it. He hoped Boston could evade
the torpedoes that had been launched in her direction, but that was out of his
hands.

"Two explosions bearing zero-zero-three, sir."
That was the last bearing to the second Victor, but sonar detected nothing more.
Had the fish killed the sub, the decoy, or had they homed in on each other?

Chicago continued north, increasing speed to ten knots as
she zigzagged through the sonobuoy lines to increase her distance from the
injured Providence. The attack-center crew was emotionally exhausted, as
drained as their captain from the frantic tracking and shooting exercise. The
technical aspects of the work had been handled well in pre-war workups, but
nothing could simulate the tension of firing live weapons. The captain sent
them in pairs to the galley for food and a half-hour's rest. The cooks brought
up a platter of sandwiches for the ones who couldn't leave. McCafferty sat
behind the periscope, eyes closed, head back against something metallic while
he munched on a ham sandwich. He remembered seeing the cans loaded aboard. The
Navy had gotten a good price earlier in the year on canned Polish hams. Polish
hams, he thought. Crazy.

He allowed his crew to go off battle stations an hour later.
Half his men were allowed to go off duty. They didn't head for the galley and a
meal. They all preferred sleep. The captain knew that he needed it at least as
badly as they. After we get to the ice, he promised himself. I'll sleep for a
month.

They picked up Boston on sonar, a ghostly trace on the sonar
screens due east of them. Providence was still aft, still cruising along at six
knots, and still making too much noise from her battered sail. Time passed more
rapidly now. The captain remained seated, forgetting his dignity and listening to
reports of . . . nothing.

McCafferty's head came up. He checked his watch and realized
he'd been dozing for half an hour. Five more hours to the ice. It came up
clearly on sonar now, a low-frequency growl of noise that covered thirty
degrees on either side of the bow.

Where did the Alfa go? McCafferty was in sonar ten seconds
after asking himself that question.

"What was your last bearing on the Alfa?"

"Sir, we lost him three hours ago. Last we had him, he
was at flank speed on a steady northeasterly bearing. Faded out and he hasn't
come back, sir. "

"What's the chance he's hiding in the ice, waiting for
us?"

"If he does, we'll pick him up before he picks us up,
sir. If he's moving, his engine plant turns out a lot of medium- and
high-frequency noise," the sonar chief explained. McCafferty knew all
that, but wanted to hear it again anyway. "All the low-frequency ice
noise'll ruin his chance to detect us at long range, but we should be able to
hear him a good ways off if he's moving." The captain nodded and went aft.

"XO, if you were driving that Alfa, where would you
be?"

"Home!" The exec smiled. "He has to know
there are at least two boats out here. Those are awful short odds. We crippled
that one Victor, and Boston probably killed the other one. What's he going to
think? Ivan's brave, but he's not crazy. If he has any sense at all, he'll
report a lost contact and leave it at that."

"I don't buy it. He beat our fish, and he probably beat
one from Boston, " the captain said quietly.

"You could be right, skipper, but he ain't on
sonar."

McCafferty had to concede that point. "We'll be very
careful approaching the ice."

"Agreed, sir. We're being paranoid enough."

McCafferty didn't think so, but he didn't know why. What am
I missing?

Their fix on the edge of the icepack was old. Currents and
wind would have moved the ice a few miles south as increasing summer
temperatures weakened the thick white roof on the ocean. Maybe an hour's worth?
the captain wondered hopefully.

The plot showed Boston fifteen miles to the east, and
Providence eight miles southeast. Three more hours to the ice. Eighteen
nautical miles, maybe less, and they'd be safe. Why should there be anything
else out here? They can't send their whole fleet after us. They have plenty of
other problems to worry about. McCafferty dozed off again.

"Conn, sonar!" McCafferty's head came up.

"Conn, aye," the exec answered.

"Providence has speeded up somewhat, sir. Estimate
she's doing ten knots."

"Very well."

"How long was I out?" the captain asked.

"About an hour and a half. You've been awake quite a
while, sir, and you weren't snoring loud enough to bother anybody. Sonar is
still blank except for our friends."

McCafferty got up and stretched. That wasn't enough. It's
catching up with me. Much more of this and I'm more dangerous to my own crew
than I am to the Russians.

"Distance to the ice?"

"About twelve thousand yards, near as we can make
out."

McCafferty went to look at the chart. Providence had caught
up and was even with him now. He didn't like that.

"Go to twelve knots and come right to zero-four-five.
He's getting too eager."

"You're right," the exec said after giving the
proper orders, "but who can blame him?"

"I can. What the hell does another few minutes matter
after all the time it's taken to get this far?"

"Conn, sonar, we have a possible contact bearing
zero-six-three. Sounds like machinery noise, very faint. Fading out now. We're
getting flow noise that's blanking it out."

"Slow down?" the executive officer asked. The
captain shook his head.

"All ahead two-thirds." Chicago accelerated to
eighteen knots. McCafferty stared down at the chart. There was something
important here that he wasn't seeing. The submarine was still deep, at one
thousand feet. Providence still had her tail working, but she was running close
to the surface, and that made trouble for her sonar performance. Was Boston
running shallow, too? The quartermasters on the fire-control tracking party
kept advancing the positions of the two American subs in keeping with the known
course and speed of each. Chicago rapidly closed the distance. After half an
hour she was broad on Providence's port bow, and McCafferty ordered speed
reduced to six knots again. As the submarine slowed, the exterior flow noise
abated and her sonars returned to full performance.

"Sonar contact bearing zero-nine-five!"

The plotting team ran a line across the chart. It
intersected the previous bearing line . . . almost exactly between Boston and
Providence!

McCafferty bent down to check the depth there-nineteen
hundred feet. Deeper than a 688-class sub could dive . . .

. . . but not too deep for an Alfa . . .

"Holy shit!"

He couldn't fire at the contact. The bearing to the target
was too close to Providence. If the control wires broke, the fish would go into
automatic mode and not care a whit that Providence was a friendly.

"Sonar, go active, Yankee-search on bearing
zero-nine-five!"

It took a moment to power-up the system. Then the deep
ba-wah sound shook the ocean. McCafferty had meant to alert his comrades. He'd
also alerted the Alfa.

"Conn, sonar, I have hull-popping noises and increased
machinery noise at bearing zero-nine-five. No target on the scope yet."

"Come on, Todd,!" the captain urged.

"Transients, transients! Boston just increased power,
sir-there goes Providence. Torpedoes in the water, bearing zero-nine-five!
Multiple torpedoes in the water at zero-nine-five!"

"All ahead full!" McCafferty looked at the plot.
The Alfa was perilously close to both subs, behind both, and Providence
couldn't run, couldn't dive, couldn't do a Goddamned thing! He could only watch
as his fire-control team readied two torpedoes. The Alfa had fired four fish,
two at each American boat. Boston changed course west, as did Providence.
McCafferty and the exec went to the sonar room.

He watched the contact lines swing left and right across the
screen. The thick ones denoted the submarines; the thinner, brighter lines each
of the four torpedoes. The two aimed at Providence closed rapidly. The wounded
sub was up to twenty knots, and made noise like a gravel truck trying to run.
It was clear that she'd never make it. Three noisemakers appeared on the
screen, but the torpedoes ignored them. The lines converged to a single point
that blossomed bright on the screen.

"They got her, sir," the chief said quietly.

Boston had a better chance. Simms was at full speed now,
with the torpedoes less than a thousand yards behind. He, too, deployed
noisemakers and made radical changes in course and depth. One torpedo went
wild, diving after a decoy and exploding on the bottom. The other locked on
Boston and slowly ate up the distance. Another bright dot appeared, and that
was that.

"Yankee-search the Alfa," McCafferty said, his
voice low with rage. The submarine vibrated with the powerful sonar pulses.

"Bearing one-zero-nine, range thirteen thousand."

"Set!"

"Match and shoot!"

The Alfa didn't wait to hear the incoming torpedoes. Her
skipper knew that there was a third sub out there, knew that he'd been pinged.
The Soviet sub went to maximum speed and turned east. Chicago's weapons officer
tried to move the torpedoes on a closing course, but they had a scant five-knot
advantage on the Alfa, and the math was clear: they'd come up two thousand
yards short at the end of their fuel. McCafferty was past caring. He too went
to flank speed and chased after her for half an hour, coming down to five knots
three minutes before the torpedoes ran out of fuel. The flow noise cleared off
his sonars just in time to hear the Alfa decelerate safely.

"Okay, now we'll try again." They were three miles
from the ice now, and Chicago was quiet. The Alfa turned west, and McCafferty's
tracking party gathered data to compute her range. The turn west was a mistake.
He evidently expected Chicago to run for the pack and safety.

"Conn, sonar. New contact, bearing
zero-zero-three."

Now what? Another Russian trap?"

"I need information!"

"Very faint, but I got a bearing change, just moved to
zero-zero-four." A quartermaster looked up from his slide rule.
"Range has to be under ten thousand yards, sir!"

"Transients, transients!-torpedo in the water bearing
zero-zero-five!"

"Left full rudder, all ahead flank!"

"Bearing change! Torpedo bearing now
zero-zero-eight!"

"Belay that order!" McCafferty shouted. The new
contact was shooting at the Alfa.

"Jesus, what is this thing?" the sonar chief
asked.

The Alfa heard the new fish and reversed course. Again they
heard and saw the thunder of the Alfa's engines . . . but the torpedo closed
the distance rapidly.

"It's a Brit. That's one of their new Spearfish. I
didn't know they had any in the fleet yet."

"How fast?" the sonar chief asked.

"Sixty or seventy knots."

"Gawd! Let's buy some."

The Alfa ran straight for three miles, then turned north to
head for the ice. She didn't make it. The Spearfish cut the corner. The lines
on the display merged again, and a final bright dot appeared.

"Bring her around north," McCafferty told the
exec. "Go to eighteen knots. I want to be sure he knows who we are."

"We are HMS Torbay. Who are you?"

"Chicago."

"We heard the commotion earlier. Are you alone?"
Captain James Little asked

"Yes. The Alfa ambushed us-we're alone."

"We will escort you."

"Understood. Do you know if the mission was
successful?"

"Yes, it was."

40 - The Killing Ground

STYKKISHOLMUR, ICELAND

There was much to do, and time was short.

Lieutenant Potter and his team of Force Recon commandos
found eight Russian troops in the town. They were trying to escape down the
only road south when they ran into an ambush which killed or wounded five of
their number. Those were the last who could have warned Keflavik of the ships
on the horizon.

The first regular troops came by helicopter. Platoon- or
company-sized units were placed on every hilltop overlooking the bay.
Particular care was taken to keep the aircraft below the radar horizon from
Keflavik, where a single Russian transmitter remained in operation despite all
efforts to the contrary. A CH-53 Super Stallion helicopter airlifted the
components of a mobile radar transmitter to a hill on the island's northwest
coast, and a team of Army technicians went to work at once to get it
operational. By the time the ships entered the rock-filled nightmare called
Stykkisholmur harbor, five thousand troops were already in position over the
handful of roads leading into the town.

The captain of one big LST-Landing Ship, Tank-had tried to
count the rocks and shoals on the trip up from Norfolk. He'd stopped on
reaching five hundred and concentrated on memorizing his particular area of
responsibility, known as Green-Two-Charlie. The daylight and low tide helped.
Many of the rocks were exposed by low water, and helicopter crews relieved of
their immediate duties of landing troops dropped radar-reflectors and lighted
beacons on most of them, which improved matters greatly. The remaining task was
marginally safer than crossing a highway blindfolded. The LSTs went first,
winding through the rocks at the recklessly high speed of ten knots, relying on
their auxiliary bow thrusters to assist rudder movements to steer the ships
through the lethal maze.

Again, Lieutenant Potter's team of commandos helped matters.
They went from house to house, locating the captains and mates of local fishing
boats. The skilled seamen were flown to the lead ships to help pilot the big
gray amphibs through the tightest of the passages. By noon the first LST had
her ramp on land, and the first Marine tanks rolled onto the island. Right
behind them were trucks loaded with steel, pierced-plank runway material, which
was dispatched east to a flat piece of ground preselected as a base for Marine
helicopters and Harrier jump-jet fighters.

Once the fleet helicopters had completed their task of
marking the rocks and shoals, they returned to moving troops. The troop
carriers were escorted by SeaCobra gunships and Harriers as they extended the
Marine perimeter to the hills overlooking the Hvita River. There contact was
made with outlying Russian observation posts and the first real fighting began.

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

"So much for our intelligence reports," General
Andreyev muttered. From his headquarters he could see the massive shapes
steaming slowly into view. They were the battleships Iowa and New Jersey,
accompanied by missile cruisers for air defense.

"We can engage them now," the artillery chief
said.

"Then do so." While you can. He turned to his communications
officer. "Has word gotten out to Severomorsk?"

"Yes, Northern Fleet will sortie its aircraft today and
submarines are being sent as well."

"Tell them their primary targets are the American
amphibious ships at Stykkisholmur."

"But we are not sure they are there. The harbor is too
dangerous for-"

"Where the hell else would they be?" Andreyev
demanded. "Our observation posts there do not answer us, and we have
reports of enemy helicopters moving south and east from that direction. Think,
man!"

"Comrade General, the Navy's primary objective will be
the enemy carrier force."

"Then explain to our comrades in blue that carrier
aircraft cannot take Iceland away from us, but their fucking Marines can!"

Andreyev saw smoke rise from one of his heavy gun batteries.
The sound followed a few seconds later. The first Russian salvo landed several
thousand yards short.

"Fire mission!"

Iowa had not fired her guns in anger since Korea, but now
the massive sixteen-inch rifles turned slowly to starboard. In the central
gunnery control station, a technician worked the joystick controls for a
Mastiff remotely piloted vehicle. The miniature airplane purchased a few years
earlier from Israel circled eight thousand feet above the Russian gun battery,
its television camera shifting from one emplacement to another.

"I count six guns, look like one-fifty-five or so. Call
'em six-inch."

The precise location of the Russian battery was plotted.
Next the computer analyzed data on air density, barometric pressure, relative
humidity, wind direction and speed, and a dozen other factors. The gunnery
officer watched his status board for the solution light to come up.

"Commence firing."

The center gun of the number two turret loosed a single
round. A millimeter-band radar atop the after director-tower tracked the shell,
comparing its flight path with the one predicted by the fire-control computer.
Not surprisingly, there were some errors in predicted wind velocity. The
radar's own computer forwarded the new empirical readings to the master system,
and the remaining eight main-battery guns altered position slightly. They fired
even before the first round landed.

"Mother of God!" Andreyev whispered. The orange
flash obscured the ship momentarily. Someone to his left shouted, perhaps
thinking that one of the Russian artillery rounds had struck home. Andreyev had
no such illusions. His artillerymen were out of practice and had not yet
bracketed their target. He turned his field glasses to his gun battery, four
kilometers away.

The first round landed fifteen hundred meters southeast of
the nearest gun. The next eight landed two hundred meters behind them.

"Get that battery moved right now!"

"Drop two hundred and fire for effect!"

Already the guns were going through their thirty-second
reload cycle. Inert gas ejected scraps of the silk propellant-bags out the
muzzles to clear the bores, then the breeches opened and loading ramps unfolded
into place. The bores were checked for dangerous residue, then elevators from
the handling rooms rose to the back edge of the ramps and the shells were
rammed into the waiting gun barrels. The heavy power bags were dropped onto the
ramps and rammed behind the shells. The ramp came up, the breeches closed
hydraulically, and the guns elevated. The turret crews moved out of the loading
compartments and held their hands over their muff-style ear-protectors. In
fire-control fingers depressed the keys and the breeches surged backwards once
more. The cycle began again, the teenage seamen performing the same tasks that
their grandfathers had done forty years before.

Andreyev stepped outside to watch in ghastly fascination. He
could hear the sound of ripping linen that announced the passage of the
monstrous projectiles, and turned to look at the battery. Trucks were puffing
up to the guns as the crews fired off their last rounds and began frantic
preparations for relocating their guns. The battery had six 152mm pieces and
many trucks for the crews and ammunition. A curtain of dirt and rock appeared,
followed by three secondary explosions, then four more salvos as New Jersey
joined her older sister in the bombardment.

"What's that?" A lieutenant pointed to a dot in
the sky.

The artillery commander tore his eyes away from what had
been a third of his heavy guns and identified the remotely piloted vehicle.
"I can have it shot down."

"No!" Andreyev shouted. "You want to tell
them where our last SAM launchers are?" The General had faced mortar and
rocket fire in Afghanistan. This was his first experience on the receiving end
of heavy guns.

"My other batteries are all camouflaged."

"I want at least three new alternate positions prepared
for every gun you have, fully camouflaged, all of them." The General went
back inside the building. He felt confident that the Americans would not shell
the city of Keflavik, at least not soon. The map room contained wall-sized
charts of the western Icelandic coast. Already his intelligence staff was
placing flags to denote the position of suspected American units.

"What do we have on the Hvita?" he asked his
operations chief.

"One battalion. Ten BMD infantry carriers; the rest of
the transport is trucks and commandeered vehicles. They have mortars, antitank
missiles, and handheld SAMs. They are deployed to cover the highway bridge
above Bogarnes."

"The Americans are already looking down at them from
this hill. What sort of aircraft have we seen?"

"The Americans have several carriers within striking
distance of us. Twenty-four fighters and thirty-four attack aircraft per
carrier. If they also landed a full division of Marines, we are facing a
significant number of helicopters, plus fixed-wing Harriers. These can operate
off their amphibious aviation ships or from land bases set up for the
purpose-with the right materials it can be done in four to six hours. A Marine
division is about double our strength in men, one heavy battalion of tanks,
stronger in artillery, but not so many mortars. It's their mobility that
worries me. They can dance all around us, using helicopters and landing craft
to place troops anywhere they choose-"

"Just as we did when we landed. Yes," the General
agreed soberly. "How good are they?"

"The American Marines regard themselves as elite
troops, just as we do. Some of their senior officers and NCOs doubtless have
combat experience, but few company officers and squad sergeants will have seen
any real action."

"How bad is it?" A new man came into the room. It
was the KGB station chief.

"You chekista bastard! You told me the Marine division
was going to Europe! They're killing my men while we speak." The distant
thunder of heavy guns punctuated Andreyev's words. The battleships were
shifting fire to a supply dump. Fortunately not much was left there.

"Comrade General, I-"

"Get out of here! I have work to do." Andreyev was
already wondering if his mission might be hopeless, but he was a general of
paratroops and not accustomed to failure. He had ten attack helicopters, all
dispersed and hidden after the attack on the Keflavik airfield. "What's
our chance of getting someone in to look at this harbor?"

"We are under continuous surveillance from the American
radar aircraft. Our helicopter would have to fly over enemy positions to get
there. The Americans have their own armed helicopters and jet fighters-it's a
suicide mission, and it would take a miracle for our men to get close enough to
see anything, much less live long enough to tell us something useful."

"Then see if you can get us a reconnaissance aircraft
from the mainland or satellite support. I must know what we're pitted against.
If we can smash their invasion beach, we stand a good chance of defeating the
troops they have on the ground, and to hell with their naval aircraft!"

It was complicated to do, but a Flash information request
from the Commander Northern Fleet cut through most of the bureaucracy. One of
the two real-time-capable Soviet reconnaissance satellites burned a quarter of
its maneuvering fuel to alter its orbit and came low over Iceland two hours
later. Minutes later, the last Soviet RORSAT was launched south from the
Baikonor Kosmodrome, and its first revolution took it within radar range of
Iceland. Four hours after Andreyev's message, the Russians had a clear picture
of what was arrayed at Iceland.

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

"Are they ready?" SACEUR asked.

"Another twelve hours would be better, but they're
ready." The operations officer checked his watch. "They go off on the
hour. Ten minutes." The hours spent getting the new division in place had
been used profitably. Several additional brigades had been assembled into a
pair of new polyglot divisions. The front had been almost entirely stripped of
reserves to do it, while a hastily thought-out cover and deception plan had
radio units all over the front, broadcasting radio messages to simulate the
presence of the relocated formations. NATO had deliberately limited its own
"maskirovka" until now, allowing SACEUR to bet all of Western Europe
on a pair of fives.

HUNZEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

It was a stimulating exercise. Alekseyev had to move his A
exploitation forces forward while a battered B motor-rifle division bled to
force a crossing of the Weser. All the while the General waited nervously for
news from his shaky right flank. There was none. CINC-West was as good as his
word, and launched a covering attack against Hamburg to draw off NATO forces
from the latest Soviet breakthrough.

That was no easy maneuver. Antiaircraft missile and gun
units had been drawn from other sectors. When NATO appreciated what was in the
offing, they would break every effort to prevent a Soviet advance on the Ruhr.
Resistance so far had been light. Perhaps they didn't understand what was
happening, or perhaps, Alekseyev thought, they really were at the end of their
personnel and logistical string.

The first A unit was 120th Motor-Rifle, the famous Rogachev
Guards, whose leading elements were just now crossing at R�hle, and right
behind was 8th Guards Tank. Two more tank divisions were bunched on the roads
to R�hle, while an engineer regiment labored to erect seven bridges. Intelligence
estimated two, perhaps three, NATO regiments coming to meet them. Not enough,
Alekseyev thought. Not this time. Even their air power was depleted. His
frontal aviation groups reported minor opposition only around R�hle. Perhaps my
superior was right after all

"Heavy enemy air activity at Salzhemmendorf," an
Air Force communications officer reported.

That's where 40th Tanks is, Alekseyev thought. The B unit
had been badly chewed up by the German spoiling attack

"Fortieth Tanks reports a major enemy attack under way
on its front."

"What do they mean by 'major'?"

"The report comes from the alternate command post. I
can't reach the divisional HQ. The assistant commander reports American and
German tanks advancing in brigade force."

Brigade force? Another spoiling attack?

"Enemy attack in progress at Dunsen."

"Dunsen? That's close to Gronau. How the hell did they
get there?" Alekseyev shouted. "Confirm that report! Is it an air or
ground attack?"

"Hundred twentieth Motor-Rifle has a full regiment
across the Weser. They are advancing on Br”keln. Eighth Tanks, leading elements
have the Weser in sight. SAM units are setting up to cover the crossing
point."

It was like having people read different parts of the paper
to him simultaneously, Alekseyev thought. General Beregovoy was at the front,
coordinating traffic control and setting final assignments for the
post-crossing maneuver. Pasha knew that was his proper place, but, as before,
he was annoyed to be far from the real action, giving orders like a Party boss
instead of a fighting commander. The artillery from all the advancing divisions
was well forward to protect the crossing against counterattack.

My rear areas are awfully weak . . .

"Comrade General, the attack at Dunsen is composed of
enemy tank and motorized troops with heavy tactical air support. The regimental
commander at Dunsen estimates brigade strength."

A brigade at Dunsen, and a brigade at Salzhemmendorf?

Those are B unit commanders. Out of practice, inexperienced.
If they were really effective officers, they'd be in A units, not shepherding
out-of-shape reservists.

"Enemy ground units at Bremke, strength unknown."

That's only fifteen kilometers from here! Alekseyev reached
for some maps. It was cramped in the command vehicle, so he went outside and
spread them on the, ground with his intelligence officer beside him.

"What the hell's going on here?" His hand moved
across the map. "That's an attack on a twenty-kilometer front."

"The new enemy division is not supposed to be in place
yet, and Theater Intelligence says it will be broken up for spot-reinforcement
use all over the northern front area."

"Headquarters at F”lziehausen reported a heavy air
attack and went off the air!"

As if to emphasize this latest report, there was a massive
explosion to the north in the direction of Bremke, where 24th Tanks had its
main fuel and ordnance dump. Suddenly aircraft began to appear low on the
horizon. The mobile command post was in woods overlooking the small town of
Hunzen. The town was largely deserted, and the unit's radio transmitters were
there. NATO aircraft had so far shown a reluctance to damage civilian buildings
unless they had to

Not today. Four tactical fighters leveled the center of the
town, where the transmitters were, with high-explosive bombs.

"Get Alternate One going immediately," Alekseyev
ordered.

More aircraft swept overhead, heading southwest toward
Highway 240, where Alekseyev's A units were moving toward R�hle. The General
found a working radio and called CINC-West at Stand.

"We have a major enemy attack coming southeast from
Springe. I would estimate at least two-division strength."

"Impossible, Pasha-they don't have two reserve
divisions!"

"I have reports of enemy ground units at Bremke,
Salzhemmendorf, and Dunsen. It is my opinion that my right flank is in
jeopardy, and I must reorient my forces to meet it. I request permission to
suspend the attack at R�hle to meet this threat."

"Request denied."

"Comrade General, I am the commander at the scene. The
situation can be managed if I have authority to handle it properly."

"General Alekseyev, your objective is the Ruhr. If you
are not able to achieve that objective, I will find a commander who is."

Alekseyev looked at the radiotelephone receiver in
disbelief. He had worked for this man-two years. They were friends. He's always
trusted my judgment.

"You order me to continue the attack regardless of
enemy action?"

"Pasha, they make another spoiling attack-nothing more
serious than that. Get those four divisions across the Weser," the man
said more gently. "Out."

"Major Sergetov!" Alekseyev called. The young
officer appeared a moment later. "Get yourself a vehicle and head for
Dunsen. I want your personal observations on what you find. Be careful, Ivan
Mikhailovich. I want you back here in less than two hours. Move."

"You will do nothing else?" the intelligence
officer asked.

Pasha watched Sergetov board a light truck. He could not
face his officer. "I have my orders. The operation to cross the Weser
continues. We have an antitank battalion at Holle. Tell them to move north and
be alert for enemy forces on the road from Bremke. General Beregovoy knows what
he's supposed to do."

If I warn him, he'll change his dispositions. Then Beregovoy
will be blamed for violating orders. That's a safe move. I prudently pass on a
warning, and-no! If I can't violate orders, I cannot co-opt someone else into
doing so.

What if they're right? This could be another spoiling attack
The Ruhr is a strategic objective of vast importance.

Alekseyev looked up. "The battle orders stand."

"Yes, Comrade General."

"The report of enemy tanks at Bremke was
incorrect." A junior officer came over. "The observer saw our tanks
coming south and misidentified them!"

"And this is good news?" Alekseyev demanded.

"Of course, Comrade General," the captain answered
lamely.

"Did it occur to you to inquire why our tanks were
heading south? Goddamn it, must I do all the thinking here?" He couldn't
scream at the right person. He had to scream at somebody. The captain wilted
before his eyes. Part of Alekseyev was ashamed, but another part needed the
release.

They had the job because they had more battle experience
than anyone else. It had never occurred to anyone that they had no experience
at all in this sort of operation. They were advancing. Except for local
counterattacks, no NATO unit had done very much of that, but Lieutenant-he
still thought like a sergeant-Mackall knew that they were best suited to it.
The M-1 tank had an engine governor that limited its speed to about forty-three
miles per hour. It was always the first thing the crews removed.

His M-1 was going south at fifty-seven miles per hour.

The ride was enough to rattle the brain loose inside his
skull, but he'd never known such exhilaration. His life was balanced on the knife-edge
of boldness and lunacy. Armed helicopters flew ahead of his company, scouting
the route, and pronounced it clear all the way to Alfeld. The Russians weren't
using this route for anything. It wasn't a road at all, but the right-of-way
for an underground pipeline, a grassy strip one hundred feet wide that took a
straight line through the forests. The tank's wide treads threw off dirt like
the roostertail from a speedboat as the vehicle raced south.

The driver slowed for a sweeping turn while Mackall squinted
ahead, trying to see whatever enemy vehicle the helicopters missed. It didn't
have to be a vehicle. It just could be three guys with a missile launcher, and
Mrs. Mackall would get The Telegram, regretting to inform her that her son . .
.

Thirty kilometers, he thought. Damn! Only a half-hour since
the German grenadiers had punched a hole in the Russian lines, and zoom! goes
the Black Horse Cav! It was crazy, but hell, it was crazy to have stayed alive
ever since his first engagement---an hour after the war started. Ten klicks to
go.

"Look at that! More of our tanks southbound. What the
hell is going on?" Sergetov snarled to his driver, even talking like his
general now.

"Are they our tanks?" the driver asked.

The new major shook his head. Another one passed through the
gap in the trees-the turret had a flat top, not the usual dome shape of Soviet
tanks!

A helicopter appeared over the gap and pivoted in the sky.
Sergetov didn't mistake this for a Russian, and the stubby wings on either side
of the fuselage marked it as an armed attack-chopper. The driver lurched to the
right just before the nose-mounted machine gun flashed at them. Sergetov jumped
clear as the tracers reached out. He landed on his back and rolled toward the
treeline. His head was down, but he could feel the heat blast when the
machine-gun tracers ignited the spare gas tank on the back of the truck. The
young officer scampered into the trees and looked around the edge of a tall
pine. The American helicopter flew to within a hundred meters of his vehicle to
ensure its destruction, then spun off to the south. His radio was in the
overturned, burning truck.

"Buffalo Three-One, this is Comanche, over."

"Comanche, this is Three-One. Report, over."

"We just popped a Russian truck. Everything else looks
clear. Roll 'em, cowboy!" the helicopter pilot urged.

Mackall laughed at that. He had to remind himself that this
wasn't really fun. Quite a few tank drivers had gotten into trouble by getting
just a little too unwound on the German countryside, and now they were being
ordered to! Two more minutes and three kilometers passed.

Here's where it gets tricky.

"Buffalo Three-One, we show three Russian vehicles
standing guard on the hilltop. Look like Bravo-Tango-Romeos. All the bridge
traffic seems to be trucks. The repair shop is on the east bank north of the
town."

The tank slowed as they came to the last turn. Mackall
ordered his "track" off the road, onto the meadow grass, as it edged
ponderously around a stand of trees.

"Target BTR, eleven o'clock, twenty-seven hundred! Fire
when ready, Woody!"

The first of the eight-wheel vehicles exploded before any of
their crews knew a tank was near. They were looking for aircraft, not enemy
tanks forty kilometers in the rear. The next two died within a minute, and
Mackall's platoon of four tanks dashed forward.

They all reached the ridge three minutes later. One by one,
the huge Abrams tanks crested the hill overlooking what had once been a small
city. Many days of continuous air attacks and artillery fire had ended that.
Four ribbon bridges were in operation, with numerous trucks crossing or waiting
to cross.

First the tanks located and engaged anything that looked
even vaguely dangerous. Machine-gun fire began working on the trucks, while the
main guns reached into the tank-repair yard established in the fields north of
the town. By this time, two full troops were in place, and infantry vehicles
took on the trucks with their light 25mm cannon. Within fifteen minutes, over a
hundred trucks were burning, along with enough supplies to keep a whole Russian
division in business for a hard day of combat. But the supplies were
incidental. The rest of the squadron was catching up with the advance party,
and their job was to hold this Russian communications nexus until relieved. The
Germans already had Gronau, and the Russian forces east of the Leine were now
cut off from their supplies. Two of the Russian bridges were clear, and a
company of M-2 Bradley infantry carriers darted across to take up position on
the eastern edge of the town.

Ivan Sergetov crawled to the edge of the grassy road-he
didn't know what it was-and watched the units pass while his stomach contracted
into an icy ball. They were Americans, at least a battalion in strength, he
estimated, traveling light. No trucks, just their tracked vehicles. He kept his
wits enough to begin a count of the tanks and personnel carriers that raced
before him at a speed that he'd never really appreciated before. It was the
noise that was most impressive. The turbine-driven M-1 tanks did not make the
roar of diesel-powered tanks. Until they were a few hundred meters away, you
couldn't even know they were there-the combination of low noise and high speed
. . . They're heading towards Alfeld!

I have to report this. But how? His radio was gone, and
Sergetov had to think for a minute to determine where he was . . . two
kilometers from the Leine, right across that wooded ridge. His choice was a
difficult one. If he returned to the command post, it was a walk of twenty
kilometers. If he ran to the rear, he might find friendly units in half the
time and get the alarm out. But running that way was cowardice, wasn't it?

Cowardice or not, he had to go east. Sergetov had the
sickening feeling that the alarm had not been sounded. He moved to the edge of
the trees and waited for a gap in the American column. It was only thirty
meters to the far side. Five seconds to cross the gap, he told himself. Less.

Another M-1 blazed past him. He looked left and saw that the
next was nearly three hundred meters away. Sergetov took a deep breath and ran
into the open.

The tank commander saw him, but couldn't get to his machine
gun fast enough. Besides, one man on foot without even a rifle wasn't worth
stopping for. He reported the sighting on his radio and returned to the mission
at hand.

Sergetov didn't stop running until he was a hundred meters
into the trees. Such a short distance, but he felt as if his heart would spring
from his chest. He sat down with his back against a tree to catch his breath
and continued to watch the vehicle pass. It took several minutes before he
could move again, then it was up the steep hill, and soon he was once more
looking down at the Leine.

The shock of seeing the American tanks was bad enough. What
he saw here was far worse. The Army tank-repair yard was a smoking ruin.
Everywhere there were burning trucks. At least it was downhill. He ran down the
east side of the ridge right up to the river. Quickly stripping off his pistol
belt, Sergetov leaped into the swift current.

"What's that? Hey, I see a Russian swimming!" A
machine gunner swiveled his .50 caliber around. The vehicle commander stopped
him.

"Save it for the MiGs, soldier!"

He climbed up the east bank and turned to look back. The
American vehicles were digging into defensive positions. He ran to cover and
stopped again to make a count before proceeding. There was a traffic-control
point at Sack. Sergetov ran all the way.

After the first hour, things settled down. Lieutenant
Mackall got out of his tank to inspect his platoon's positions. One of the few
ammunition carriers to accompany the troop stopped briefly at each tank, its
crew tossing out fifteen rounds each. Not enough to replace what they'd fired,
but not bad. The air attacks would be next. Crews were out chopping down trees
and shrubs to camouflage their vehicles. The accompanying infantry set out
their Stinger crews, and Air Force fighters were already circling overhead.
intelligence said that eight Russian divisions were on the west side of this
river. Mackall was sitting on their supply route. That made it a very important
plot of real estate.

USS INDEPENDENCE

Quite a change from the last time, Toland thought. The Air
Force had an E-3 Sentry operating out of Sondrestrom to protect the fleet, and
four of their own E-2C Hawkeyes were also up. There was even an Army-manned
ground radar just coming up on Iceland. Two Aegis cruisers were with the
carriers, and a third with the amphibious force.

"You think they'll hit us first, or the 'phibs?"
Admiral Jacobsen asked.

"That's a coin-toss, Admiral," Toland replied.
"Depends on who gives the orders. Their navy will want to kill us first.
Their army will want to kill the 'phibs."

Jacobsen crossed his arms and stared at the map display.
"This close, they can come in from any direction they want."

They expected-no more than fifty Backfires, but there were
still plenty of the older Badgers, and the fleet was only fifteen hundred miles
from the Soviet bomber bases: they could come out with nearly their maximum
ordnance loads. To stop the Russians, the Navy had six squadrons of Tomcats,
and six more of Hornets, nearly a hundred forty fighters in all. Twenty-four
were aloft now, supported by tankers while the ground attack aircraft pounded
Russian positions continuously. The battleships had ended their first visit to
the Keflavik area and were now in Hvalfj”rdur-Whale Bay-providing fire support
to the Marines north of Bogarnes. The entire operation had been planned with
the likelihood of a Russian air-to-surface missile attack in mind. There would
be more vampires.

The loss of northern Norway had eliminated the utility of
Realtime. The submarine was still on station gathering signal intelligence, but
the task of spotting the outbound Russian bomber streams passed on to British
and Norwegian patrol aircraft operating out of Scotland. One of the latter
spotted a three-plane Vic of Badgers heading southwest and radioed a warning.
The Russian aircraft were roughly seventy minutes from the fleet.

Toland's station in CIC was immediately below the flight
deck, and he listened to the roar of jet engines overhead as the fighters
catapulted off. He was nervous. Toland knew that the tactical situation was
very different now from that on the second day of the war, but he also
remembered that he was one of the two men who'd escaped alive from a
compartment just like this. A flood of information came into the room. The
land-based radar, the Air Force E-3, and the Navy E-2s all linked their data to
the carriers. There was enough electromagnetic energy in the sky to cook the
birds in flight. The display showed the fighters proceeding to their stations.
The Tomcats reached out to the northern Icelandic shore, curving into loitering
circles as they awaited the Russian bombers.

"Ideas, Toland. I want ideas!" the Admiral said
quietly.

"If they're after us, they'll approach from the east.
If they're going for the 'Phibs, they'll come straight in. There's just no
percentage in deceptive tactics if they're heading for Stykkishohnur."

Jacobsen nodded. "That's how I see it."

The pounding on the flight deck continued overhead as strike
aircraft landed to rearm for new bombing strikes. Aside from the expected
material effect, they hoped to wreck the morale of the Soviet paratroopers by
violent and continuous air attacks. Marine Harriers were also in action, along
with attack helicopters. Initial progress was somewhat better than expected.
The Russians did not have their troops as widely dispersed as they'd thought,
and the known concentrations were being subjected to a hurricane of bombs and
rockets.

"Starbase, this is Hawk-Blue-Three. I'm getting some
jamming, bearing zero-two-four . . . more jamming now." The data was
linked directly to the carrier, and the thick yellow strobes came up on the
electronic display. The other Hawkeyes quickly reported the same information.

The fleet air-ops officer smiled thinly as he lifted his
microphone. His units were fully in place, and this gave him several options.

"Plan Delta."

Hawk-Green-One carried Independence's air-wing commander. A
fighter pilot who would have much preferred riding his Tomcat for the mission,
he directed two fighters from each Tomcat squadron to seek out the Russian
jamming aircraft. The converted Badgers were spread on a wide front to cover
the approach of the missile-armed bombers and advanced at five hundred knots,
three hundred miles now from the line of radar-picket aircraft. The Tomcats
homed in on them at five hundred knots as well.

Each jammer created a "strobe," an opaque wedge
shape on the U.S. radar screens, so that they looked like the spokes of a wagon
wheel. Since every such spoke was particular to each of the radar transmitters,
the controllers were able to compare data, triangulate, and plot the position
of the jammers. The Tomcats closed in quickly while the radar-intercept
officers in the back seat of each fighter flipped the Phoenix missile seekers
to home-on-jam guidance mode. Instead of depending on the aircraft's own radar
for guidance, the missiles would seek out the noise transmitted from the
Badgers.

Twenty jamming aircraft were plotted. Eighteen fighters
headed for them, targeting at least two missiles at each.

"Delta--execute!"

The Tomcats launched on orders forty miles from their
targets. Once more, Phoenix missiles streaked through the air. Flight time was a
mere fifty-six seconds. Sixteen of the Badger jammers went off the air. The
surviving four all switched off when they saw the smoke trails of missiles and
dove for the deck with Tomcats in pursuit.

"Numerous radar contacts. Raid One is fifty aircraft,
bearing zero-zero nine, range three-six-zero, speed six hundred knots, altitude
three-zero thousand. Raid Two-" the talker went on as the enemy aircraft
were plotted.

"We have the main raid, probably Badgers going for the
'phibs. This one will be Backfires. They'll try to launch on us, probably far
out to draw our fighters off," Toland said.

Jacobsen spoke briefly to his operations officer.
Hawk-Green-One would control the defense of the amphibious force.
Hawk-Blue-Four from Nimitz would defend the carrier groups. The fighters
divided according to plan and went to work. Toland noted that Jacobsen was
leaving control of the air action to the officers in the control aircraft. The
fleet air-defense officer on USS Yorktown controlled the SAM ships, an of which
went to full alert but left their radar transmitters on standby.

"The only thing that worries me is they might try that
drone crap again," Jacobsen murmured.

"It worked once," Toland agreed. "But we
didn't have them this far out before."

The Tomcats divided into four-plane divisions, each
controlled by radar. They, too, had been briefed about the drones that had
fooled Nimitz. The fighters kept their radars off until they were within fifty
miles of their targets, then used the radars to locate targets for their
on-board TV systems.

"Hawk-Blue-Four," one called. "Tallyho, I got
eyeballs on a Backfire. Engaging now. Out."

The Russian plan of attack had anticipated that the American
fighters would try to bum through the jamming aircraft to the north, then be
caught off balance by the appearance of the Backfires to the east. But the
jammers were gone, and the Backfires did not yet have the American carrier
fleet on radar and could not launch their missiles on the basis of hours-old
satellite photographs. Neither could they run away. The supersonic Russian
bombers went to afterburner and activated their radars in a contest with time,
distance, and American interceptors.

Again it was like watching a video game. The symbols
designating the Backfires changed as the planes switched on their own
protective jammers. The jamming reduced the effectiveness of the Phoenix
missiles, but Russian losses were already serious. The Backfires were three
hundred miles away. Their radars had an effective range of only half that, and
already fighters swarmed over their formations. "Tallyho" calls
cluttered the radio circuits as the Tomcats converged to engage the Russian
bombers, and the ^ symbols started dropping off the radar screens. The
Backfires closed at seventeen miles per minute, their radars searching
desperately for the American fleet.

"Going to get some leakers," Toland said.

"Six or eight," Jacobsen agreed.

"Figure three missiles each."

By now the Tomcats had fired all of their missiles, and drew
off for the Hornets to join the action with Sparrows and Sidewinders. It wasn't
easy for the fighters to keep up with their targets. The Backfires, speed made
for difficult pursuit curves, and the fighters were notoriously short on fuel.
Their missiles continued to score, however, and no amount of jinking and
jamming could defeat all of them. Finally one aircraft got a surface radar
contact and radioed a position. The seven remaining Backfires fired their
missiles and turned north at Mach 2. Three more fell to missiles before the
fighters had to turn away.

Again the Vampire call came in, and again Toland cringed.
Twenty incoming missiles were plotted. The formation activated jammers and SAM
systems, with a pair of Aegis cruisers on the threat axis. In seconds they were
launching missiles, and the other SM2-equipped SAM ships added their own
missiles to the "basket," allowing their birds to be guided by the
Aegis computer systems. The twenty incoming missiles had ninety SM2s targeted
on them. Only three got through the SAM cloud, and only one of them headed for
a carrier. America's three point-defense guns tracked the AS-6 and destroyed it
a thousand feet from the ship. The other two missiles both found the cruiser
Wainwright and exploded her four miles from Independence.

"Damn." Jacobsen's face took a hard set. "I
thought we had that one beat. Let's start recovering aircraft. We got some dry
fighters up there."

Everyone's attention turned to the Badgers. The northern
Tomcat groups were just coming within range of the older bombers. The Badger
crews had expected to follow their jammers in, reversing earlier tactics. Some
were slow to realize that they had no electronic wall to hide behind, but none
had a choice. They detected incoming fighters while still five minutes from their
launch points. The Badgers held course and increased to full speed to lessen
their time of vulnerability while their crews looked anxiously for missiles.

The Tomcat pilots were surprised that their incoming targets
were not altering course, which made the possibility of drones seem even more
likely. They closed to get visual identification of their targets for fear of
being tricked again into shooting at drones.

"Tallyho! Badger at twelve o'clock and level." The
first Tomcat loosed a pair of missiles from forty miles out.

Unlike the Backfires, the Badgers had a location fix for
their targets, which enabled them to launch their AS-4s from maximum range. One
by one, the twenty-year-old bombers launched and turned as tight as their
pilots dared to escape. Their escape maneuvers allowed half to survive, since
the Navy fighters were unable to pursue. Aboard the radar aircraft, kills were
being tallied even as the missiles flew toward Stykkisholmur. Soviet Naval
Aviation had just taken fearful losses.

USS NASSAU

Edwards was still in the twilight of anesthesia when he
heard the electronic gonging of the General Quarters alarm. He was only vaguely
aware of where he was. He seemed to remember the helicopter ride, but his next
impression was that of lying in a bunk with needles and tubes stuck in various
parts of his body. He knew what the alarm meant, and knew intellectually that
he should be afraid. But he couldn't quite work his emotions up through the
drug-induced haze. He succeeded in raising his head. Vigdis was sitting on a
chair next to his bed, holding his right hand. He squeezed back, not knowing
that she was asleep. A moment later he was, too.

Five levels up, Nassau's captain was standing on the bridge
wing. His normal battle station was in CIC, but the ship was not moving, and he
figured that this was as good a place as any to watch. Over a hundred missiles
were inbound from the northeast. As soon as raid warning had been received an
hour earlier, all of his boat crews had set to lighting off the smoke pots set
on the rocks in this so-called anchorage. That was his best defense, he knew,
hardly believing it himself. The point-defense guns at the comers of the flight
deck were in automatic mode. Called R2D2s for their shape, the
Close-In-Weapons-System Gatling guns were elevated twenty degrees, pointing off
to the threat axis. That was all he could do. It had been decided by the
air-defense experts that even firing off their chaff rockets would do more harm
than good. The captain shrugged. One way or another, he'd know in five minutes.

He watched the cruiser Vincennes to the east, steaming in
slow circles. Suddenly four smoke-trails erupted from her missile launchers,
and the missile firing cycle began. Soon the northeastern sky was a solid mass
of gray smoke. Through his binoculars he began to pick out the sudden black
puffs of successful intercepts. They seemed to be coming closer, and he noticed
that the missiles were, too. And the Aegis cruiser could not get them all.
Vincennes emptied her magazines in four minutes, then bent on full speed to
race between a pair of rocky islands. The captain was amazed to see it. Someone
was taking a billion-dollar cruiser into a rock garden at twenty-five knots!
Even off Guadalcanal-

An explosion rocked the island of Hrappsey, four miles away.
Then another on Seley. It was working!

Ten miles up, the Russian missiles switched on their radar
seeker heads and found their target windows crammed with blips. Overloaded,
they automatically scanned the largest for infrared signatures. Many of the
blips gave off heat, and the missiles automatically selected the largest for
their attention as they made their final Mach 3 dives. They had no way of
knowing that they were attacking volcanic rocks. Thirty missiles got through
the SAM defenses. Only five of them actually aimed themselves at ships.

Two of Nassau's R2D2s swiveled together and fired at a
missile traveling too fast too see. The captain looked in the direction of the
barrels just in time to see a white flash a thousand feet overhead. The sound
that followed nearly deafened him, and he realized how foolish it was to be
exposed when fragments dinged off the pilothouse next to him. Two more missiles
fell into the town to his west. Then the sky cleared. A fireball to the west
told him that at least one ship had been hit. But not mine!

"Son of a bitch." He lifted the phone to the
Combat Information Center. "Combat, Bridge, two missiles fell into
Stykkisholmur. Let's get a helo over there, there's gonna be some
casualties."

As Toland watched, the tapes of the air engagement were
replayed at fast speed. A computer tallied the kills. Everything was automated
now.

"Wow," the intelligence officer said to himself

"Not like before, was it, son?" Jacobsen observed.
"Spaulding, I want word on the 'phibs!"

"Just coming in now, sir. Charleston took a hit and
broke in half. We have minor damage to Guam and Ponce--and that's it,
Admiral!"

"Plus Wainwright." Jacobsen took a deep breath.
Two valuable ships and fifteen hundred men were gone, yet he had to call it a
success.

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

"The attack should be over by now."

Andreyev didn't expect rapid information. The Americans had
finally succeeded in damaging his last radar, and he had no way of tracking the
air battle. His radio-intercept crews had copied numerous voice transmissions,
but they'd been too faint and too fast for any conclusion other than that a
battle had in fact been fought.

"The last time we caught a NATO carrier force, we
smashed it," the operations officer said hopefully.

"Our troops above Bogarnes are still under heavy
fire," another reported. The American battleships had been hitting them
for over an hour. "They are taking serious losses."

"Comrade General, I have a-you'd better listen to this,
it's on our command circuit."

The message repeated four times, in Russian: "Commander
Soviet Forces Iceland, this is Commander Strike Fleet Atlantic. If you don't
get this, somebody will get it to you. Tell your bombers better luck next time.
We'll be seeing you soon. Out."

SACK, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

Sergetov staggered up to the traffic-control point in time
to see a battalion of tanks move down the road toward Alfeld. He stood slumped
over, hands on his knees, as he watched the tanks roll off.

"Identify yourself!" It was a KGB lieutenant. The
KGB had taken over traffic management. The authority to shoot violators came
easy to the KGB.

"Major Sergetov. I must see the area commander at
once."

"Attached to what unit, Sergetov?"

Ivan stood up straight. Not Comrade Major, not Comrade, just
Sergetov.

"I am personal aide to General Alekseyev, Deputy
Commander West. Now get me the hell to your commander!"

"Papers." The lieutenant held out his hand, a
coldly arrogant look on his face.

Sergetov smiled thinly. His identification documents were in
a waterproof plastic envelope. He handed the top card over to the KGB officer.
It was something his father had managed to get for him before mobilization.

"And what might you be doing with a Class-1-Priority
pass?" The lieutenant was wary now.

"And who the fuck are you to ask?" The son of a
Politburo member brought his face to within a centimeter of the other man's.
"Get me to your commander now or we'll see who gets shot here today!"

The chekist deflated abruptly and led him to a farm cottage.
The commander of the traffic-control station was a major. Good.

"I need a radio on the Army command circuit,"
Sergetov snapped.

"All I have is regimental and division," the major
answered.

"Nearest division headquarters?"

"Fortieth Tanks at-"

"It's destroyed. Damn, I need a vehicle. Now! There is
an American force at Alfeld."

"We just sent off a battalion-"

"I know. Call them back."

"I have no such authority."

"You damned fool, they're heading into a trap! Call
them now!''

"I don't have the auth-"

"Are you a German agent? Haven't you seen what's going
on there?" "It was an air attack, wasn't it?"

"There are American tanks in Alfeld, you idiot. We must
launch a counterattack, but one battalion isn't enough. We-" The first
explosions started, six kilometers away. "Major, I want one of two things.
Either you give me transport right now or you give me your name and service
number so that I can denounce you properly."

The two KGB officers shared a look of incredulity. Nobody
talked that way to them, but anyone who did . . . Sergetov got his vehicle and
raced off. Half an hour later he was in the supply base at Holle. There he
found a radio.

"Where are you, Major?" Alekseyev demanded.

"Holle. The Americans got through our lines. They have
at least one battalion of tanks at Alfeld."

"What?" The radio was silent for a moment.
"Are you certain?"

"Comrade General, I had to swim the damned river to get
here. I counted a column of twenty-five armored vehicles a few kilometers north
of the town. They shot up the tank-repair station and massacred a column of
trucks. I repeat, General, there is an American force at Alfeld in at least
battalion strength."

"Get transport to Stendal and report personally to
Commander-in-Chief West."

USS INDEPENDENCE

"Good evening, Major Chapayev. How's the leg?"
Toland asked, sitting down beside the hospital bunk. "Are you being
treated properly.?"

"I have no complaints. Your Russian is-fair."

"I do not often get to practice with a Soviet citizen.
Perhaps you can help me somewhat." Major Alexandr Georgiveyich Chapayev,
the computer printout read. Age 30. Second son of General Georgiy
Konstantinovich Chapayev, commander of the Moscow Air Defense District. Married
to the youngest daughter of a Central Committee member, Ilya Nikolayevich
Govorov. And therefore probably a young man with access to lots of
under-the-counter information . . .

"With your grammar?" Chapayev snorted.

"You were the commander of the MiGs? Be at ease, Major,
they're all finished now. You know that."

"I was the senior flying officer, yes."

"I've been told to compliment you. I am not a flyer
myself, but they tell me your tactics over Keflavik were excellent. I believe
you had five MiGs. We lost a total of seven aircraft yesterday, three to MiGs,
two to missiles, and two to ground fire. Considering the odds, we were
disagreeably surprised."

"I had my duty."

"Da. We all have our duty," Toland agreed.
"If you are concerned at how we will treat you, you should not be. You
will be treated properly in all respects. I don't know what you have been told
to expect, but probably you have noticed once or twice that not everything the
Party says is completely true. I see from your identification papers that you
have a wife and two children. I have a family, too. We'll both live to see them
again, Major. Well, probably."

"And when our bombers attack you?'

"That happened three hours ago. Didn't anyone tell
you?"

"Ha! The first time-"

"I was on Nimitz We took two hits." Toland
described the attack briefly. "This time things worked out differently.
We're conducting rescue operations now. You'll know for sure when we bring some
survivors in. Your air force is no longer a threat to us. Submarines are
another matter, but there is no sense asking a fighter pilot about that. In
fact, this isn't really an interrogation."

"So why are you here?"

"I will be asking you some questions later. I just
wanted to come down and say hello. Is there anything I can get you, anything
you need?"

Chapayev did not know what to make of this. Aside from the
possibility the Americans would shoot him outright, he didn't know what to
expect. He'd had the usual lectures about trying to escape, but clearly these
did not apply to being aboard a ship in the middle of the ocean.

"I do not believe you," he said finally.

"Comrade Major, there is no point in asking you about
the MiG-29, because none are left on Iceland. All the others in the Soviet Air
Force are in Central Europe, but we're not going there. There is no point in
asking you about ground-defense positions on Iceland; you're a pilot and you
don't know anything about that. The same is true of the remaining threat
against us: submarines. What do you know about submarines, eh? Think, Major,
you are an educated man. Do you think you have information that we need? I
doubt it. You will be exchanged in due course for our prisoners-a political
question, for our political masters. Until then we will treat you
properly." Toland paused. Talk to me, Major . . .

"I'm hungry," Chapayev said after a moment.

"Dinner should be in about thirty minutes."

"You will just send me home, after-"

"We don't have labor camps and we don't kill prisoners.
If we were going to mistreat you, why did the surgeon sew up your leg and
prescribe pain medications?"

"The pictures I had with me?"

"Almost forgot." Toland handed the Russian's
wallet over. "Isn't it against the rules to take this up with you?"

"I carry it for luck," he said. Chapayev pulled
out the black-and-white shot of his wife and twin daughters. I will see you
again It may be some months, but I will see you again.

Bob chuckled. "It worked, Comrade Major. Here are
mine."

"Your wife is too skinny, but you are a lucky man
also." Chapayev paused as his eyes teared up for a moment. He blinked them
away. "I would like a drink," he said hopefully.

"Me, too. Not allowed on our ships." He looked at
the photos. "Your daughters are beautiful, Major. You know, we have to be
crazy to leave them."

"We have our duty," Chapayev said. Toland gestured
angrily.

"It's the damned politicians. They just tell us to
go-and we go, like idiots! Hell, we don't even know why the Goddamned war
started!"

"You mean you do not know?"

Bingo. Codeine and sympathy . . . The tape recorder he had
in his pocket was already turned on.

HUNZEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

"If I continue the attack, we'll be destroyed
here!" Alekseyev protested. "I have two full divisions on my flank,
and I have a report that American tanks are at Alfeld."

"Impossible!" CINC-West replied angrily.

"The report came from Major Sergetov. He saw them
arrive. I have ordered him to Stendal to make his report to you
personally."

"I have 26th Motor-Rifle approaching Alfeld now. If any
Americans are present, they'll handle matters."

That's a Category-C unit, Alekseyev thought. Reservists,
short on equipment, out-of-date training.

"What progress have you made on the crossing?"

"Two regiments across, a third moving now. Enemy air
activity has picked up-dammit! I have enemy units in my rear!"

"Get back to Stendal, Pasha. Beregovoy is in command at
Hunzen. I need you here."

I'm being relieved. I'm being relieved of my command!

"Understood, Comrade General," Alekseyev replied.
He switched off the radio. Can I leave my troops this vulnerable to
counterattack? Can I forego warning my commanders? Alekseyev slammed his fist
on the worktable. "Get me General Beregovoy'!'

ALFELD, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

It was too far for artillery support from the NATO lines,
and they'd been forced to leave their own guns behind. Mackall trained his
gunsights through the haze and saw the advancing Russian formations. He
estimated two regiments. That made it a division-sized attack in the classic
two-up, one-back fashion. Hmm. I don't see any SAM launchers upfront The
colonel in overall command started giving his orders over the command circuit.
Friendly air was coming in.

Apache attack choppers popped up right behind the Cav's
positions. They moved south to flank the advancing Russian vehicles, jinking
and skidding as they launched their Hellfire missiles into the leading echelon
of tanks. Their pilots sought out missile-launch vehicles but found none. Next
came the A10s. The ugly twin-engine aircraft swooped low, free for once of the
SAM threat. Their rotary cannon and cluster bombs continued the job of the
Apaches.

"They're coming in dumb, boss," the gunner
commented.

"Maybe they're green, Woody."

"Okay by me."

The Bradleys on the eastern edge of the town engaged next
with their missiles. The leading Soviet ranks were savaged even before they
came into range of the tanks over the river. The attack began to falter. The
Russian tanks stopped to shoot. They popped smoke and shot wildly from inside
it. A few wild rounds landed close to Mackall's position, but they were not
aimed shots. The attack was stopped two kilometers short of the town.

"Head north," Alekseyev said over the headset.

"Comrade General, if we head north-" the pilot
started to say.

"I said head north! Keep low," he added.

The heavily armed Mi-24 swooped low abruptly. Alekseyev's
gorge rose in his throat as the pilot tried to get even with him for giving the
stupid, dangerous order. He sat in the back, hanging on to the seatbelt and
leaning out the left-side door to see what he could. The helicopter jinked
violently left and right, up and down-the pilot knew the dangers here.

"There!" Alekseyev called. "Ten o'clock. I
see-American or German? Tanks at ten o'clock."

"I see some missile vehicles, too, Comrade General. Do
you wish to see them more closely?" the pilot inquired acidly. He brought
the chopper down a wooded road, barely two meters above the pavement as he
dipped out of sight.

"That was at least a battalion," the General said.

"I'd say more," the pilot commented. He was at
full power, his nose low for maximum speed, and his eyes scanned ahead for
enemy aircraft.

The General fumbled with his map. He had to sit down and
strap in to use both hands on it. "My God, this far south?"

"As I told you," the pilot answered over the
intercom, "they have staged a breakthrough."

"How close can you go to Alfeld?"

'That depends on how much the General wishes to be alive
tonight." Alekseyev noted the fear and anger in the words, and reminded
himself that the captain flying his helicopter was already twice a Hero of the
Soviet Union for his daring over the battlefield.

"As close as you think safe, Comrade Captain. I must
see for myself what the enemy is doing."

"Understood. Hang on, it will be a very rough
ride." The Mi-24 jumped up to avoid some power lines, then dropped again
like a stone. Alekseyev winced at how close to the ground they stopped.
"Enemy aircraft overhead. Look like the Devil's Cross . . . four of them
heading west."

They passed over a-not a road, Alekseyev thought, a grassy
strip with tracked vehicles on it. The grass had been churned to bare dirt. He
checked his map. This route led to Alfeld.

"I will cross over the Leine and approach Alfeld from
the east. That way we'll be over friendly troops if anything happens," the
pilot advised. Immediately thereafter the aircraft jumped up and down again.
Alekseyev caught a glimpse of tanks on the ridge as they raced past. Many of
them. A few strings of tracer bullets reached out at the chopper, but fell
behind. "Quite a few tanks there, Comrade General. I'd say a regimental
force. The tank-repair yard is to the south-what's left of it-shit! Enemy
helicopters to the south!"

The aircraft stopped and pivoted in the air. There was a
roar as an air-to-air missile leaped off the wingtip, then the Mi-24 started
moving again. It jinked up, then down hard, and the General saw a smoke trail
go overhead.

"That was close."

"Did you get him?"

"Does the General wish me to stop and see? What's that?
That wasn't here before."

The chopper stopped briefly. Alekseyev saw burning vehicles
and running men. The tanks were old T-55s . . . this was the counterattack he'd
been told about! Smashed. A minute later he saw vehicles assembling for another
effort.

"I've seen enough. Straight to Stendal as fast as you
can." The General leaned back with his maps and tried to formulate a clear
picture of what he'd seen. Half an hour later the helicopter flared and landed.

"You were right, Pasha," CINC-West said as soon as
he walked into the operations room. He held three reconnaissance photographs.

"Twenty-Sixth Motor-Rifle's initial attack was crushed
two kilometers in front of enemy lines. When I flew over, they were re-forming
for another. This is a mistake," Alekseyev said with quiet urgency.
"If we want that position back, we have to attack with full
preparation."

"We must have that bridgehead back in our hands as
quickly as possible."

"Fine. Tell Beregovoy to detach two of his units and
drive back east."

"We can't abandon the Weser crossing!"

"Comrade General, either we pull those units back or we
let NATO destroy them in place. That is the only choice we have at the
moment."

"No. Once we get Alfeld back, we can reinforce. That
will defeat the counterattack on their flank and allow us to continue the
advance."

"What do we have to strike Alfeld with?"

"Three divisions are en route now-"

Alekseyev scanned the unit designations on the map.
"They're all C formations!"

"Yes. I had to divert most of my B units north. NATO
counterattacked at Hamburg as well. Cheer up, Pasha, we have many C units
coming onto the front."

Wonderful All these old, fat, out-of-practice reservists are
marching to a front held by battle-seasoned troops.

"Wait until all three divisions are in place. Get their
artillery up front first so that we can pound the NATO positions. What about
Gronau?"

"The Germans crossed the Leine there, but we have them
contained. Two divisions are moving to attack there also."

Alekseyev walked over to the main map display and looked for
changes in the tactical situation since he'd last been here. The battle lines
in the north had not changed appreciably, and the NATO counterattack on the
Alfeld-R�hle salient was only now being posted. Blue flags were at Gronau, and
Alfeld. There was the counterattack at Hamburg.

We've lost the initiative. How do we get it back?

The Soviet Army had started the war with twenty A divisions
based in Germany, with another ten moved in at the start, and more since. All
of them had now been committed to battle, many pulled off the line due to
losses. The last reserve of the full-strength formations was at R�hle, and they
were about to be trapped. Beregovoy was too good a soldier to violate orders,
even though he knew his forces had to be pulled back before they were
irretrievably cut off.

"We must abandon the attack. If we press on, those
divisions will be trapped behind two rivers, not just one."

"The attack is a political and military
necessity," CINC-West answered- "If they push forward, NATO will have
to draw forces off this attack to defend the Ruhr. Then we'll have them."

Alekseyev didn't argue further. The thought that came to him
felt like a blast of cold air on exposed skin. Have we failed?

USS INDEPENDENCE

"Admiral, I need to see somebody in the MAF."

"Who?"

"Chuck Lowe-he's a regimental commander. Before he took
it over, we worked together on CINCLANT's intelligence staff."

"Why not-"

"He's good, Admiral, very good at this stuff."

"You think the information is that hot?" Jacobsen
asked.

"I sure do, sir, but I need a second opinion. Chuck's
the best guy who's handy."

Jacobsen lifted his phone. "Get me General Emerson,
quick . . . Billy? Scott. You have a Colonel Chuck Lowe serving with you?
Where? Okay, one of my intel people needs to see him right now . . . important
enough, Billy. Very well, he'll be on his way in ten minutes." The Admiral
set the phone down. "Have you copied that tape?"

"Yes, sir. This is one of the copies. The original's in
the safe."

"There'll be a helo waiting for you."

It was a one-hour flight to Stykkisholmur. From there a
Marine chopper took him southeast. He found Chuck Lowe in a tent looking over
some maps.

"You get around pretty good. I heard about Nimitz, Bob.
Glad to see you made it. What's up?"

"I want you to listen to this tape. It'll take you
about twenty minutes." Toland explained who the Russian was. He handed
over a small Japanese personal tape player with earphones. The two officers
walked out of the tent to a relatively quiet place. Twice Lowe rewound the tape
to repeat a section.

"Son of a bitch," he said quietly when it was
finished.

"He thought we already knew."

Colonel Lowe stooped down and picked up a rock. He hefted it
in his hand for a moment, then hurled it as hard as he could. "Why not? We
assume the KGB is competent, why should they assume that we're not! We had the
information all along . . . and we blew it! " His voice was full of wonder
and disgust. "You sure this isn't a cock-and-bull story?"

"When we pulled him out of the water, he had a nasty
cut on the leg. The docs sewed that up and gave him pain pills. I caught him
weak from blood loss, and pretty well juiced on codeine. Kinda hard to lie well
when you're drunk, isn't it? Chuck, I really need your opinion."

"Trying to land me back in the intel business?"
Lowe smiled briefly. "Bob, it makes a hell of a lot of sense. This should
go up the ladder fast."

"I think SACEUR should get it."

"You can't just call up for an appointment, Bob."

"I can go through COMEASTLANT. The original goes to
Washington. CIA will want to use a voice-stress-analysis machine on it. But I
saw the man's eyes, Chuck."

"I agree. It should go to the top as fast as you can
get it there-and SACEUR can make the fastest use of it."

"Thanks, Colonel. How do I call the chopper back?"

"I'll handle that. Welcome to Iceland, by the
way."

"How's it going?" Toland followed the colonel back
to the tent.

"We're up against good troops, but they have a tough
defensive problem here, and we have all the firepower we need. We got 'em by
the ass!" The colonel paused. "Nice work, Squid!"

Two hours later, Toland was aboard a plane bound for
Heathrow.

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

The briefing was given by Marshal Fyodr Borissovich
Bukharin. The KGB had arrested Marshals Shavyrin and Rozhkov the day before, a
move that told Minister Sergetov more than this briefing ever would.

"The attack west from Alfeld has bogged down due to
poor planning and execution by Commander-in-Chief West. We need to regain the
initiative. Fortunately we have the troops available, and nothing changes the
fact that NATO has suffered grievous losses.

"I propose replacement of the Western Theater command
staff and-"

"Wait. I wish to say something," Sergetov
interrupted.

"Make your point, Mikhail Eduardovich," the
Defense Minister said, his annoyance clear.

"Marshal Bukharin, you propose complete staff
replacement?" The practical consequences to the replacees was unspoken,
Sergetov thought, but plain enough.

"My son is on the staff of the Deputy Commander West,
General Alekseyev. This general is the one who led the breakthrough at Alfeld,
and the one at R�hle! He's been wounded twice and had his helicopter shot down
by enemy fighters-after which he commandeered a truck and raced to the front to
lead yet another successful attack. He's the only effective general we have
that I know of, and you want to replace him with someone unfamiliar with the
situation-what madness is this?" he asked angrily. The Minister of the
Interior leaned forward.

"Just because your son is on his staff-"

Sergetov's face went beet-red. "'Just because my
son,'  you say? My son is at the front,
serving the State. He's been wounded, and barely escaped death when he was shot
down at his general's side. Who else at this table can say that, Comrades?
Where are your sons?" He pounded on the table in rage. Sergetov concluded
in a softer voice, wounding his colleagues in a way that mattered, really
mattered: "Where are the Communists here?"

There was a brief but deadly silence. Sergetov knew that he
had either ended his political career or boosted it beyond measure. His fate
would be decided by whoever spoke next.

"In the Great Patriotic War," Pyotr Bromkovskiy
said with an old man's dignity, "Politburo members lived at the front.
Many lost sons. Even Comrade Stalin gave his sons to the State, serving
alongside the sons of ordinary workers and peasants. Mikhail Eduardovich speaks
well. Comrade Marshal, your evaluation of General Alekseyev, if you please? Is
Comrade Sergetov correct in his assessment?"

Bukharin looked uneasy. "Alekseyev is a young, bright
officer, and, yes, he has done fairly well at his present post."

"But you wish to replace him with one of your own
people?" Bromkovskiy didn't wait for an answer. "It is amazing, the
things we learn and the things we forget. We forget that it is necessary for
all Soviet citizens to share the burden together-but we remember the mistakes
made in 1941, arresting good officers because their superiors erred, and
replacing them all with political cronies who could lead us to disaster! If
Alekseyev is a bright young officer who knows how to fight, why do you replace
him?"

"Perhaps we were hasty," the Defense Minister
admitted, watching the mood around the table shift dramatically. I'll get you
for this, Mikhail Eduardovich. If you wish to ally yourself with our oldest
member, it is fine with me. He won't live forever. Neither will you.

"That is decided then," the Party Chairman said.
"Next, Bukharin, what of the situation on Iceland?"

"There are reports that some enemy troops have landed,
but we immediately attacked the NATO fleet. We are waiting now for an
assessment of the losses we inflicted. We have to wait for satellite
reconnaissance before we can be sure of that." Bukharin knew only what
Soviet losses were, and he would not reveal those until he could report
favorable strike results.

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

They arrived just after dark, the KGB officers in battle
dress. Alekseyev was working on deployments of newly arrived C divisions and
didn't see them enter CINC-West's office. Five minutes later he was summoned.

"Comrade General Alekseyev, you are now Commander-in-Chief
of the Western Theater of Military Operations," his superior said simply.
"I wish you luck."

Alekseyev felt the hair rise up on his neck at the General's
tone. The man was flanked by a pair of KGB colonels wearing the standard KGB
battle dress, camouflage cloth tailored in the pattern of a class-A uniform,
the "State Security" GB emblem shoulder boards. It was an
institutional form of arrogance that suited the KGB as perfectly as the look on
the colonels' faces.

What do I say? What can I do? This is my friend.

The former Commander-in-Chief of the Western Theater of
Military Operations said it for him: "Good-bye, Pasha."

They took the General out. Alekseyev watched him go, then
stop at the door. He turned with a look of hopeless fatalism before proceeding.
Alekseyev's last sight was of the General's pistol belt, the leather flap loose
over an empty holster. He turned away and saw on the desk a telex confirming
his command status. It told him that he had the complete confidence of the
Party, the Politburo, and the People. He crumpled it and threw it against the
wall. He had seen the same words on the same form a few brief weeks before. The
recipient of that message of confidence was now in a car heading east.

How long do I have? Alekseyev summoned his communications
officer.

"Get me General Beregovoy!"

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

SACEUR allowed himself a meal. He'd lost ten pounds since
the war had begun by subsisting on coffee and sandwiches and stomach acid.
Alexander had commanded armies in his teens and twenties-maybe that's why he
did so well, the General thought. He was young enough to stand it.

It was working. The Cav was at Alfeld. The Germans were
firmly in control of Gronau and Bruggen, and unless Ivan reacted quickly, his
divisions on the Weser were in for a very nasty surprise. The door to his
office opened. It was his German intelligence officer.

"Excuse me, Herr General, I have an naval intelligence
officer here."

"Is it important, Joachim?"

"Ja."

SACEUR looked down at his plate. "Show him in."

The General was not impressed. The man was dressed in his
shipboard khakis. Only a very sharp eye could see where the creases used to be.

"General, I'm Commander Bob Toland. Until a few hours
ago, I was on the threat team with Strike Fleet Atlantic-"

"How's it going on Iceland?"

"The air attack on the fleet was chewed up, sir.
There's still the submarine problem to deal with, but the Marines are moving. I
think we'll win this one, General."

"Well, the more subs they send after the carriers, the
fewer go after my convoys."

That's one way to look at it, Toland thought. "Admiral,
we captured a Russian fighter pilot. He comes from an important family. I
interrogated him; here's the tape. I think we know why the war started."

"Joachim, did you check his data?"

"No, sir. He has already briefed COMEASTLANT, and
Admiral Beattie wanted the data to come directly to you."

SACEUR's eyes narrowed. "Let's hear it, son."

"Oil."

41 -Targets of Opportunity

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

Three copies were made of the tape. One went to one of
SACEUR's intelligence staff for a separate translation to be checked against
Toland's. Another was taken to French intelligence for electronic analysis. The
third was analyzed by a Belgian psychiatrist who was fluent in Russian. While
that was going on, half of the intelligence officers at NATO headquarters
updated all their information about Soviet fuel consumption to date. CIA and
other national intelligence services began a frantic investigation into Soviet
oil production and utilization. Toland predicted the outcome hours before it
came in: insufficient data. The range of possible conclusions predicted that
the Russians had enough fuel for several months---or had already run out!

SACEUR took his time before accepting the data at face
value. Prisoner interrogations had given his intelligence people a wealth of
information-most of it patently false or contradictory. Since supply officers
naturally lagged behind the fighting troops, few of them had been captured. It
was the Air Force that bought the story first. They knew that enemy fuel-supply
dumps were smaller than expected. Instead of the One Big Facility so prevalent
throughout Russian society (and after the big dump at Wittenburg had been blown
up), the Russians had gone to small ones, accepting the price of increased
air-defense and security requirements. NATO's deep-strike air missions had been
concentrating on airfields, munitions dumps, transport junctions, and the tank
columns approaching the front . . . more lucrative targets than the
smaller-than-expected fuel depots, which were also harder to spot. The traffic
signatures associated with the large fuel-posts usually showed hundreds of
trucks cycling in and out. The small ones, with fewer trucks involved, were
harder for the look-down radar aircraft to locate. All these factors militated
to a different targeting priority.

After fifteen minutes' discussion with his Air Chief, SACEUR
changed all that.

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

"I can't do both things," Alekseyev whispered to
himself He'd spent the last twelve hours trying to find a way, but it wasn't
there. It was a marvel what it meant finally to be in command himself, no
longer the aggressive subordinate. He was now responsible for success or
failure. A mistake was his mistake. A failure was his failure. It had been much
more comfortable the other way. Like his predecessor, Alekseyev had to mark his
orders, even though his orders were impossible. He had to maintain the salient
and continue the advance. He had the resources to do one or the other, but not
both. You will advance northwest from the Weser, cutting off the forces on the
right-flank of the advancing troops and preparing the way for a decisive attack
into the Ruhr Valley. Whoever issued the orders either didn't know or didn't
care that this was impossible.

But NATO knew. Their air power had smashed convoys on every
road between R�hle and Alfeld. The two B tank divisions guarding Beregovoy's
northern flank had been caught off-balance and routed. Battalion-sized blocking
forces occupied the major crossroads while the NATO commanders reinforced the
regiment at Alfeld. Probably two full tank divisions lurked in the forests
north of R�hle, but for the present they had not attacked Beregovoy. Instead
their inaction both dared him to cross and invited him to counterattack north.

Alekseyev remembered an important lesson from the Frunze
Academy: the Kharkov Offensive of 1942. The Germans had allowed the advancing
Red Army forces to penetrate deep-then cut them off and chewed them up. High
Command [meaning Stalin] ignored the objective realities of the situation
(hence violating the Second Law of Armed Combat), concentrating instead on
subjective perceptions of apparent progress that unfortunately proved false,
the lesson concluded. The General wondered if this battle would be an object
lesson for some future class of captains and majors who would then write their
test answers and essays in bluebooks, pointing out what an ass General Colonel
Pavel Leonidovich Alekseyev was!

Or he could pull them back . . . and admit defeat, and
perhaps be shot, and then be remembered, if at all, as a traitor to the
Motherland. It was so fitting. After sending so many thousands of boys into
fire, now he faced death as well, though from an unexpected direction.

"Major Sergetov, I want you to go back to Moscow to
tell them in person what I am. up to. I am going to detach one division from
Beregovoy and drive it east to open the way at Alfeld again. The attack on Alfeld
will be from two directions, and after it succeeds, we will be able to continue
the Weser crossing without fear of having our spearhead cut off."

"A skillful compromise," the major said hopefully.

That's just the thing I need to hear!

BITBURG, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

Twelve Frisbees were left. Twice they'd been pulled out of
action briefly to determine what new tactics would lessen the hazards-with some
success, Colonel Ellington told himself A few of the Soviet systems had proved
to have unsuspected capabilities, but half of his losses were unexplained. Were
they the kind of accidents that accompanied flying heavily loaded aircraft at
minimum altitude or simply the laws of probability catching up with everyone? A
pilot might think a 1-percent chance of being shot down on a given mission
acceptable, then realize that fifty such missions made it a 40 percent chance.

His flight crews were unnaturally quiet. The elite Frisbee
squadron was a tight family of men, a third of whom were gone. The professionalism
that allowed them to shut this out and do their weeping in private had its
limits. That limit had been passed. Mission performance was down. But combat
requirements were not, and Ellington knew that sentiment's place in the great
military scheme of things fell below the need to hit targets.

He rotated the aircraft off the pavement and headed east
alone. Tonight he carried no weapons save Sidewinders and antiradar missiles
for self-defense. His F-19A was burdened with fuel tanks instead of bombs. He
settled to an initial flight altitude of three thousand feet and checked his
instruments, making a slight adjustment in the aircraft's trim before starting
a slow descent to five hundred feet. That was his altitude on crossing the
Weser.

"Got some activity on the ground, Duke," Eisly
reported. "Looks like a column of tanks and troop carriers heading
northeast on Highway 64."

"Report it in." In this sector, everything that
moved was a target. A minute later, they crossed the Leine north of Alfeld.
They could see the distant flashes of artillery, and Ellington banked left to
keep clear. A six-inch shell in its ballistic arc didn't care if the Frisbee
was invisible or not.

This ought to be safer than a strike mission, Ellington told
himself. They flew east, two miles from a secondary road that Eisly kept under
surveillance with their nose-mounted television camera. The threat-warning
receiver was lit up from SAM radars sweeping the sky for intruders.

"Tanks," he said quietly. "Lots of 'em."

"Moving?"

"Don't think so. Looks like they're sitting alongside
the road near the treeline. Wait-missile-launch warning! SAM three
o'clock!"

Ellington pushed the stick down and to the left. In a matter
of seconds he had to dive his aircraft one way, turn his head the other to see
the incoming missile, then turn back to make sure he didn't plow a furrow in
the dirt with his fifty-million-dollar aircraft. All he saw of the SAM was a
yellow-white gout of flame, and it was heading for him. As soon as he leveled
out, he wrenched the Frisbee into a hard right turn. In the back Eisly had his
eyes on the missile.

"Veering off, Duke-yeah!" The missile leveled out
at the treetops behind the F19, then dipped and exploded in the woods.
"The instruments say that was a SA-6. The search radar is one o'clock and
very close."

"Okay," Ellington said. He activated a single
Sidearm antiradar missile and fired it at the transmitter from a range of four
miles. The Russians were slow to detect it. Ellington saw the detonation. Take
that, Darth Vader!

"I think you're right on how they're getting us,
Duke."

"Yeah." The Frisbee was designed to defeat
overhead radars. Something looking up had a much better chance of detecting
them. They could defeat that by flying very low, but then they couldn't see as
well as they wanted to see. He turned for another look at the tanks. "How
many you think, Don?"

"Lots, over a hundred."

"Tell 'em." Ellington turned back north while
Major Eisly made his report. In minutes some German Phantom jets would visit
the tank assembly point. That many tanks sitting still probably meant a fueling
point, he thought. Either the fuel trucks were already there or they were en
route. Fuel trucks were now his primary targets, a surprising change after
weeks of going for supply dumps and moving columns . . . What's that?

"Trucks dead ahead!" The Duke watched the enhanced
view on his Head-Up Display. A long line of . . . fuel trucks, traveling in a
tight column, blacked out and moving fast. The curved metal tops made the
identification easy. He turned the fighter again to circle two miles from the
road. Eisly's infrared picture showed the glow of engines and exhaust piping,
hotter than the cool night air. It was like a procession of ghosts down the
tree-lined road.

"I count fifty or so, Duke, and they're heading for
that tank park."

Five thousand gallons per truck, Ellington thought. Two
hundred fifty thousand gallons of diesel fuel . . . enough to fill every tank
in two Soviet divisions. Eisly called that one in also.

"Shade Three," the AWACS controller radioed back.
"We have eight birds en route, ETA four minutes. Orbit and evaluate."

Ellington did not acknowledge. He put his aircraft right
down on the treetops for several minutes, wondering how many trees had Russian
soldiers standing nearby with their SA-7 hand-held missiles.

A long time since he'd flown over Vietnam, a long time since
he'd first realized that random chance could reach up into the sky and end his
life despite all his skill. His years of peacetime flying had allowed him to
forget that-Ellington never thought an accident could kill him. But one man
with an SA-7 could, and there was no way to know when he was flying over one .
. . Stop thinking about that, Duke.

The Royal Air Force Tornados swept in from the east. The
lead aircraft dropped his cluster bombs in front of the column. The rest swept
over the road at a shallow angle, raining the bomblets on the convoy. Trucks
exploded, sending burning fuel high into the air. Ellington saw the silhouettes
of two fighter-bombers against the orange flames as they headed west for home.
The fuel spread out on both sides of the road, and he watched the undamaged
trucks stop and turn, desperately trying to escape the conflagration. Some were
abandoned by their drivers. Others steered clear of the fire and tried to
continue south. A few succeeded. Most bogged down, too heavily loaded to move
on the soft earth.

"Tell 'em they got about half. Not bad at all."

A minute later, the Frisbee was ordered northeast again.

In Brussels the radar signals downlinked from the
ground-search radar aircraft plotted the fuel convoy's path. A computer was now
programmed to perform the function of the videotape recorder, and it traced the
convoy's movements back to its point of origin. Eight more attack aircraft
headed toward this patch of woods. The Frisbee got there first.

"I show SAM radars, Duke," Eisly said. "I'll
call it one battery of SA-6 and another of SA-11. They must think this place is
important."

"And a hundred little bastards with hand-held
SAMs," Ellington added. "ETA on the strike?"

"Four minutes."

Two batteries of SAMs would be very bad news for the strike
aircraft "Let's cut those odds down some."

Eisly singled out the SA-11 search/acquisition radar.
Ellington headed towards it at four hundred knots, using a road to travel below
the trees until he was two miles away. Another Sidearm dropped off the airframe
and rocketed toward the radar transmitter. At the same moment, two missiles
came their way. The Duke applied maximum power and turned hard to the east,
dropping chaff and flares as he did so. One missile went for the chaff and
exploded harmlessly. The other locked onto the fuzzy radar signal reflected
from the Frisbee and wouldn't let go. Ellington jinked up hard, then pulled the
aircraft into a maximum-g turn in hope of outmaneuvering the missile. But the
SA-11 was too fast. It exploded a hundred feet behind the Frisbee. The two
crewmen ejected from the disintegrating aircraft a moment later, their
parachutes opening a scarce four hundred feet off the ground.

Ellington landed at the edge of a small clearing. He quickly
detached himself from the chute and activated his rescue radio before drawing
his revolver. He caught a glimpse of Eisly's chute dropping into the trees and
ran in that direction.

"Fuckin' trees!" Eisly said. His feet were
dangling off the ground. Ellington climbed up and cut him down. The major's
face was bleeding.

Explosions thundered to the north.

"They got it!" Ellington said.

"Yeah, but who's got us?" Eisly said. "I hurt
my back."

"Can you move, Don?"

"Hell, yes!"

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

The dispersal of fuel reserves into small depots had reduced
NATO attacks on them nearly to zero. The resulting sense of security had lasted
nearly a month. The attacks on tank columns and munitions stores were serious,
but there were plenty of replacements for both. Fuel was a different story.

"Comrade General, NATO has changed its pattern of air
attacks."

Alekseyev turned from the map display to listen to his
air-intelligence officer. Five minutes later, his supply chief came in.

"How bad is it?"

"Overall, perhaps as much as ten percent of our forward
supplies. In the Alfeld sector, over thirty percent."

The phone rang next. It was the general whose divisions were
to attack Alfeld in five hours.

"My fuel is gone! The convoy was attacked and destroyed
twenty kilometers from here."

"Can you attack with what you have?" Alekseyev
asked.

"I can, but I won't be able to maneuver my units worth
a damn!"

"You must attack with what you have."

"But-"

"There are four divisions of Soviet soldiers who will
die if you do not relieve them. The attack will go as scheduled!"
Alekseyev set the phone down. Beregovoy was also short on fuel. A tank could
have enough fuel to drive three hundred kilometers in a straight line, but they
almost never traveled in a straight line, and despite orders, the crews
invariably left the engines running when sitting still. The time needed to
start their diesels could mean death if a sudden air attack fell on them.
Beregovoy had been forced to give all of his reserve fuel to his eastbound
tanks so that they could hit Alfeld in conjunction with the westbound C
divisions. The two divisions on the left bank of the Weser were essentially
immobilized. Alekseyev was gambling the offensive on his ability to reestablish
his supply routes. He told his supply chief to get more fuel. If his attack
succeeded he'd need more still.

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

The transition was ridiculous-less than two hours from
Stendal to Moscow by jet, from war to peace, from danger to safety. His
father's chauffeur, Vitaly, met him at the military airport and drove at once
to the Minister's official dacha in the birch forests outside the capital. He
entered the front room to see a stranger with his father.

"So this is the famous Ivan Mikhailovich Sergetov,
Major of the Soviet Army."

"Excuse me, Comrade, but I do not think we have met
before."

"Vanya, this is Boris Kosov."

The young officer's face betrayed just a fraction of his
emotions on being introduced to the Director of the KGB. He leaned back into
the easy chair and observed the man who had ordered the bombing of the
Kremlin-after arranging for children to be there. It was two in the morning.
KGB troops loyal-thought to be loyal, Minister Sergetov corrected himself-to
Kosov patrolled outside to keep this meeting a secret.

"Ivan Mikhailovich," Kosov said genially,
"what is your assessment of the situation at the front?"

The young officer suppressed a desire to look to his father
for guidance. "The success or failure of the operation hangs in the
balance-remember that I am a junior officer and I lack the expertise for a
reliable evaluation. But as I see things, the campaign could now go either way.
NATO is short on manpower but they've had a sudden infusion of supplies."

"About two weeks' worth."

"Probably less," Sergetov said. "One thing
we've learned at the front is that supplies get used up much faster than
expected. Fuel, ordnance, everything seems almost to evaporate. So our friends
in the Navy must keep hitting the convoys."

"Our ability to do this is seriously reduced,"
Kosov said. "I would not expect-the truth is that the Navy has been
defeated. Iceland will soon be back in NATO hands."

"But Bukharin didn't say that!" the elder Sergetov
objected.

"He didn't tell us that Northern Fleet's long-range
aircraft were nearly exterminated either, but they were. The fool thinks he can
keep me from learning this! The Americans have a full division on Iceland now,
with massive support from their fleet. Unless our submarines can defeat this
collection of ships-and remember that while they are there, they cannot strike
at the convoys-Iceland will be lost within a week. That will obviate the Navy's
strategy for isolating Europe. If NATO can resupply at will, then what?"

Ivan Sergetov shifted nervously in his chair. He could see
where the conversation was leading. "Then possibly we have lost."

"Possibly?" Kosov snorted. "Then we are
doomed. We will have lost our war against NATO, we still have only a fraction
of our energy needs, and our armed forces are a shadow of their former selves. And
what will the Politburo do then?"

"But if the Alfeld offensive succeeds . . . " Both
Politburo men ignored this statement.

"What of the secret German negotiations in India?"
Minister Sergetov asked.

"Ah, you noted that the Foreign Minister glossed over
that?" Kosov smiled wickedly. He was a man born to conspiracy. "They
have not changed their bargaining position a dot. At most it was a hedge
against the collapse of NATO forces. It might also have been a trick from the
beginning. We're not sure." The KGB Chief poured himself a glass of
mineral water. "The Politburo meets in eight hours. I will not be there. I
feel an angina attack coming on from my damaged heart."

"So Larionov will deliver your report?"

"Yes." Kosov grinned. "Poor Josef. He is
trapped by his own intelligence estimates. He will report that things are not
going according to plan, but still going. He will say that NATO's current
attack is a desperate attempt to forestall the Alfeld offensive, and that the
German negotiations still hold promise. I should warn you, Major, that one of
his men is on your staff. I know his name, but I have not seen his reports. It
was probably he who provided the information that got the former commander
arrested and put your general in his place."

"What will happen to him?" the officer asked.

"That is not your concern," Kosov answered coldly.
A total of seven senior officers had been arrested in the past thirty-six
hours. All were now in Lefortovo Prison, and Kosov could not have altered their
fates even if he'd had the mind to.

"Father, I need to know the fuel situation."

"We are down to minimum national reserves-you have a
week's fuel delivered or being shipped now, and roughly one week's supply is
available for the forces deployed in Germany, plus a week for the armies
detailed to go into the Persian Gulf."

"So tell your commander that he has two weeks to win
the war. If he fails, it will mean his head. Larionov will blame the Army for
his own intelligence mistakes. Your life will be in danger too, young
man."

"Who is the KGB spy on our staff?"

"The Theater Operations Officer. He was co-opted years
ago, but his control officer is in the Larionov faction. I don't know exactly
what he is reporting."

"General Alekseyev is-technically he's violating orders
by taking a unit on the Weser and sending it east to relieve Alfeld."

"Then he is already in danger, and I cannot help
him." Not without tipping my hand

"Vanya, you should return now. Comrade Kosov and I have
other things to discuss." Sergetov embraced his son and walked him to the
door. He watched the red taillights disappear behind the birch trees.

"I don't like using my own son in this!"

"Whom else can you trust, Mikhail Eduardovich? The
Rodina faces possible destruction, the Party leadership has gone mad, and I
don't even have full control of the KGB. Don't you see: we have lost! We must
now save what we can."

"But we still hold enemy territory-"

"Yesterday does not matter. Today does not matter. What
matters is one week from today. What will our Defense Minister do when it
becomes obvious even to him that we have failed? Have you considered that? When
desperate men realize they have failed--and those desperate men have control of
atomic weapons, then what?"

Then what, indeed? Sergetov wondered. He pondered two more
questions. What do I-we?-do about it? Then he looked at Kosov and asked himself
the second.

ALFELD, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

The Russians were not responding very fast, Mackall was
surprised to see. There had been air attacks and several vicious artillery
bombardments during the night, but the expected ground assault hadn't
materialized. For the Russians this was a crucial mistake. More ammunition had
arrived, bringing them to full loads for the first time in weeks. Better still,
a full brigade of German panzer Grenadiers had reinforced the depleted troopers
of the 11th Cav, and Mackall had learned to trust these men as he trusted his
tank's composite armor. Their defensive positions were arrayed in depth to the
east and west. The armored forces pushing down from the north could now support
Alfeld with their long-range guns. Engineers had repaired the Russian bridges
on the Leine, and Mackall was about to move his tanks east to support the
mechanized troops guarding the rubble that was Alfeld.

It was strange crossing the Soviet ribbon bridge-it was
strange to be moving east at all! Mackall thought-and his driver was nervous,
crossing the narrow, flimsy-looking structure at five miles per hour. Once
across, they moved north along the river, swinging around the town. It was
raining lightly, with fog and low-hanging clouds, typical European summer
weather that cut visibility to under a thousand yards. He was met by troops who
guided the arriving tanks to selected defensive positions. The Soviets had
helped for once. In their constant efforts to clear the roads of rubble, they'd
given the Americans neat piles of brick and stone about two meters high, almost
exactly the right size for tanks to hide behind. The lieutenant dismounted from
his vehicle to check the placement of his four tanks, then conferred with the
commander of the infantry company he was detailed to support. There were two
battalions of infantry dug in deep and hard on the outskirts of Alfeld, supported
by a squadron of tanks. He heard the overhead whistling of artillery shells,
the new kind that dropped mines on the fog-shrouded battlefield ahead of him.
The whistling changed as he mounted his tank. Incoming.

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-pronged 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 hit 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 class-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 fucking 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
coffinsized 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 slain 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 shell 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 failing-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 antitank 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 piss 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 ships 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 ships whose
helicopters were now backed up by those of HMS Illustrious, 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 Illustrious-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 ships as soon as he
had the chance. From a thousand feet, O'Malley could see Nassau 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.

"Mat's all right. I'm sure Ivan did." O'Malley
looked north again. There were three thousand Marines on those ships. The Marines
had saved his ass in Vietnam more than once.

Reuben James and O'Malley had the inshore side of the small
convoy while the British ships and helos guarded to seaward. It was relatively
shallow water. Their towed-array sonars were reeled in.

"Willy, drop---now, now, now!" The first active
sonobuoy was ejected into the water. Five more were deployed in the next few
minutes. The passive 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: "Bastard's within missile range. That oughta make the Marines
happy."

"Contact! Possible contact on buoy four," Willy
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 ship, 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
massacre 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 ships 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 battleships 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 sonobuoy 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 ship 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 assume 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 ships. Be
careful, Doug.

"Contact!" Willy 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 Nassau we're working a possible contact."

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

Willy 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
passive plot also.

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

"I can feel him, Willy. 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 he 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.

"Explosion sounded funny, sir," Willy said.

"Hammer, Romeo-report."

"Romeo, Hammer, I think we just killed a rock."
O'Malley paused.

"Romeo, there's a sub here, but I can't prove it just
yet."

"What makes you think that, Hammer?"

"Because it's one damned fine place to hide,
Romeo."

"Concur." Morris had learned to trust O'Malley's
hunches. He called up the amphibious commander on Nassau. "November, this
is Romeo, we have a possible contact. Recommend you maneuver north while we
prosecute."

"Negative, Romeo," the Commodore replied at once.
"India is working a probable, repeat probable contact that's acting like a
missile boat.

We're heading for our objective at max speed. Get him for
us, Romeo."

"Roger. Out." Morris set the phone back in place.
He looked at his tactical action officer. "Continue to close the datum
point."

"Isn't this dangerous, rushing after a submarine
contact?" Calloway asked. "Don't you have your helicopter to keep
them at arm's length?"

"You're learning, Mr. Calloway. It's dangerous, all
right. I think they mentioned that the job could get that way when I was at
Annapolis . . . "

Both her jet turbines were running flat-out, and the
frigate's knife-edge bow sliced through the water at over thirty knots. The
torque from her single screw gave the ship a four-degree list to port as she
raced to close the submarine.

"This is getting nasty." O'Malley could see the
frigate's mast clearly now, the distinctive crosstrees well above the horizon
as he covered fifty feet over the water. "Talk to me, Willy!"

"Lots of bottom echoes, sir. The bottom must look like
a city, all these damned things sticking up. We got eddies-we got too many
things here, sir. Sonar conditions suck!"

"Go passive." The pilot reached up and flipped the
switch to listen in.

Willy was right. Too much flow noise. Think! he told himself
The pilot looked at his tactical display. The amphibs were a scant ten miles
away. He couldn't hear them on his sonar, but there was about a 30-percent
chance that a submarine could. If we had him at antenna depth before, he
probably has a fair idea where they are . . . but not good enough to shoot.

"Romeo, Hammer, can you warn the 'phibs off?
Over."

"Negative, Hammer. They are running away from a
probable contact to seaward."

"Great!" O'Malley growled over the intercom.
"Prepare to raise dome, Willy." A minute later they were heading
west.

"This sub-driver's got real balls," the pilot
said. "He's got brains, too O'Malley keyed his radio.

"Romeo, Hammer, put November's course track on your
tactical display and transmit to my gadget."

It took a minute. O'Malley blessed the unknown engineer
who'd built this feature into the Seahawk's tactical computer. The pilot drew
an imaginary line from their only contact on the sub and Nassau's projected
course. Figure the sub is going at twenty- to twenty-five knots . . . The pilot
reached down and stabbed his finger on the glass tube.

"That's where the bastard is!"

"How do you know?" Ralston asked. O'Malley already
had the Seahawk heading that way.

"'Cause if I was him, that's where I'd be! Willy, next
time we dip, keep the dome at exactly one hundred feet. Tell you one other
thing, Mr. Ralston-this guy thinks he's beat us." Nobody beats the Hammer!
O'Malley circled over the spot he'd selected and brought the Seahawk into
hover.

"Down dome, Willy. Passive search only."

"One hundred feet, listening, skipper." Seconds
stretched out into minutes while the pilot worked his controls to keep the
helicopter stationary. "Possible contact bearing one-six-two."

"Go active?" Ralston asked.

"Not yet."

"Bearing is changing slowly, now one-five-nine."

"Romeo, Hammer, we have a possible submarine
contact." The helicopter's onboard computer transmitted the data to Reuben
James. Morris altered course to bear down on the contact. O'Malley raised his
sonar dome and deployed a sonobuoy to mark the position and hold the contact
while he moved to another position. The frigate was now four miles from the
helicopter.

"Down dome!" Another minute's wait.

"Contact, bearing one-nine-seven. Buoy six shows
contact bearing one-four-two."

"Gotcha, sucker! Up dome, let's go get him!"

Ralston worked the attack system as O'Malley moved south to
get right behind the target. He set their last torpedo for a search depth of
two hundred feet, and a snake course.

"Down dome!"

"Contact, bearing two-nine-eight."

"Hammer!"

Willy punched the active sonar button. "Positive
contact, bearing two-nine-eight, range six hundred."

"Set!" Ralston said immediately, and the pilot
jammed his thumb on the red release button. The burnished green torpedo dropped
into the water.

And nothing happened.

"Skipper, the torp didn't activate-dead torp,
sir."

There wasn't time to curse. "Romeo, Hammer, we just
dropped on a positive contact-bad torpedo, negative function on the torp."

Morris clenched his fist on the radiotelephone receiver. He
gave course and rudder orders. "Hammer, Romeo, can you continue to track
the target?"

"Affirmative, he's running hard on course
two-two-zero-wait, turning north . . . seems to be slowing down now."

Reuben James was now six thousand yards from the submarine.
The ships were on converging courses, with each in firing range of the other.

"Crash stop!" Morris ordered. In seconds the
entire ship was vibrating from the reverse power. The frigate slowed to five
knots inside a minute, and Morris ordered a speed of three knots, bare
steerageway. "Prairie/ Masker?"

"Operating, sir," the ship control officer
confirmed.

Calloway had kept out of the way with his mouth shut-but
this was too much. "Captain Morris, aren't we a sitting duck?"

"Yep." Morris nodded. "But we can stop faster
than he can. His sonar should just be coming back on line-and we're not making
enough noise to hear. Sonar conditions are bad for everybody. It's a
gamble," the captain admitted. He radioed for another helicopter.
Illustrious would have one to him in fifteen minutes.

Morris watched O'Malley's helicopter on radar. The Russian
sub had slowed and gone deep again.

"Vampire, vampire!" the radar technician called.
"Two missiles in the air-"

"Bravo reports her helo just dropped on an SSGN,
sir!" the ASW officer sang out.

"This is getting complicated," Morris observed
coolly. "Weapons free."

"Bravo has splashed one missile, sir! The other one's
heading for the India!"

Morris's eyes focused on the main display. A ^ symbol was
marching toward HMS Illustrious-moving very fast.

"Evaluate vampire as SS-N-19-Bravo evaluates her
contact as Oscar-class. She reports a hit, sir." Four helicopters were
swarming around the submarine contact symbol now.

"Romeo, Hammer, the bastard's right underneath
us-bearing just reversed on us."

"Sonar, Yankee-search on bearing one-one-three!"
Morris lifted the radiotelephone. "November, turn north now!" he
ordered the Nassau.

"India is hit, sir. The vampire scored on India . . .
wait, India helo reports he dropped another torp on the contact!"

Illustrious would have to look out after herself, Morris
thought.

"Sonar contact, sir, bearing one-one-eight, range
fifteen hundred." The data went into the fire-control director. The
solution light blinked on.

"Set!"

"Shoot!" Morris paused for a moment. "Bridge,
combat: all ahead flank! Come right to zero-one-zero."

"Bloody hell," observed Mr. Calloway.

On the frigate's starboard side, the triple torpedo tube
mount swung out and loosed a single fish. Below, the engineers listened to
their engines go from idle to maximum power. The frigate settled at the stem as
the propeller churned the water to foam. The powerful jet turbines accelerated
the ship almost like an automobile.

"Romeo, Hammer: warning, warning, the target just fired
a fish at you!"

"Nixie?" Morris asked. The ship was moving too
fast for her own sonar to work.

"One in the water and another ready to stream,
sir," a petty officer responded.

"That's it, then," Morris said. He reached into
his pocket for a cigarette, looked at it, then tossed the whole pack into a
waste can.

"Romeo, Hammer, this contact is a Type-Two engine
plant. I evaluate this contact as a Victor-class. Now at full speed, turning
north. Your torp is pinging the target. We've lost the fish he sent your
way."

"Roger, stick with the sub, Hammer."

"Aren't you one cool bastard!" O'Malley said into
the intercom. He could see smoke rising from HMS Illustrious. Idiot, the pilot
said to himself. You shouldn't have dropped the first torp! All he could do now
was ping.

"Skipper, the torp just went to continuous ping. It
seems to be closing the target, ping interval is shortening. Hull-popping
noise, the sub is changing depth again, coming up, I think."

O'Malley saw a disturbance in the water. Suddenly the
spherical bow of the Victor came through the surface-the submarine had lost
depth control trying to evade the fish. What followed a moment later was the
first warhead explosion O'Malley had ever really seen. The submarine was
sliding back down when a plume of water appeared a hundred feet from where the
bow had poked up.

"Romeo, Hammer, that was a hit-I saw the sunuvabitch!
Say again, that's a hit!"

Morris checked with his sonar officer. They hadn't picked up
the Russian torpedo's homing sonar. It had missed.

Captain Perrin scarcely believed it. The Oscar had taken
three torpedo hits so far and still there were no breaking-up noises. But the
machinery noise had stopped, and he had the submarine on his active sonar.
Battleaxe closed at fifteen knots when the black shape appeared amid a mass of
bubbles on the surface. The captain ran to the bridge and put his binoculars on
the Russian ship. The sub was a bare mile away. A man appeared atop the
submarine's sail, waving wildly.

"Check fire! Check fire!" he screamed. "Ship
Control, bring us alongside quick as you can!"

He didn't believe it. The Oscar showed a pair of jagged
rents on her upper hull and floated with a 30-degree list from the ruptured
ballast tanks. Men were scrambling out of the sail and the forward deck hatch.

"Bravo, Romeo. We just killed a Victor-class inshore.
Please advise your situation, over."

Perrin lifted the phone. "Romeo, we have a wounded
Oscar on the surface, the crew is abandoning ship. He fired two missiles. Our
Sea Wolves splashed one. The other hit India in the bows. We are preparing to
conduct rescue operations. Tell November that he may continue his promenade.
Over."

"Way to go, Bravo! Out." He switched channels.
"November, this is Romeo, did you copy Bravo's last transmission,
over?"

"Affirmative, Romeo. Let's get this parade to the
beach."

General Andreyev took the report from the observation post
himself before handing the radiophone to his operations officer. The American
landing ships were now five kilometers from Akranes lighthouse. They'd proceed
probably to the old whaling station in Hvalfj”rdur to wait their chance.

"We will resist to the end," the KGB colonel said.
"We'll show them how Soviet soldiers can fight!"

"I admire your spirit, Comrade Colonel." He walked
over to the corner and picked up a rifle. "Here, you may take this to the
front yourself."

"But-"

"Lieutenant Gasporenko, get the colonel a driver. He's
going to the front to show the Americans how Soviet soldiers fight."
Andreyev watched with dark amusement. The chekist could not back down. After he
was gone, the General summoned his divisional communications officer. All
long-range radio transmitters except for two would be destroyed. Andreyev knew
he could not surrender yet. His troopers would have to pay a bill in blood
first, and the General would suffer for every drop. But he knew it would soon
reach a point at which further resistance was futile, and he would not
sacrifice his men for nothing.

ALFELD, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

It was over for a while. The second attack had nearly done
it, Mackall thought. The Russians had run their tanks flat-out and gotten to within
fifty yards of the American positions, close enough that their old, obsolete
cannon had destroyed half of the troop's tanks. But that attack had faltered on
the brink of success, and the third attack at dusk was a halfhearted affair
executed by men too tired to advance into the kill zone. He could hear the
noise behind him of another action under way. The Germans west of the town were
under heavy attack.

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

"General Beregovoy reports a heavy counterattack from
the north-towards Alfeld."

Alekseyev accepted the news impassively. His gamble had
failed. That's why it's called gambling, Pasha

Now what?

It was very quiet in the map room. The junior officers who
plotted the movements of friendly and enemy forces had never talked much, and
now were not even looking over to the other map sectors. It was no longer a
race to see whose forces got to their objectives first.

The word you're looking for is gloom, Pasha The General
stood next to his operations officer.

"Yevgeny Ilych, I am open to suggestions."

He shrugged. "We must continue. Our troops are tired.
So are theirs."

"We're throwing inexperienced troops against veterans.
We have to change that. We will take officers and NCOs from the A units that
are off the line and use them to beef up the C units now arriving. These
reservists must have experienced combat soldiers to leaven their ranks, else we
send them like cattle to the slaughter. Next, we will temporarily suspend
offensive operations-"

"Comrade General, if we do that-"

"We have enough strength for one last hard push. That
push will be at the time and place of my choosing, and it will be a fully
prepared attack. I will order Beregovoy to escape the best way he can-I cannot
trust that order to the radio. Yevgeny Ilych, I want you to fly to Beregovoy's
headquarters tonight. He'll need a good operational brain to assist him. That
will be your assignment." I'll give you a chance to redeem yourself, you
traitorous bastard Use it well. More importantly, it got the KGB informer out
of the way. The operations officer walked off to arrange transport. Alekseyev
took Sergetov back into his office.

"You're going back to Moscow."

42 - The Resolution of Conflict

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

"Amazing what a pair of fives can do . . "

"What's that, General?" his intelligence chief
inquired. SACEUR shook his head, looking at the map with confidence for once.
Alfeld held -a couplet, the General thought. The Germans to the west had taken
a murderous pounding, but while their lines had bent, they hadn't broken. More
help was on the way. A tank brigade was en route to reinforce them. The newly
arrived armored division was pressing south now to isolate this Russian
division from those on the Weser. The farthest-advanced Russian divisions had
shot out their supply of surface-to-air missiles, and NATO air power was
blasting their positions with grim regularity.

Aerial reconnaissance showed the open ground east of Alfeld
to be a charnel house of burned-out tanks. Reinforcements were heading there
also. Ivan would be back, but skies were clearing again. The full weight of
NATO aircraft was coming into play.

"Joachim, I think we've stopped them."

"Ja, Herr General! Now we'll begin to drive them
back."

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

"Father, General Alekseyev has ordered me to tell you
that he does not think it possible to defeat NATO."

"You are certain?"

"Yes, father." The young man sat down in the
Minister's office. "We failed to achieve strategic surprise. We underestimated
NATO's air power-too many things. We failed to prevent NATO's resupply. Except
for that last counterattack it might have worked, but . . . There is one more
chance. The General is suspending offensive operations in preparation for a
final attack. To do this-"

"If all is lost, what is this you're talking
about?"

"If we can damage the NATO forces sufficiently to
forestall a major counteroffensive, we will hold on to our gains, enabling
you-enabling the Politburo to negotiate from a position of strength. Even this
is uncertain, but it is the best option the General sees. He asks that you put
it to the Politburo that a diplomatic settlement is necessary, and quickly,
before NATO recovers its strength sufficiently for their own offensive."

The Minister nodded. He turned in his chair to look out the
window for a few minutes while his son waited for a response.

"Before that is possible," the Minister said
finally, "they will order Alekseyev's arrest. You know what's happened to
the others they arrested, don't you?" It took his son a moment to grasp
the father's words.

"They couldn't have!"

"Last night, all seven of them, including your former
Commander-in-Chief."

"But he was an effective commander-"

"He failed, Vanya," the elder Sergetov said
quietly. "The State does not suffer failure gladly, and I have allied
myself, for your sake, with Alekseyev . . ." His voice trailed off. I have
no choice now. I must cooperate with Kosov, bastard or not, consequences or
not. And I must risk your life also, Vanya. "Vitaly will take you to the
dacha. You will change into civilian clothes and wait for me. You will not go
outside, you will not allow yourself to be seen by anyone."

"But surely you are being watched!"

"Of course." His father smiled briefly. "I am
being watched by officers of the Committee for State Security, officers of
Kosov's personal staff"

"And if he plays you for a fool?"

"Then I am a dead man, Vanya, and so are you. Forgive
me, I never dreamed that something like this would-you have made me very proud
these last few weeks." He rose and embraced his son. "Go now, you
must trust me."

After his son left, Sergetov lifted his phone and dialed KGB
headquarters. Director Kosov was out, and the Petroleum Minister left a message
that the figures Kosov had requested on oil production in the Gulf States were
ready.

The meeting requested by the Minister's use of the code
phrase took place soon after sunset. By midnight, Ivan Mikhailovich was again
on a plane bound for Germany.

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

"Director Kosov applauds your method for dealing with
the traitor. He said that killing him, even accidentally, would have aroused
suspicion, but now that he is safely behind enemy lines and doing his duty,
they will be certain that he is not under suspicion."

"The next time you see the bastard, tell him thank
you."

"Your friend was shot thirty-six hours ago,"
Sergetov said next. The General snapped to rigid attention.

"What?"

"The former Commander-in-Chief West was shot, along
with Marshal Shavyrin, Rozhkov, four others."

"And that fucking Kosov congratulates me for-"

"He said there was nothing he could do about it and
offers his condolences."

Condolences from the Committee for State Security, Alekseyev
thought. There will come a time, Comrade Kosov . . .

"I am next, of course."

"You were right to have me float your rationale for
future operations with my father. He and Kosov both feel that for you to
propose this to STAVKA would mean your instant arrest. The Politburo still
feels that victory is possible. When they lose that belief, anything can
happen."

Alekseyev knew exactly what anything meant.

"Go on."

"Your idea to put experienced troops in the arriving C
divisions has merit-anyone will see that. A number of such divisions are
cycling through Moscow every day." Sergetov halted to allow his general to
draw his own conclusions.

The General's whole body appeared to shudder. "Vanya,
you are talking treason."

"We are talking about the survival of the Motherland-"

"Do not confuse the importance of your own skin with
the importance of our country! You are a soldier, Ivan Mikhailovich, as am I.
Our lives are expendable pawns-"

"For our political leadership?" Sergetov scoffed.
"Your respect for the Party comes late, Comrade General."

"I hoped that your father could persuade the Politburo
to a more moderate course of action. I did not intend to incite a
rebellion."

"The time for moderation is long passed," Sergetov
replied, speaking like a young Party chieftain. "My father spoke against
the war, as did others, to no avail. If you propose a diplomatic solution, you
will be arrested and shot, first for failing to achieve your assigned
objective, second for daring to propose political policy to the Party
hierarchy. With whom would you be replaced, and what would be the result? My
father fears that the Politburo will lean towards a nuclear resolution of the
conflict." My father was right, Sergetov thought, for all his anger at the
Party, Alekseyev has served the State too long and too well to allow himself to
think realistically of treason.

"The Party and the Revolution have been betrayed,
Comrade General. If we do not save them, both are lost. My father says that you
must decide whom and what you serve."

"And if I decide wrongly?"

"Then I will die, and my father, and others. And you
will not have saved yourself."

He's right. He's right on all things. The Revolution has been
betrayed. The idea of the Party has been betrayed-but-

"You try to manipulate me like a child! Your father
told you that I would not cooperate unless you convinced me of the
idealistic"-the General sputtered for a moment, seeking the right
word-"rightness, rightness of your action."

"My father told me that you have been conditioned, just
as the science of Communism says men can be conditioned. You have been told all
your life that the Army serves the Party, that you are the guardian of the
State. He told me to remind you that you are a man of the Party, that it is
time for the people to reclaim the Party for themselves."

"Ali, this is why he conspires with the Director of the
KGB!"

"Perhaps you would prefer that we have some bearded
priests from the Orthodox Church, or some dissident Jews from the Gulag to make
the revolution a pure one? We must fight with what we have." It was heady
wine indeed for Sergetov to talk this way to a man with whom he had served
under fire, but he knew that his father was right. Twice in fifty years, the
Party had broken the Army to its will. For all their pride and power, the
generals of the Soviet Army had as much instinct for rebellion as a lapdog. But
once the decision is made, his father had told him . . . "The Rodina cries
out for rescue, Comrade General."

"Don't tell me about the Motherland!" The Party is
the soul of the people. Alekseyev remembered the slogan for a thousand
repetitions.

"Then what of the children of Pskov?"

"The KGB did that!"

"Do you blame the sword for the hand that wields it? If
so, what does that make you?"

Alekseyev wavered. "It is not an easy thing to overturn
the State, Ivan Mikhailovich."

"Comrade General, is it your duty to carry out orders
that will only bring about its destruction? We do not seek to overturn the
State," Sergetov said gently. "We seek to restore the State."

"We will probably fail." Alekseyev took a perverse
comfort in the statement. He sat down at his desk. "But if I must die,
better that it should be as a man than a dog." The General took out a pad
of paper and a pencil. He began to formulate a plan to ensure that they would
not fail, and that he would not die until he had accomplished at least one
thing.

HILL 914, ICELAND

They were good troops up there, Colonel Lowe knew. Nearly all
of the division's artillery was lashing the hill, plus continuous air attacks,
plus the battleships' five-inch guns. He watched his troops advancing up the
steep slopes under fire from the remaining Russians. The battlewagons were
close inshore, delivering VT proximity rounds from their secondary batteries.
The shells exploded twenty feet or so from the ground in ugly black puffs that
sprayed the hill with fragments, while the Marines' own heavy guns plowed up
the hilltop. Every few minutes the artillery would stop for a moment to allow
the aircraft to swoop in with napalm and cluster bombs-and still the Russians
fought back.

"Now-move the choppers now!" Lowe ordered.

Ten minutes later, he heard the stuttering sound of rotors
as fifteen helicopters passed his command post to the east, curving around the
back side of the hill. His artillery coordinator called to halt the fire
briefly as the two companies of men landed on the hill's southern rim. They
were supported by SeaCobra attack choppers and advanced at a run toward the
Russian positions on the northern crests.

The Russian commander was wounded, and his second in command
was slow to realize that he had enemy troops in his rear. When he did, a
hopeless situation became one of despair. The word got out slowly. Many of the
Russian radios were destroyed. Some of the troopers never got the word and had
to be killed in their holes. But they were the exceptions. Most heard the
diminishing fire and saw the raised hands. With a mixture of shame and relief,
they disabled their weapons and waited for capture. The battle for the hill had
lasted four hours.

"Hill 914 does not answer, Comrade General," the
communications officer said.

"It's hopeless," Andreyev muttered to himself His
artillery was destroyed, his SAMs were gone. He'd been ordered to hold the
island for only a few weeks, been promised seaborne reinforcement, been told
that the war in Europe would last two weeks, four at the most. He'd held longer
than that. One of his regiments had been destroyed north of Reykjavik, and now
that the Americans had hill 914, they could see into the island's capital. Two
thousand of his men were dead or missing, another thousand wounded. It was
enough.

"See if you can raise the American commander on the
radio. Say that I request a cease-fire and desire to meet with him at a place
of his choosing."

USS NASSAU

"So, you're Beagle?"

"Yes, General." Edwards tried to sit up a little
straighter in the bed. The tubes in his arm and the cast on his leg didn't
help. The landing ship's hospital was full of wounded men.

"And this must be Miss Vigdis. They told me you were
pretty. I have a daughter about your age."

The Navy corpsmen had gotten her clothes that nearly fit. A
doctor had examined her and pronounced her pregnancy normal and healthy. She
was rested and bathed; to Mike and everyone else who had seen her she was a
reminder of better times and better things.

"Except for Michael, I would be dead."

"So I've heard. Is there anything you need, miss?"

She looked down at Edwards, and that answered the question.

"You've done pretty well for a weatherman,
Lieutenant."

"Sir, all we did was keep out of the way."

"No. You told us what Ivan had on this rock, and where
they were-well, at least where they weren't. You and your people did a lot more
than just keep out of the way, son." The General pulled a small box out of
his pocket. "Well done, Marine!"

"Sir, I'm Air Force."

"Oh, yeah? Well, this here says you're a Marine."
The General pinned a Navy Cross to his pillow. A major approached the General
and handed him a message form. The General pocketed it and looked down the rows
of hospital beds.

"About time," he breathed. "Miss Vigdis,
would you please look after this man for us?"

SVERDLOVSK, R.S.F.S.R.

Two more days and they'd be leaving for the front. The 77th
Motor-Rifle Division was a Category-C unit, and like all such units was
composed of reservists in their thirties and possessed a little over a third of
its normal outlay of equipment. Since mobilization they had been training
incessantly, the older men with military experience passing along their
knowledge to the newly inducted conscripts. It was a strange match. The young
arrivals were physically fit but ignorant of military life. The older men
remembered much of their own military service, but had softened with age. The
young men had the ardor of youth, and as much as they naturally feared exposure
to danger on the battlefield, they would not hesitate to defend their country.
The older men with families had much more to lose. Lectures to their officers
from a veteran combat officer had fiItered down to the ranks. Germany would not
be pleasant. A sergeant from communications receipted the message, and the word
got out quickly: experienced combat officers and NCOs would join them at
Moscow. The experienced reservists knew that they'd need such men to teach them
the lessons hard-won at the front.

They knew something else it meant: the 77th Motor-Rifle
Division would be committed to action within a week. It was quiet that night in
the encampment. Men stood outside the unheated barracks, looking at the pine
forests on the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains.

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

"Why are we not attacking?" the General Secretary
demanded.

"General Alekseyev has informed me that he is preparing
for a major attack now. He says he needs time to organize his forces for a
weighted blow," Bukharin answered.

"You tell Comrade General Alekseyev," the Defense
Minister said, "that we want action, not words!"

"Comrades," Sergetov said, "I seem to recall
from my own military service that one should not attack until one has a
decisive advantage in men and weapons. If we order Alekseyev to attack before
he is ready, we condemn our army to failure. We must give him time to do his
job properly."

"And now you are an expert on defense matters?"
the Defense Minister inquired. "A pity you are not so expert in your own
field, or we should not be in this predicament!"

"Comrade Minister, I told you that your projections for
oil use at the front were overly optimistic, and I was correct. You said 'Give
us the fuel, and we'll see it is properly used,' did you not? You said a two-week
campaign, four at the worst, did you not?" Sergetov looked around the
table. "Such expertise as this has brought us to disaster!"

"We will not fail! We will defeat the West."

"Comrades," Kosov walked into the room.
"Forgive me for being late. I just received notification that our forces
on Iceland are surrendering. The general in command cites thirty-percent
casualties and a hopeless tactical situation."

"Have him arrested at once!" Defense roared.
"And arrest the family of the traitor."

"Our Comrade Defense Minister seems far more efficient
in arresting our own people than in defeating our enemies," Sergetov
observed dryly.

"You young whelp!" The Defense Minister went white
with rage.

"I do not say that we have been defeated, but it is
clear that we have not yet been victorious. It is time that we seek a political
conclusion to this war."

"We could accept the German terms," the Foreign
Minister said hopefully.

"I regret to inform you that this is no longer a
possibility," Kosov replied. "I have reason to believe that this was
a sham-a German maskirovka."

"But your deputy said only the day before
yesterday-"

"I warned him and you that I had my doubts. A story
appeared today in the French newspaper Le Monde that the Germans have rejected
a Soviet offer for a political settlement to the war. They give the correct
times and location that the meetings took place-the story could only have come
from official German channels, and the clear implication is that this was all
along a NATO effort to affect our strategic thinking. They are sending us a
message, Comrades. They say that they are prepared to fight the war to the
finish."

"Marshal Bukharin, what is the strength of the NATO
forces?" the General Secretary asked.

"They have taken massive losses in men and materiel.
Their armies are exhausted. They must be, else they would have counterattacked
in strength already."

"One more push, then," Defense said. He looked to
the head of the table for support. "One more very very hard push. Perhaps
Alekseyev is right-we need to coordinate a single massive attack to smash their
lines."

Now you are grasping at other men's straws, Sergetov
thought.

"The Defense Council will consider this in
private," the General Secretary said.

"No!" Sergetov objected. "This is now a
political question for the entire Politburo. The fate of the country will not
be decided by five men only!"

"You have no place to object, Mikhail Eduardovich. You
have no vote at this table." Sergetov was stunned to hear these words from
Kosov.

"Perhaps he should," Bromkovskiy said.

"That is not a question to be decided now," the
General Secretary announced.

Sergetov watched the faces arrayed around the oak table. No
one had the courage to speak up now. He had almost altered the power balance of
the Politburo, but until it was clear which faction was stronger, the old rules
would prevail. The meeting adjourned. The members filed out except for the five
Defense Council members, who kept Bukharin with them.

The candidate member lingered outside looking for allies.
His fellow chieftains filed past. Several met his eyes, then looked away.

"Mikhail Eduardovich?" It was the Minister for
Agriculture. "How much fuel will be available for food distribution?"

"How much food will there be?" Sergetov asked. How
much food can there be?

"More than you think. We have tripled the size of
private plots throughout the Russian Republic-"

"What?"

"Yes, the old people on the farms are growing plenty of
food now-at least enough to feed us for the time being. The problem is now one
of distribution."

"No one told me." Some good news? Sergetov
wondered.

"Do you know how many times I have proposed this? No,
you weren't here last July, were you? I've said for years that by doing this we
could solve many problems, and finally they listened to me! We have food,
Mikhail Eduardovich. I just hope we will have people to eat it! I need fuel to
transport it to the cities. Will I have the fuel?"

"I will see what I can do, Filip Moiseyevich."

"You have spoken well, Comrade. I hope some will
listen."

"Thank you."

"Your son is well?"

"The last I heard from him, yes."

"I am ashamed that my son is not there, too." The
Minister for Agriculture paused. "We must-well, we have no time for that
now. Get me the fuel figures as quickly as you can."

A convert? Or an agent provocateur?

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

Alekseyev held the message in his hand: FLY AT ONCE TO
MOSCOW FOR CONSULTATIONS. Was it his death sentence? The General summoned his
deputy.

"Nothing new. We have some probes around Hamburg, and
what looks like preparations for an attack north of Hannover, but nothing we
should not be able to handle."

"I have to go to Moscow." Alekseyev saw the
concern on the man's face. "'Don't worry, Anatoliy, I haven't been in
command long enough to be shot. We will have to arrange our personnel transfers
in a systematic way if we have any hope of transforming these C divisions into
a fighting force. I should be back in twenty-four hours or less. Tell Major
Sergetov to get my map case and meet me outside in ten minutes."

Alekseyev handed his aide the message form in the back of
the staff car, along with an ironic look.

"What does this mean?"

"We'll find out in a few hours, Vanya."

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

"They are truly mad."

"You should choose your words with greater care, Boris
Georgiyevich," Sergetov said. "What has NATO done now?"

The KGB Chief shook his head in surprise. "I mean the
Defense Council, you young fool!"

"This young fool has no vote on the Politburo. You
pointed that out yourself." Sergetov had held the fleeting hope that the
Politburo might be brought to its senses.

"Mikhail Eduardovich, I have worked very hard to
protect you to this point. Please do not make me regret this. If you had
managed to force a Politburo decision in the open, you would have lost and
possibly destroyed yourself. As it is"-Kosov paused for another of his
grins-"as it is, they have asked me to discuss their decision with you in
hope of getting your support.

"They are doubly mad," Kosov went on. "First,
the Defense Minister wishes to initiate the use of a few small tactical nuclear
warheads. Second, he hopes for your support. They propose the maskirovka all
over again. They will explode a small tactical device in the DDR, forcing us to
retaliate while proclaiming that NATO has violated the no-first-use agreement.
But it could be worse. They've summoned Alekseyev to Moscow to seek his
assessment of the plan and how best to implement it. He should be on his way
here now."

"The Politburo will never agree to this. We're not all
crazy, are we? Have you told them how NATO will react?"

"Of course. I've told them that NATO will not react at
all at first, they will be too confused."

"You encouraged them?"

"I wish you would keep in mind that they prefer
Larionov's opinions to my own."

Comrade Kosov, Sergetov thought to himself, you care less
about the danger to the Rodina than you do for your own future. You'd be quite
satisfied to bring the whole country down if you bring them down first,
wouldn't you?

"The votes on the Politburo . . . "

"Will support the Defense Council. Think. Bromkovskiy
will vote no, perhaps Agriculture also, though I doubt it. They want you to
speak in favor of the plan. This will reduce the opposition to old Petya. Petya
is a good old man, but no one really listens to him anymore."

"I will never do this!"

"But you must. And Alekseyev must agree." Kosov
got up and looked out the window. "There is nothing to fear-no nuclear
bombs will be used. I have already seen to that."

"What do you mean?"

"Surely you know who controls the nuclear weapons in
this country?"

"Certainly, the strategic rocket forces, the Army's
artillerymen--"

"Excuse me, I phrased my question poorly. Yes, they
control the rockets. It is my people who control the warheads, and Josef
Larionov's faction does not include that segment of the KGB! This is why you
must play along."

"Very well. Then we must warn Alekseyev."

"With caution now. No one seems to have noticed that
your son has made several trips to Moscow, but if you are seen with General
Alekseyev before he meets with them . . . "

"Yes, I can understand that." Sergetov thought for
a moment. "Perhaps Vitaly can meet them at the airport and pass a
message?"

"Very good! I will make a chekist of you yet!"

The Minister's driver was summoned and handed a written
note. He departed at once, taking the Minister's Zil out toward the airport. A
military convoy of wheeled armored personnel carriers held him up. Forty
minutes later, he noticed that his gas gauge was down. Odd, he'd just filled
the car up the day before-the Politburo members were never short of anything.
But it kept dropping. Then the engine stopped. Vitaly pulled the car over,
seven kilometers from the airport, got out, and opened the hood. The chauffeur
checked belts and electrical connections. Everything seemed as it should. He
got back in and tried to start the car, and nothing happened. He figured out a
moment later that the alternator had gone bad, and the car had been running off
battery power. He tried the car phone. The battery was completely flat.

Alekseyev's transport was just arriving. A staff car
provided by the commander of the Moscow Military District motored up to the
plane, and the General and his aide got in at once for the ride to the Kremlin.
For Alekseyev the most frightening part of the flight was getting out of the
aircraft-he halfway expected to see KGB troops waiting for him instead of the
staff car. It would almost have been a relief to be arrested.

The General and his aide rode in silence-all their talking
had been done on the noisy aircraft where listening devices could not possibly
have worked. Alekseyev noted the empty streets, the absence of trucks-most of
them now at the front-even the shorter-than-usual lines outside the food
stores. A country at war, he thought.

Alekseyev had expected the ride to the Kremlin to seem slow.
The reverse was true. Seemingly in the blink of an eye the car pulled through
the Kremlin gates. A sergeant outside the Council of Ministers building pulled
open the door, saluting smartly. Alekseyev returned it and walked up the steps
to the door, where another sergeant waited. Alekseyev walked like a soldier,
back straight, his face set in a stern mien. His newly polished boots
glistened, and his eyes caught the flashing reflection of the ceiling lights as
he walked into the lobby. The General disdained the elevator, preferring the
stairs for the trip to the conference room. He noted that the building had been
repaired since the bombing incident.

A captain of the Taman Guards, the ceremonial unit stationed
at Alabino outside Moscow, met the General at the top of the stairs and
escorted him to the double doors of the conference room. Alekseyev ordered his
aide to wait as he entered, his visored cap tucked tightly under his arm.

"Comrades: General Colonel P. L. Alekseyev reports as
ordered!"

"Welcome to Moscow, Comrade General," the Defense
Minister said. "What is the situation in Germany?"

"Both sides are exhausted but still fighting. The
current tactical situation is one of stalemate. We have more troops and weapons
available, but we are critically short of fuel."

"Can you win?" the General Secretary asked.

"Yes, Comrade Secretary! Given several days to organize
my forces, and if I can do some crucial work with the arriving reserve
formations, I think it likely that we can sunder the NATO front."

"Likely? Not certain?" the Defense Minister asked.

"In war there is no certainty," Alekseyev answered
simply.

"We have learned that," the Foreign Minister
answered dryly. "Why have we not won yet?"

"Comrades, we failed initially to achieve strategic and
tactical surprise. Surprise is the most important variable factor in war. With
it we would probably-almost certainly-have succeeded in two or three
weeks."

"To achieve certain success now, what else will you
need?"

"Comrade Defense Minister, I need the support of the
people and the Party, and I need a little time."

"You evade the question!" Marshal Bukharin said.

"We were never allowed to use our chemical weapons in
the initial assault. That could have been a decisive advantage-"

"The political cost of those weapons was deemed too
great," the Foreign Minister said defensively.

"Could you make profitable use of them now?" the
General Secretary asked.

"I think not. Those weapons should have been used from
the first on equipment-storage depots. The depots are now mainly empty, and
hitting them would have only a limited effect. Use of chemicals at the front is
no longer a viable option. The newly arriving C formations lack the modem
equipment necessary to operate efficiently in a chemical environment."

"Again I ask the question," the Defense Minister
repeated. "What do you need to make victory certain?"

"To achieve a decisive breakthrough, we need to be able
to blast a hole in NATO lines at least thirty kilometers wide and twenty
kilometers in depth. To do that, I need ten full-strength divisions on line,
ready to advance. I need several days to prepare that force."

"How about tactical nuclear weapons?" Alekseyev's
face did not change. Are you mad, Comrade General Secretary?

"The risks are high." There's a prize
understatement.

"And if we can prevent, politically, NATO
retaliation?" Defense asked.

"I do not know how that is possible." And neither
do you.

"But if we can make it possible?"

"Then it would increase our chances measurably."
Alekseyev paused, inwardly chilled at what he saw in those faces. They want to
use nuclear weapons at the front-and when NATO responds in kind and vaporizes
my troops, then what? Will it stop with a single exchange or will more and more
be used, the explosions advancing west and east? If I tell them they are crazy,
they will find a general who will not "The problem is one of control,
Comrades."

"Explain."

If he were to stay alive and prevent this . . . Alekseyev
spoke carefully, mixing truth and lies and guesses. Dissimulation did not come
easily to the General, but at least this was an issue he had discussed with his
peers for over a decade. "Comrade General Secretary, nuclear weapons are,
foremost, political weapons for both sides, controlled by political leaders.
This limits their battlefield utility. A decision to use an atomic warhead in a
tactical environment must be passed on by those leaders. By the time approval
is granted, the tactical situation will almost certainly have changed, and the
weapon is no longer useful. NATO never has seemed to grasp this. The weapons
they have are mainly designed to be used by battlefield commanders, yet I have
never thought myself that NATO's political leadership would lightly give use
authority to those battlefield commanders. Because of this, the weapons they would
more probably use against us are actually strategic weapons aimed at strategic
targets, not the tactical weapons in the field."

"That is not what they say," Defense objected.

"You will note that when we made our breakthroughs at
Alfeld and R�hle, nuclear weapons were not used on the bridgeheads even though
some prewar NATO writings would seem to suggest they should have been. I
conclude that there are more variable factors in the equation than were fully
appreciated. We have learned ourselves that the reality of war can be different
from the theory of war."

"So you support our decision to use tactical nuclear
weapons?" the Foreign Minister asked.

No! The lie rolled off his lips. "If you are certain
that you can prevent retaliation, of course I support it. I caution you,
however, that my reading of NATO's response might be very different from what
we might otherwise expect. I would expect retaliation to fall some hours later
than we think, and against strategic rather than tactical targets. They are more
likely to hit road and rail junctions, airfields, and supply facilities. These
do not move. Our tanks do." Think on what I just said, Comrades. things
will quickly go out of control. Make peace, you fools!

"So you think we could use tactical weapons with impunity
if we simultaneously threaten strategic targets of our own?" the General
Secretary asked hopefully.

"That is essentially the NATO pre-war doctrine. It
overlooks the fact that the use of nuclear weapons over friendly territory is
not something undertaken lightly. Comrades, I warn you that the prevention of a
NATO response will not be an easy exercise."

"You worry about the battlefield, Comrade
General," the Defense Minister suggested lightly. "We will worry
about the political questions."

There was only one more thing he could say to discourage
them. "Very well. In that case I will need direct control of the
weapons."

"Why?" the General Secretary demanded.

So they won't be fired, you fucking idiots! "We have
here a question of practicality. Targets will appear and disappear on a
minute-to-minute basis. If you want me to blast a hole in NATO lines with
atomic arms, I will not have the time to get your approval."

Alekseyev was horrified to see that even this did not
dissuade them.

"How many would you need?" the Defense Minister
wanted to know.

"That is a question contingent upon the time and place
of the breakthrough operation, and we would use small weapons against discrete
point targets-not population centers. I would say a maximum of thirty weapons
in the five- to ten-kiloton range. We would launch them with free-flight
artillery rockets."

"How soon will you be ready for your attack?"
Marshal Bukharin asked.

"That depends on how quickly I can get veteran troops
into the new divisions. If these reservists are to survive on the battlefield,
we must get experienced men to firm up their ranks."

"A good idea, Comrade General," the Defense
Minister approved. "We will not detain you further. In two days, I want to
see detailed plans for your breakthrough."

The five members of the Defense Council watched Alekseyev
salute, pivot on his heels, and depart. Kosov looked up at Marshal Bukharin.

"And you wanted to replace this man?"

The General Secretary agreed. "That's the first real
fighting soldier I've seen in years."

Alekseyev waved for Major Sergetov to follow him. Only he
felt the cold lead weight in his belly. Only he knew how weak his knees were as
they trod down the marble steps. Alekseyev didn't believe in God, but he knew
that he had just seen the door to hell cracked open.

"Major," he said casually as they entered the
staff car, "since we're in Moscow, perhaps you would like to visit your
father the Minister before we return to the front?"

"That is very kind of you, Comrade General."

"You have earned it, Comrade Major. Besides, I want
figures on our oil supply."

The driver would report what he'd heard, of course.

"They want me to use nuclear weapons at the
front!" Alekseyev whispered as soon as the Minister's door was closed.

"Yes, I was afraid of that."

"They must be stopped! There is no predicting what
catastrophe this could bring about."

"The Defense Minister says that a tactical nuclear
environment could easily be controlled."

"He's talking like one of those NATO idiots! There is
no wall between a tactical and a strategic nuclear exchange, just a fuzzy line
in the imagination of the amateurs and academics who advise their political
leaders. The only thing that would then stand between us and a nuclear
holocaust-our survival would be at the mercy of whichever NATO leader is the
least stable."

"What did you tell them?" the Minister asked. Had
Alekseyev retained his wits enough to say the right thing?

"I must be alive to stop them-I told them it's a
wonderful ideal" The General sat down. "I also told them that I must
have tactical control of the weapons. I think they will agree to that. I'll
make sure those weapons are never used. I have just the man on my staff to do
that, too."

"You agree then that the Defense Council must be
stopped?"

"Yes." The General looked down at the floor, then
back up. "Otherwise-I don't know. It is possible that their plan might
start something that no one could stop. If we die, we die in a good
cause."

"How do we stop them?"

"When does the Politburo meet?"

"Every day now. We usually meet at nine-thirty."

"Whom can we trust?"

"Kosov is with us. There will be a few others,
Politburo members, but I do not know whom I can approach."

Wonderful-our only certain ally is the KGB!

"I need some time."

"Perhaps this will help." Sergetov handed over a
file he'd gotten from Kosov. "Here is a list of officers in your command
who are suspected of political unreliability."

Alekseyev scanned the list. He recognized the names of three
men who had served with distinction in battalion and regimental commands . . .
one good staff officer and one terrible one. Even when my men fight a war for
the Motherland, they are under suspicion!

"I'm supposed to formulate my attack plan before I
return to the front. I will be at Army Headquarters."

"Good luck, Pavel Leonidovich."

"And to you, Mikhail Eduardovich." The General
watched father and son embrace. He wondered what his own father would think of
this. To whom do I turn for guidance?

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

"Good afternoon, I am Major General William Emerson.
This is Colonel Lowe. He will act as interpreter.

"General Major Andreyev. I speak English."

"Do you propose a surrender?" Emerson asked.

"I propose that we negotiate," Andreyev answered.

"I require that your forces cease hostilities at once
and surrender their weapons."

"And what will become of my troops?"

"They will be interned as prisoners of war. Your
wounded will receive proper medical attention and your men will be treated in
accordance with the usual international conventions."

"How do I know you speak truly?"

"You do not."

Andreyev noted the blunt, honest answer. But what choice do
I have?

"I propose a cease-fire"-he checked his
watch-"at fifteen hours."

"Agreed."

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

"How long?" SACEUR asked.

"Three days. We'll be able to attack with four
divisions."

What's left off our divisions, SACEUR thought. We've stopped
then all right, but what do we have to drive them back with?

They did have confidence. NATO had begun the war with an
advantage only in its technology, which was even more pronounced now. The
Russian stocks of new tanks and guns had been ravaged, and the divisions coming
into the line now had twenty-year-old castoffs. They still had numbers, though,
and any offensive SACEUR planned would have to be carefully planned and
executed. Only in the air did he have an important advantage, and air power had
never won a war. The Germans were pushing hard for a counterstrike. Too much of
their land, and too many of their citizens, were on the wrong side of the line.
Already the Bundeswehr was probing aggressively on several fronts, but they'd
have to wait. The German Army was not strong enough to push forward alone.
They'd taken too many losses in their prime role of stopping the Soviet
advance.

KAZAN, R.S.F.S.R.

The youngsters were too excited to sleep. The older men were
too worried to sleep. Conditions didn't help. The men of the 77th Motor-Rifle
Division were crammed into passenger cars, and while all had seats, it was at the
cost of rubbing against their comrades even as they breathed. The troop trains
moved along at a speed of a hundred kilometers per hour. The tracks were set in
the Russian way, with the rail segments ending together instead of offset; so,
instead of the clickity-click familiar to Western riders, the men of this C
division heard only a series of thuds. It tested nerves already raw.

The interval between the jarring sounds slowed. A few
soldiers looked out to see that their train was stopping at Kazan. The officers
were surprised. They weren't supposed to stop until they got to Moscow. The
mystery was soon solved. No sooner had the twenty-car train stopped than new
men filed into the carriages.

"Attention," called one loud voice. "Combat
soldiers arriving!"

Though they had been issued new uniforms, their boots showed
the weeks of abuse. Their swagger marked them as veterans. About twenty got
onto each passenger car, and rapidly secured comfortable seating for
themselves. Those displaced would have to stand. There were officers, too, and
they found their counterparts. The officers of the 77th began to get firsthand
information of NATO doctrine and tactics, what worked and what didn't work, all
the lessons paid for in blood by the soldiers who did not join the division at
Kazan. The enlisted men got no such lessons. They watched men who were able to
sleep even as they rode to the fighting front.

FASLANE, SCOTLAND

Chicago was alongside the pier, loading torpedoes and
missiles for her next mission. Half her crew was ashore stretching their legs
and buying drinks for the crew of Torbay.

Their boat had acquired quite a reputation for her work in
the Barents Sea, enough so that they'd be heading back as soon as she was
ready, to escort the carrier battle groups now in the Norwegian Sea, heading
for the Soviet bases on the Kola Peninsula.

McCafferty sat alone in his stateroom, wondering why a
mission that had ended in disaster was considered successful, hoping that he
wouldn't be sent out again-but knowing that he would . . .

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

"Good news, Comrade General!" A colonel stuck his
head in the office Alekseyev had taken for himself. "Your people were able
to join up with the 77th at Kazan."

"Thank you." Alekseyev's head went back to his
maps when the colonel withdrew.

"It's amazing."

"What's that, Vanya?"

"The men you selected for the 77th, the paperwork, the
orders-they went through just like that!"

"A routine transfer of personnel-why shouldn't it go
through?" the General asked. "The Politburo approved the
procedure."

"But this is the only group of men flown out."

"They had the farthest to go." Alekseyev held up a
message form he'd just filled out. Captain-no, now he was Major Arkady
Semyonovich Sorokin of the 76th Guards Airborne Division was ordered to report
to Moscow immediately. He would fly also. A pity he could not have the captain
bring some of his men along, but they were where no Soviet general could reach.

"So, Mikhail Eduardovich, what does General Alekseyev
plan?"

Sergetov handed over some notes. Kosov leafed through the
pages in a few minutes.

"If be succeeds, at least an Order of Lenin from us,
yes?" That general is overly smart. Too bad for him.

"We are far from that point. What about the timing? We
depend on you to set the stage."

"I have a colonel who specializes in this sort of
thing."

"I'm sure."

"One other thing we should do," Kosov said. He
explained for several minutes before taking his leave. Sergetov shredded the
notes he had from Alekseyev and had Vitaly bum them.

The trouble light and buzzer caught the dispatcher's
attention at once. Something was wrong with the trackage on the
Elektrozavodskaya Bridge, three kilometers east of Kazan Station.

"Get an inspector out there."

"There's a train half a kilometer away," his
assistant warned.

"Tell it to stop at once!" The dispatcher flipped
the switch controlling the tower signal.

The deputy dispatcher lifted his radiotelephone. "Train
eleven ninety-one, this is Kazan Central Dispatch. Trouble on the bridge ahead,
stop immediately!"

"I see the signal! Stopping now," the engineer
replied. "We won't make it!"

And he couldn't. Eleven ninety-one was a hundred-car unit,
flatcars loaded with armored vehicles and boxcars loaded with munitions. Sparks
flew in the pre-dawn light as the engineer applied the brakes on every car, but
he needed more than a few hundred meters to halt the train. He peered ahead
looking for the problem-a bad signal, he hoped.

No! A track was loose just at the west side of the bridge.
The engineer shouted a warning to his crew and cringed. The locomotive jumped
the track and ground sideways to a halt. This could not prevent the three
engines behind it and eight flatcars from surging forward. They too jumped off
the track, and only the bridge's steel framework prevented them from spilling
into the Yauza River. The track inspector arrived a minute later. He cursed all
the way to the telephone box.

"We need two big wreckers here!"

"How bad?" the dispatcher asked.

"Not as bad as the one last August. Twelve hours,
perhaps sixteen."

"What went wrong?"

"All the traffic on this bridge-what do you
think?"

"Anyone hurt?"

"Don't think so-they weren't going very fast."

"I'll have a crew out there in ten minutes." The
dispatcher looked up at the blackboard list of arriving trains.

"Damn! What are we going to do with these?"

"We can't split them up, it's a whole Army division
traveling as a unit. They were supposed to go around the north side. We can't
send them around to the south either. Novodanilovskiy Bridge is packed solid
for hours."

"Reroute them into Kursk Station. I'll call the
Rzhevskaya dispatcher and see if he can get us a routing on his track."

The trains arrived at seven-thirty. One by one they were
shunted onto the sidings at Kursk Station and stopped. Many of the troops
aboard had never been to Moscow before, but except for those on the outermost
sidings, all they could see were the trains of their fellow soldiers.

"A deliberate attempt to sabotage the State
railroads!" the KGB colonel said.

"More probably it was worn trackage, Comrade," the
Kazan dispatcher said. "But you are correct to be prudent."

"Worn trackage?" the colonel snarled. He knew for
certain that it had been a different cause. "I think perhaps you do not
take this seriously enough."

The dispatcher's blood chilled at that statement. "I
have my responsibilities, too. For the moment that means clearing the wreckage
off that damned bridge and getting my trains rolling again. Now, I have a
seven-train unit sitting at Kursk, and unless I can get them moving
north--"

"From what I see of your map, moving all the traffic
around the city's northern perimeter depends on a single switch."

"Well, yes, but that's the responsibility of the
Rzhevskaya dispatcher."

"Has it ever occurred to you that saboteurs are not
assigned in the same way as dispatchers? Perhaps the same man could operate in
a different district! Has anyone checked that switch?"

"I don't know."

"Well, find out! No, no, I will send my own people to
check before you railroad fools wreck anything else."

"But, my scheduling . . ." The dispatcher was a proud
man, but he knew that he had pressed his luck too far already.

"Welcome to Moscow," Alekseyev said genially.

Major Arkady Semyonovich Sorokin was short, like most
paratroop officers. A handsome young man with light brown hair, his blue eyes
burned for a reason that Alekseyev understood better than the major did. He
limped slightly from two bullets he'd taken in the leg during the initial
assault on the Keflavik air base on Iceland. On his breast was the ribbon of
the Order of the Red Banner, earned for leading his company into enemy fire.
Sorokin and most of the early casualties had been flown out for medical
treatment. He and they were now awaiting new assignment since their division
had been captured on Iceland.

"How may I serve the General?" Sorokin asked.

"I need a new aide, and I prefer officers with combat
experience. More than that, Arkady Semyonovich, I will need you to perform a
delicate task. But before we discuss that, there is something I need to explain
to you. Please sit down. Your leg?"

"The doctors advised me not to run on it for another
week. They were right. I tried to do my ten kilometers yesterday and pulled up
lame after only two." He didn't smile. Alekseyev imagined that the boy
hadn't smiled at all since May. The General explained to him for the first time
why this was true. Five minutes later, Sorokin's hand was opening and closing
beside the arm of the leather chair, about where his pistol holster would be if
he'd been standing.

"Major, the essence of a soldier is discipline,"
Alekseyev concluded. "I have brought you here for a reason, but I must
know that you will carry out your orders exactly. I will understand if you
cannot."

There was no emotion on his face at all, but the hand
relaxed. "Yes, Comrade General, and I thank you from my soul for bringing
me here. It will be exactly as you say."

"Come, then. We have work to do."

The General's car was already waiting. Alekseyev and Sorokin
drove to the inner ring road around central Moscow that changes its name every
few kilometers. It is called Chkalova where it passes the Star Theater toward
the Kursk Railroad Station.

The commander of the 77th Motor-Rifle Division was dozing.
He had a new deputy commander, a brigadier from the front to replace the
overaged colonel who had held the post. They had talked for ten hours on NATO
tactics, and now the Generals were taking advantage of their unexpectedly
extended stop in Moscow to get some sleep.

"What the hell is this!"

The 77th's commander opened his eyes to see a four-star
general staring down at him. He jumped to attention like a cadet.

"Good morning, Comrade General!"

"And good morning to you! What the hell is a division
of the Soviet Army doing asleep on a Goddamned railroad siding while men are
dying in Germany!" Alekseyev nearly screamed at the man.

"We-we can't make the trains move, there is some
problem with the tracks."

"There is a problem with the tracks? You have your
vehicles, don't you?"

"The train goes to Kiev Station, where we switch
locomotives for the trip to Poland."

"I'll arrange transport for you. We don't have
time," Alekseyev explained as though to a wayward child, "to have a
fighting division sit on its ass. If the train can't move, you can! Roll your
vehicles off the flatcars, we'll take you through Moscow, and you can get to
Kiev Station yourself. Now rub the sleep out of your eyes and get this division
rolling before I find someone else who can!"

It never failed to amaze the General what a little screaming
could do. Alekseyev watched the division commander scream at his regimental
commanders, who went off to scream at their battalion commanders. In ten
minutes the screaming was done at the squad level. Ten minutes after that, the
tie-down chains were being stripped off the BTR-60 infantry carriers and the
first of them rolled off the back of the train for assembly in Korskogo Square
in front of the station. The infantrymen mounted their vehicles, looking very
dangerous in battle dress, their weapons in their hands.

"You got your new communications officers?" Alekseyev
asked.

"Yes, they have completely replaced my own
people," the division commander nodded.

"Good. We've learned the hard way about communications
security at the front. Your new men will serve you well. And the new
riflemen?"

"One company of veterans in each regiment, plus others
spread individually throughout the rifle companies." The commander was
also pleased to have some new combat officers to replace a few of his
less-well-regarded subordinates. Alekseyev had clearly sent him good ones.

"Good, get your division formed up in columns of
regiments. Let's show the people something, Comrade. Show them what a Soviet
Army division is supposed to look like. They need it."

"How do we proceed through the city?"

"I have gotten some KGB border guards for traffic
control. Keep your people in proper order, I don't want anyone to get
lost!"

A major came running up. "Ready to move in twenty
minutes."

"Fifteen!" the commander insisted.

"Very good," Alekseyev observed. "General, I
will accompany you. I want to see how familiar your men are with their
equipment."

Mikhail Sergetov arrived early for the Politburo meeting, as
was his habit. The usual complement of Kremlin guards was about, one company of
infantry with light arms. They were from the Taman Guards division, ceremonial
troops with minimal weapons training-a praetorial guard without teeth, like
many ceremonial units they practiced parading and boot-shining and looking like
soldiers, though at Alabino they did have a full divisional set of tanks and
guns. The real Kremlin guardians were the KGB border guards and the division of
MVD troops garrisoned outside Moscow. It was typical of the Soviet system that
there would be three armed formations loyal to three separate ministries. The
Taman division had the best weapons but the least training. The KGB had the
best training but only light weapons. The MVD, which answered to the Ministry
of the Interior, was also short on weapons and trained mainly as a paramilitary
police force, but they were composed of Tartars, troops of known ferocity and
antipathy toward the ethnic Russian people. The relationship among the three
was more than merely complex.

"Mikhail Eduardovich?"

"Ah." It was the Agriculture Minister. "Good
morning, Filip Moiseyevich."

"I am worried," the man said quietly.

"About what?"

"I fear they-the Defense Council-may be thinking about
atomic weapons."

"They cannot be so desperate." If you are an agent
provocateur, Comrade, you know that I've been told this. Better that I should
know now what you are.

The man's open Slavic face did not change. "I hope you
are right. I have not managed to feed this country for once to see someone blow
it up!"

An ally! Sergetov told himself "If they put it to a
vote, what then?" "I don't know, Misha, I wish I did. Too many of us are
being swept away by events."

"Will you speak out against this madness?"

"Yes! I will soon have a grandchild, and he will have a
country to grow up in even if it means my life!"

Forgive me, Comrade, forgive me for all the things I have
thought of you before.

"Always the early bird, Mikhail Eduardovich?"
Kosov and the Defense Minister arrived together.

"Filip and I had to discuss fuel allocations for food
transport."

"You worry about my tanks! Food can wait." Defense
walked past them into the conference room. Sergetov and his compatriot shared a
look.

The meeting came to order ten minutes later. The General
Secretary began it, immediately turning over discussions to Defense.

"We must make a decisive move in Germany."

"You have been promising us one of those for
weeks!" Bromkovskiy said.

"This time it will work. General Alekseyev will be here
in an hour to present his plan. For the moment, we will discuss the use of
tactical nuclear weapons at the front and how to prevent a NATO nuclear
response."

Sergetov's was one of the impassive faces at the table. He
counted four who displayed obvious horror. The discussion that followed was
spirited.

Alekseyev rode with the division commander for the first few
kilometers, past the Indian Embassy and the Justice Ministry. The latter drew
an ironic look from the General. How fitting that I should pass that building
today! The command vehicle was essentially a radio with eight wheels. Six
communications officers rode in the back to allow the commander to run his
division right from here. The communications officers were from the front, and
loyal to the combat officers who'd brought them back.

Progress was slow. The combat vehicles were designed for
speed, but speed also made for breakdowns, and at anything over twenty
kilometers per hour the tanks would tear the pavement apart. As it was, they
motored along placidly, attracting small knots of people who watched and waved
and cheered as the soldiers passed. The procession was not as precise as one of
the parades for which the Taman Guards practiced every day. If anything this
made the people more enthusiastic. Here were real soldiers going to the front.
KGB officers stood along the route, "advising" the officers of the
Moscow Militia to let the division pass-they'd explained the reason, the foulup
in the eastern rail network, and the traffic policemen were only too happy to
make way for the soldiers of the Motherland.

Alekseyev stood up in the gunner's hatch as the column
reached Nogina Square.

"You've done well to get your men to this level of
training," he told the divisional commander. "I want to dismount and
see how the rest of your troops are doing. I will see you again at
Stendal." Alekseyev told the driver not to stop. He jumped off the command
vehicle carrier with the agility of a young corporal and stood in the street,
waving the vehicles past, saluting the officers who rode proudly in their
vehicles. It was five minutes until the second regiment reached him, and he
waited for its second battalion. Major Sorokin was in the battalion command
vehicle, and leaned over to grasp the General's hand and pull him up off the
street.

"An old man like you could get hurt that way, Comrade
General," Sorokin warned.

"You young buck!" Alekseyev was proud of his
physical condition. He looked at the battalion commander, a man newly arrived
from the front. "Ready?"

"I am ready, Comrade General."

"Remember your orders and keep control of your
men." Alekseyev pulled the flap loose on his holster. Sorokin had himself
an AK-47 rifle.

He could see St. Basil's now, the collection of towers and
onion domes at the end of Razina Street. One by one the procession of vehicles
turned right past the old cathedral. Behind him the soldiers in the infantry
carriers all had their heads up, looking at the sights. This was the oldest
model of the BTR, and lacked overhead cover.

There! Alekseyev said to himself. The gate built by Ivan the
Terrible that led right to the Council of Ministers building. Just through the
gate under the clock tower. The time was ten-twenty. He was ten minutes early
for his appointment with the Politburo.

"Are we all crazy?" the Agriculture Minister
asked. "Do we think we can gamble with atomic arms like so many
firecrackers?"

A good man, Sergetov thought, but he has never been an
eloquent one. The Petroleum Minister rubbed sweaty hands over his trouser legs.

"Comrade Defense Minister, you have led us to the brink
of destruction," Bromkovskiy said. "Now you wish us to leap in after
you!"

"It is too late to stop," the General Secretary
said. "The decision has been made."

An explosion gave the he to that statement.

"Now!" Alekseyev said. In the back of the command
vehicle the communications officers activated the divisional radio net and
announced an explosion in the Kremlin. A battalion of riflemen under General
Alekseyev's personal command was going in to investigate.

Alekseyev was already moving. Three BTRs ran through the
smashed gate, stopping at the front steps of the Council of Ministers building.

"What the hell's going on here?" Alekseyev
screamed at the captain of the Taman Guards.

"I don't know-you can't be here, you are not allowed,
you must-"

Sorokin cut him down with a three-round burst. He jumped
down off the vehicle, nearly collapsing on his bad leg, and raced for the
building, with the General in pursuit. Alekseyev turned at the door.

"Secure the area, there is a plot to kill the
Politburo!" The order was relayed to the arriving troops. Taman Guard
troops were running across the open spaces from the old Arsenal Building. A few
warning shots were fired. The Guards wavered, then a lieutenant fired a full
magazine from his rifle, and a firefight began within the Kremlin walls. Two
bodies of Soviet soldiers, only ten of whom really knew what was happening,
began exchanging fire while members of the Politburo watched from the windows.

Alekseyev hated Sorokin for taking the lead, but the major
knew whose life was more profitably risked. He encountered a Guards captain on
the second-floor landing and killed him. He kept going up, with Alekseyev and
the battalion commander behind, remembering the diagram of the building's
fourth floor. Another soldier-this one a major-was there with a rifle. He
managed to get one burst off, missing high as his target dove, but the major of
paratroops rolled clear and killed him. The conference room was only twenty
meters away. They found a colonel of the KGB who held his hands out in the
clear.

"Where is Alekseyev?"

"Here!" The General had his pistol in his hand.

"No more Guards alive on this floor," the chekist
said. He'd just killed four with a silenced automatic hidden under his tunic.

"Door." Alekseyev motioned Sorokin. He didn't kick
it down, it was unlocked, and led into an anteroom. The double oak doors beyond
led to the Politburo.

Sorokin went through first.

They found twenty-one old and middle-aged men, mainly
standing at the windows watching a small infantry engagement that had about run
its course. The Taman Guards stationed throughout the Kremlin grounds were not
organized for this sort of assault, and had not the smallest chance of
overwhelming a company of experienced riflemen.

Alekseyev came in next, holstering his pistol.

"Comrades, please go back to your seats. Evidently
there is a plot to seize the Kremlin. Fortunately, I was just arriving for my
appointment when this column of troops passed by. Sit down, Comrades!" the
General ordered.

"What the hell is going on here?" the Defense
Minister asked.

"When I entered military school thirty-four years ago I
swore an oath to defend the State and the Party from all enemies,"
Alekseyev said coldly. "Including those who would kill my country because
they don't know what the hell else to do! Comrade Sergetov?" The Petroleum
Minister pointed to two men. "You Comrades and Comrade Kosov will stay.
The others will be leaving with me in a few minutes."

"Alekseyev, you have signed your own death
warrant," the Minister of the Interior said. He reached for a telephone.
Major Sorokin lifted his rifle and destroyed the phone with a single round.

"Do not make that mistake again. We can very easily
kill you all. That would be much more convenient than what we have in
mind." Alekseyev waited for a moment. Another officer ran into the room
and nodded. "We will now leave, Comrades. If one of you attempts to speak
to anyone, you will all be killed immediately. Two-by-two-start moving!"
The KGB colonel who had just set off his second Kremlin bomb took out the first
group.

After they left, Sergetov and Kosov came up to the General.

"Well done," said the Director of the KGB.
"Things are ready at Lefortovo. The men on duty are all mine."

"We're not going to Lefortovo. A change in plans,"
Alekseyev said. "They go to the old airport, and after that I helicopter
them to a military camp commanded by someone I trust."

"But I have it all arranged!"

"I'm sure you do. This is my new aide, Major Sorokin.
Major Sergetov is at that camp right now, making final arrangements. Tell me,
Comrade Director, does Sorokin look familiar to you?"

He did look vaguely familiar, but Kosov couldn't place him.

"He was a captain-since promoted for bravery-in the
76th Guards Airborne Division."

"Yes?" Kosov sensed the danger but not the reason.

"Major Sorokin had a daughter in the Young Octobrists.
Seventy-sixth Airborne is home-based at Pskov," Alekseyev explained.

"For my little Svetlana," Sorokin said, "who
died without a face." All Kosov had time to see was a rifle and a white
flash.

Sergetov leaped out of the way and looked to Alekseyev in
shock.

"Even if you were right to trust the chekist, I will
not take orders from one. I leave you with a company of loyal troops. I must
get control of the Army. Your job is to get control of the Party
apparatus."

"How can we trust you now?" Agriculture asked.

"By now we should be on our way to control of the
communications lines. All will be done in accordance with our plan. They will
announce an attempt to topple the government, prevented by loyal troops. Later
today one of you will appear on television. I must go. Good luck."

Directed by their KGB guides, the motorized battalions
headed for the television and radio stations, and the main telephone exchanges.
They moved rapidly now, responding to emergency calls to secure the city
against an unknown number of counterrevolutionaries. In fact they had not the
least idea what they were doing, only that they had orders from a four-star
general. That was enough for the officers of the 77th Motor Rifle. The
communications teams had done well. The division political officer appeared at
the Council of Ministers building to find four Politburo members on the
telephones giving orders. All was not as it should be, but the Party men seemed
to have things under control. The other members, he learned, had all been
killed or wounded in a vicious attack by the Kremlin Guards themselves! The
director of the KGB had detected the plot barely in time to summon loyal
troops, but died heroically resisting the attackers. None of this made much
sense to the divisional zampolit, but it didn't have to. His orders made
perfectly good sense, and he radioed instructions to the divisional commander.

Sergetov was surprised at how easy it was. The number of
people who actually knew what had happened was under two hundred. The fighting
had all taken place within the Kremlin walls, and while many had heard the
noise, the cover story explained it well enough for the moment. He had several
friends in the Central Committee, and they did what they were told in the
emergency. By the end of the day, the reins of power were shared among three
Party men. The other Politburo members were under armed guard outside the city,
with Major Sorokin in charge of their care. Without instructions from the
Minister of the Interior, the MVD troops took their orders from the Politburo,
while the KGB wavered leaderless. It was the final irony of the Soviet system
that, headless, it could not save itself. The Politburo's pervasive control of
all aspects of Soviet life prevented people now from asking the questions that
had to be asked before any organized resistance could begin, and every hour
gave Sergetov and his clique more time to consolidate their rule. He had the
aged but distinguished Pyotr Bromkovskiy to head the Party apparatus and act as
Defense Minister. Remembered in the Army as a commissar who cared about the men
he served with, Petya was able to anoint Alekseyev as Deputy Defense Minister
and Chief of the General Staff. Filip Moiseyevich Krylov retained Agriculture
and acquired Internal Affairs. Sergetov would be acting General Secretary. The
three men formed a troika, which would appeal to their countrymen until more of
their people could be brought in. One paramount task remained.

43- A Walk in the Woods

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

There is no more natural fear than of the unknown, and the
greater the unknown, the greater had to be the fear. SACEUR had four
intelligence reports side by side on his desk. The only thing they agreed on
was that they did not know what was happening, but that it might be bad.

For that I need an expert? SACEUR thought.

A snippet of information from a ferret satellite had given
him the word that there was some fighting in Moscow, and told him of the
movement of troops to communications centers, but State television and radio
had kept to a normal schedule for twelve hours until a news broadcast at five
in the morning, Moscow time, had broken the official word.

An attempted coup d'‚tat by the Defense Minister? That would
not be good news, and the fact that it had been put down was only marginally
better. The monitoring stations had just heard a brief speech by Pyotr
Bromkovskiy, known as the last of the Stalinist hard-liners: maintain calm and
keep your faith in the Party.

What the hell did that mean? SACEUR wondered.

"I need information," he told his intelligence
chief. "What do we know about the Russian command structure?"

"Alekseyev, the new Commander-West, is evidently not at
his command post. Good news for us, since we have our attack scheduled in ten
hours."

SACEUR's phone buzzed. "I told you no calls-go ahead,
Franz . . . Four hours? Potsdam. No reply yet. I'll be back to you in a little
while." He hung up. "We just received an open radio message that the
Soviet Chief of Staff urgently wishes to meet with me in Potsdam."

"'Urgently wishes, Herr General?"

"That's what the message said. I can come by helicopter
and they'll provide a helicopter escort to a meeting place." SACEUR leaned
back. "You suppose they want to shoot me down because I've done such a
great job?" The Supreme Allied Commander Europe allowed himself an ironic
smile.

"We have their troops massing northeast of
Hannover," the Chief of Intelligence pointed out.

"I know, Joachim."

"Don't go," the intel Chief said. "Send a
representative."

"Why didn't he ask for that?" SACEUR wondered.
"That's the way it's normally done."

"He's in a hurry," Joachim said. "They
haven't won. They haven't really lost anything yet, but their advance has been
stopped and they still have their fuel problems. What if a wholly new power
bloc has taken over in Moscow? They shut down the news media while they try to
consolidate power, and they will want to terminate hostilities. They don't need
the distraction. A good time to push hard," he concluded.

"When they're desperate?" SACEUR asked. "They
still have plenty of nukes. Any unusual patterns of Soviet activity, anything
that even looks unusual?"

"Aside from the newly arriving reserve divisions,
no."

What if I can stop this damned war?

"I'm going." SACEUR lifted his phone and informed
the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Council of his decision.

It was easy to be nervous with a pair of Russian attack
choppers flying in close formation. SACEUR resisted the temptation to look out
the windows at them, and concentrated instead on the intelligence folders. He
had the official NATO intel dossiers for five senior Soviet commanders.

He didn't know who it might be that he was meeting. His aide
sat across from the General. He was looking out the windows.

POTSDAM, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

Alekseyev paced the ground, nervous to have to be away from
Moscow, where the new Party bosses-but Party bosses nonetheless, he reminded
himself-were trying to pull things together. That idiot asked how they could
trust me! he thought. He reviewed the briefing information on his NATO
counterpart. Age fifty-nine. Son and grandson of a soldier. Father a paratroop
officer killed by the Germans west of St. Vith during the Battle of the Bulge.
West Point, fifteenth in his class. Vietnam, four tours of duty, last as
commander of the 101st Airborne; regarded by the North Vietnamese as an
unusually dangerous and innovative tactician-he'd proved that, Alekseyev
grunted to himself. University masters degree in international relations,
supposed to be gifted in languages. Married, two sons and a daughter, none of
them in uniform-someone decided that three generations was enough, Alekseyev
thought-four grandchildren. Four grandchildren . . . when a man has
grandchildren . . . Enjoys gambling with cards, only known vice. Moderate
drinker. No known sexual deviations, the report said. Alekseyev smiled at that.
We're both too old for that nonsense! And who has the time?

The sound of helicopter rotors filtered through the trees.
Alekseyev stood in a small clearing next to a command vehicle. The crew was in
the trees, along with a platoon of riflemen. It was unlikely, but NATO could
seize this opportunity to attack and kill-no, we're not that crazy and neither
are they, the General told himself.

It was one of their new Blackhawks. The helicopter flared
and settled gracefully to the grassy meadow, with the pair of Mi-24s circling
overhead. The door didn't open at once. The pilot killed his engines, and the
rotor took two minutes to slow to a complete stop. Then the door slid open and
the General stepped out hatless.

Tall for a paratrooper, Alekseyev thought.

SACEUR could have brought the bone-handled .45 Colt that
he'd been given in Vietnam, but he judged it better to impress the Russian by
coming unarmed in ordinary fatigues. Four black stars adorned his collar, and
the badges of a master parachutist and combat infantrymen were sewn on his left
breast. On the right side was a simple nametag: ROBINSON. I don't have to show
off, Ivan. I've won.

"Tell the men in the woods to stand down and
withdraw."

"But, Comrade General!" It was a new aide and he
didn't know his general yet.

"Quickly. If I need an interpreter I will wave."
Alekseyev walked toward the NATO commander. The aides gravitated together.

Salutes were exchanged, but neither wanted to offer a hand
first.

"You are Alekseyev," General Robinson said.
"I expected someone else."

"Marshal Bukharin is in retirement-your Russian is
excellent, General Robinson."

"Thank you, General Alekseyev. Some years ago I got
interested in the plays of Chekhov. You can really understand a play only in
its original language. Since then I have read a good deal of Russian
literature."

Alekseyev nodded. "The better to understand your
enemy." He went on in English. "Very sensible of you. Shall we take a
walk?"

"How many men do you have in the trees?"

"A platoon of motor-riflemen." Alekseyev switched
back to his native language. Robinson's mastery of Russian was better than his
of English, and Pasha had made his point. "How were we to know what would
come out of the helicopter?"

"True," SACEUR conceded. Yet you were standing out
in the open-to show me that you are fearless. "What shall we talk
about?"

"A termination of hostilities, perhaps."

"I am listening."

"You know of course that I had no part in starting this
madness."

Robinson's head turned. "What soldier ever does,
General? We merely shed the blood and get the blame. Your father was a soldier,
was he not?"

"A tanker. He was luckier than your father."

"That's often what it is, isn't it? Luck."

"We should not tell our political leaders that."
Alekseyev amost ventured a smile until he saw that he'd given Robinson an
opening.

"Who are your political leaders? If we are to reach a
workable agreement, I must be able to tell mine who is in charge."

"The General Secretary of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union is Mikhail Eduardovich Sergetov."

Who? SACEUR wondered. He did not remember the name. He'd
refreshed his memory on all the full Politburo members, but that name wasn't on
the list. He temporized. "What the hell happened?"

Alekseyev saw the puzzlement on Robinson's face, and this
time he did venture a smile. You do not know who he is, do you, Comrade
General? There is an unknown for you to ponder. "As you Americans are fond
of saying, it was time for a change."

Who taught you to play poker, son? SACEUR wondered. But I'm
holding aces over kings. What are you holding?

"What is your proposal?"

"I do not know how to be a diplomat, only how to be a
soldier," Alekseyev said. "We propose a cease-fire in place, followed
by a phased withdrawal to pre-war positions over a period of two weeks."

"In two weeks I can achieve that without a
cease-fire," Robinson said coldly.

"At great cost-and greater risk," the Russian
pointed out.

"We know that you are short of fuel. Your entire
national economy could come apart."

"Yes, General Robinson, and if our army comes apart, as
you say, we have only one defense option to safeguard the State."

"Your country has launched a war of aggression against
the NATO alliance. Do you suppose that we can let you return to status quo
ante, nothing else?" SACEUR asked quietly. He was keeping close rein on
his emotions. He'd already made one slip, and that was two too many. "And
don't tell me about the Kremlin Bomb Plot-you know sure as hell we had no part
of that."

"I have told you that I had no part in this. I follow
orders-but did you expect the Politburo to sit still while our national economy
ground to a halt? What political pressure would you have put on us, eh? If you
knew about our oil shortage-"

"We didn't until a few days ago."

The maskirovka worked?

"Why didn't you tell us you needed oil?" Robinson
asked.

"And you would have given it to us? Robinson, I do not
have your degree in international relations, but I am not so much of a fool as
that."

"We would have demanded and gotten concessions of some
kind-but don't you think we would have tried to prevent all this?"

Alekseyev tore a leaf off a tree. He stared at it for a
moment. The marvelous networking of veins, everything interconnected with
everything else. You have just killed another living thing, Pasha.

"I suppose the Politburo never thought about
that."

"They launched a war of aggression," Robinson repeated.
"How many are dead because of them?"

"The men who made that decision are under arrest. They
will be tried in a People's Court for crimes against the State. Comrade
Sergetov spoke against the war, and has risked his life, as have I, to bring it
to a just end."

"We want them. We will reconvene the Nurnberg Tribunal
and try them for crimes against humanity."

"You may have them only after we are finished with
them-it will be a dull trial, General Robinson," Alekseyev added. Both men
were now talking like soldiers, not diplomats. "You think your countries
have suffered? Someday I will tell about the suffering we have endured from
these corrupt men!"

"And your junta will change that?"

"How should I know? But we will try. In any case, that
is not your concern!"

The hell it isn't "You talk with great confidence for
the representative of a new and very shaky government."

"And you, Comrade General, talk very confidently for a
man who less than two weeks ago was on the brink of defeat! Remember what you
said of luck? Push us hard if you wish. The Soviet Union can no longer win, but
both sides can still lose. You know how close it was. We nearly defeated you.
If those damned invisible bombers of yours hadn't hit our bridges on the first
day, or if we had managed to smash three or four more of your convoys, you
would be offering me terms."

Make that one or two more convoys, Robinson reminded
himself. It was that close.

"I offer you a cease-fire in place," Alekseyev
repeated. "It could begin as early as midnight. After that, in two weeks,
we return to our pre-war lines, and the killing will stop."

"Exchange of prisoners?"

"We can work that out later. For the moment, I think
Berlin is the obvious place." Berlin, as expected, had remained largely
untouched by the war.

"What about the German civilians behind your
lines?"

Alekseyev thought that one over. "They may leave freely
after the cease-fire-better than that, I will allow supplies of food to pass
through our lines to them, under our supervision."

"And mistreatment of German civilians?"

"That is my affair. Anyone who has violated field
service regulations will be court-martialed."

"How do I know that you will not use your two weeks to
prepare a new offensive?"

"How do I know that you will not launch the
counterattack you have scheduled for tomorrow?" Alekseyev countered.

"Actually a few hours from now." Robinson wanted
to accept. "Will your political leaders abide by your terms?"

"Yes. Will yours?"

"I must present it to them, but I do have the authority
to honor a cease-fire."

"Then the decision is yours, General Robinson."

The Generals' aides were standing uneasily together at the
edge of the trees. Also watching was the platoon of Soviet infantrymen and the
crew of the helicopter. General Robinson extended his hand.

"Thank God," said the Soviet aide.

"Da," agreed his American counterpart.

Alekseyev pulled a half-liter bottle of vodka from his back
pocket. "I have not had a drink in several months, but we Russians cannot
have an agreement without one."

Robinson took a swig and handed it back. Alekseyev did the
same, and threw the bottle against a tree. It didn't break. Both men laughed
out loud as the relief of what they had just agreed to swept over each like a
wave.

"You know, Alekseyev, if we were diplomats instead of
soldiers-"

"Yes, that is why I am here. It is easier for men who
understand war to stop one."

"You have that right."

"Tell me, Robinson." Alekseyev paused, remembering
SACEUR's first name, Eugene; father's name Stephen. "Tell me, Yevgeni
Stepanovich, when we made the breakthrough at Alfeld, how close-"

"Very close. Close enough that even I don't know for
sure. We were down to five days' of supplies at one point, but a couple of
convoys got through nearly intact, and that kept us going." Robinson
stopped walking. "What will you do with your country?"

"I cannot say; I do not know; Comrade Sergetov does not
know. But the Party must answer to the people. The leaders must be responsible
to someone, we have learned that."

"I must go. Pavel Leonidovich, I wish you luck. Perhaps
later . . . "

"Yes, perhaps later." They shook hands again.

Alekseyev watched SACEUR summon his aide, who shook hands
with his Russian counterpart. Together they boarded the helicopter. The turbine
engines whined into life, the four-bladed main rotor turned, and it lifted off
from the grass. The Blackhawk circled the field once to give the escorting
choppers a chance to form up, then headed west.

You will never know, Robinson. Alekseyev smiled to himself,
standing alone in the field. You will never know that when Kosov died we were
unable to find his personal codes for control of our nuclear weapons. It would
have been at least another day until we could have made use of them. The
General and his aide walked to their command vehicle, where Alekseyev made a
terse radio broadcast that would be relayed to Moscow.

SACK, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

Colonel Ellington helped Eisly through the trees. Both men
had been through escape and evasion training, a course so tough that Ellington
once swore that if he had to go through it again, he'd turn in his wings. Which
was why he remembered the lessons, he knew. Fourteen hours they'd waited to
cross just one damned road. He figured fifteen miles from where they'd crashed
to friendly lines. A walk in the country that had turned into a week of hiding,
drinking water from streams like animals and moving from tree to tree.

Now they were on the edge of some open ground. It was dark
and surprisingly quiet. Had the Russians pulled back here?

"Let's give it a try, Duke," Eisly said. His back
had gotten worse, and he could walk only with assistance.

"Okay." They moved forward as quickly as they
could. They'd gotten a hundred yards when shadows moved around them.

"Shit!" Eisly whispered. "Sorry, Duke."

"Me, too," the colonel agreed. He didn't even
think about reaching for his revolver. He counted at least eight men, and they
all seemed to be carrying rifles. They converged quickly on the two Americans.

"Wer sind Sie?" a voice asked.

"Ich bin Amerikaner," Ellington answered. Thank
God-they're Germans. They weren't. The shape of the helmets told him that a
moment later.

Shit! We've come so close!

The Russian lieutenant examined his face with a flashlight.
Strangely, he didn't take Ellington's revolver. Then something even stranger
happened. The lieutenant flung his arms around both men and kissed them. He
pointed west.

"That way, two kilometer."

"Don't argue with the man, Duke," Eisly whispered.
As they walked off, the Russian eyes were a physical weight on their backs. The
two flyers reached friendly lines an hour later, where they learned of the
cease-fire.

USS INDEPENDENCE

The battle group was heading southwest. In another day they
would have been in position to hit the Russian bases around Murmansk, and
Toland was going over estimates of Russian fighter and SAM strengths when the
recall order came. He closed the folder and tucked it back in the security
cabinet, then went below to tell Major Chapayev that they would indeed live to
see their families again.

NORTH ATLANTIC

The C-9 Nightingale hospital plane cruised southwest also,
heading for Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, D.C. It was filled with
Marine casualties from the last fighting on Iceland, one Air Force lieutenant,
and a civilian. The plane's crew had objected to the civilian until a two-star
general of Marines explained to them over the radio that the Corps would take
it as a personal matter if anyone took the lady away from the lieutenant's
side. Mike was awake most of the time now. His leg needed further surgery-the
Achilles tendon was torn-but none of that mattered. In another four and a half
months he'd be a father. After that they could plan a child of his, too.

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

O'Malley had already flown to the beach, taking the reporter
with him. Morris hoped the Reuters correspondent would be able to file his last
story on the war before he moved on to something else-an after-the-war story,
no doubt. Reuben James had escorted the damaged America to Norfolk for repairs.
He looked down from the bridge wing at the harbor he knew so well, mindful of
the tide and the wind as he docked his frigate. One part of his mind pondered
by itself What It All Meant.

A ship lost, friends gone, the deaths he had caused, and
those he had seen himself . . .

"Rudder amidships," Morris ordered. A puff of
southerly wind helped Reuben James up to the pier.

Aft, a seaman tossed a messenger line to the men on the
pier. The officer in charge of the special sea-detail waved to a petty officer,
who keyed the announcing system.

What It All Means, Morris decided, is that it's over.

A crackle of static emerged, and then the petty officer's
voice.

"Mooring."

eBook Info

Creator:

Tom Clancy

Title:

Red Storm Rising

Date:

10/29/2000