by Tom Clancy
“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 toward 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. Hvammsfjördur 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. Hvammsfjördur 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 Edward
s. “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. Trai
ns 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 aboat 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.