by Ian Slater
It wasn’t as easy as Aussie made out, the truth being that when David tried to fire into the ventilation mesh, a ricochet from the titanium-hardened grate, its apertures too small for a bullet to pass through, almost took off his knee. While Aussie covered him, David ran ahead, snatched two grenades from the dead SPETS he’d cut down, their faces so black with camouflage paint that he could only make out their eyes, put the grenades against the mesh, and then shoved one of the SPETS hard up against the grenades and ventilator grate before he pulled the pins. The concertinaed explosion blew a grapefruit-sized hole in the mesh and had one of the SPETS’ carotid arteries spurting blood like a hose, making it slippery on the now snow-free rock.
“Thanks for shovelling my driveway, mate,” said Aussie as he and David dropped two tear gas grenades into the ventilator shaft.
It was of no use, for the exit had been sealed off at the sixty-foot level, besides which the ventilator shafts, being of Saddam design and built in the halcyon days of Gorbachev/German friendship, had no difficulty filtering out the tear gas. Aussie and Brentwood looked around for the rest of the SAS stick, but there weren’t any. At least fifty-six of the seventy had landed farther north of them in another minefield into which SPETS were pouring machine-gun and mortar fire from rocky enclaves on high ground. The SPETS were calling it the boynya— “butcher shop.” And it was still dark. Come civil twilight in another fifteen minutes the SPETS would have an even easier time of it, no longer inhibited by inferior night-vision goggles.
Surrounded by mines, the SAS would systematically be cut to pieces, as they were too near the SPETS for any close air support to help. Any strafing or bombing run would kill them as well as the SPETS. The terrible irony was that those SAS dropped farther north than Aussie, Brentwood, and a few others had made a textbook descent right on target having been guided by the heat-emission patterns seen through their PVS-7s. But of those fifty-six-odd SAS troopers there were now only thirty-seven.
They were no more than two hundred yards from an exit, one of the two hitherto unseen by Allied reconnaissance and designated by Dracheev as Rl and R2. But with the minefield between them and the SPETS they might as well have been two hundred miles away. A few had tried Brentwood’s method and had cleared a path, but here the SPETS heavy Vladimirov 14.5-millimeter fire was so concentrated and overwhelming, coming from over two hundred SPETS, that it seemed come civil twilight the SAS, and thus the Allied offensive on Ratmanov Island, was doomed.
South of the main body of SAS, Aussie, Brentwood, and two other troopers began placing C-4 charges about the double-armored cover of the sealed-off rat hole. With only ten minutes till civil twilight they knew their only chance of survival, let alone of doing any damage to the SPETS, was to penetrate the tunnel system. To make matters worse, the tear gas, albeit in weakened form after having been processed by the subterranean filter system, was being vented through the snow around them, adding to the eeriness of the place. For in the bitter, windswept blue of the cold, predawn light, it seemed as if sulfurous fumaroles were leaching up poisons from the earth’s violent interior.
* * *
Aboard the C-141 General Douglas Freeman was about to make one of the toughest decisions of his or any other military career. Twelve minutes to the first rays of civil twilight and Freeman didn’t hesitate, but the Pentagon and the president had, “advising” him to call the Ratmanov operation off but craftily leaving the final decision to him as “the man on the ground.” He wasn’t on the ground, but he knew what they meant: “You decide — you take the rap.”
The press, specifically CBN — how the hell did they know? Freeman wondered — had somehow gotten wind of the minefield catastrophe, and sniffing disaster in the air, reporters were collecting like jackals around the carcass of the White House, its authority bleak-looking beneath the low, leaden sky, its rose bushes forlornly naked but for traces of snow on the thorn. Press Secretary Trainor was swearing to get whomever was responsible for the “minefield” leak “by the balls”; he wanted a list of everyone who knew, from the White House ops room to C in C Alaska air command. Had anyone used plain language instead of the scrambler for God’s sake?
“No,” he was told — some CBN bastard was doing a “Baghdad Pete” on them.
“You mean he’s actually on Big Diomede?”
“Either that or close enough. Maybe Little Diomede.”
“I thought Freeman ordered that son of a bitch off?”
The aide, a bright young masters degree from Princeton’s International Relations program, was red-faced. “Ah, bit of a screwup there, Mr. Trainor.”
“Spill it, Simpson, spill it!”
“Ah — one of the Eskimos that came out on Little Diomede’s Evac chopper—” Simpson was looking down at some hurriedly scribbled notes. “Couple of hours before the attack. Well, far as we can tell so far, someone apparently saw the press credentials hanging around someone’s neck and figured it was the CBN guy”
“But it wasn’t!” snapped Trainor.
“Doesn’t look like it, sir. Uh, all rigged up in winter gear, snow flying everywhere around the chopper, they said — hard to see I guess.”
“Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Who said?”
“Uh, Nome control.”
“Is it hard to count?” barked Trainor. “Why didn’t the son of a bitch in charge count the fuckers?”
“Maybe they did, Mr. Trainor. Guess no one was sure exactly how many were in Inalik.”
“In-a-what?”
“Inalik village. West side of Little Diomede. They’d already moved everyone down from the village on Little Diomede’s northern—”
Trainor was so upset, pacing back and forth in the operations room, young Simpson thought he’d have a stroke right then and there in the basement beneath the map of Siberia and the strait. Trainor raised his left hand in a fist, flattened it as if to strike the map, then suddenly pulled back, quietly fuming, holding his hand over his eyes like a tennis shade. “All right. So this son of a bitch is close enough to know Freeman fucked up. Close enough to see the minefields. How’s he getting the info out?”
“By phone, Mr. Trainor. A four-wire direct satellite hookup. Portable pocket-sized dish — unfolds to umbrella size apparently.” The aide paused, gulped, and continued. “We’re only getting sound bites. No pics.”
“Oh, that’s terrific, Simpson. That’s a big help. Whole frig-gin’ world’s hearing we screwed up—Freeman screwed up — but no pics. Beautiful. It’s worse with radio. People’s imaginations run riot. Think we’ve already lost it.”
Simpson had always been told by Trainor that you couldn’t hold back the truth if you had any hope of effective damage control. So he put it on the line. “Well, we have lost it, haven’t we?”
“The island, yes, but not the whole shebang. I mean—”
Trainor, for the first time in the White House, was at a loss for words. Young Simpson’s truth, like poisoned air, was quickly filling the whole room. Young Princeton had it right. If they’d lost Rat Island — the first game — the whole series could be lost.
* * *
Aboard the C-141—three Siberian SAMs had been taken out by the Patriots as they’d raced toward the big transport — General of the Army Douglas Freeman had other ideas, but he had only ten minutes till civil twilight — till, in the undressed phrase of Dick Norton, “slaughter time.” It was to be the most controversial decision in American military history: the kind of controversy that had followed his career from the night drop on Pyongyang to take out, in Freeman’s words, “Kim Il Suck!” to the Minsk front where he’d insulted the entire Soviet high command by insisting that they salute the Stars and Stripes before negotiations could begin.”Give the Alaska Air Command!” he shouted above the combined thunder of the C-141’s engines. “General Riley!”
Riley’s voice was crackling with static; even the most sophisticated electronics were prey to the vicissitudes of solar flare-driven northern atmospherics. “Riley here, General.”
“Colin. I want immediate FAE strikes. Coordinates one six niner zero three…”As Freeman was speaking, the mauvish brown screen display in the NORAD regional combat command at Elmendorf was flashing the status of all aircraft aloft in Alaska Command; the smaller green grids to the right listed, in descending order, weapon status, fighter, reconnaissance, and airlift mission schedules. In front of Riley the duty officer was bringing up the buffer zone signified by the map grids covering the Bering Strait from latitude sixty-six north to sixty-five south. On the five magnification Riley saw the position Freeman had given them for the FAE strike was on a midline running across Ratmanov Island near the eastern cliffs.
“That’s too close to our own men,” he told Freeman.
“Whole island’s too close to our own men, General. I want FAE strikes now. You’ve got — nine minutes.”
“I don’t know whether any—”
“I’m taking full responsibility.”
Riley had to gather spittle to talk, the terrible risk having made his mouth dry. “I know you are, Douglas. What I mean is that it’ll take five minutes or so to load up FAEs. We’ve got nothing up there carrying—”
“Then don’t waste time. Start loading, damn it! I want those airstrikes, Colin. Now!”
Freeman was off the air and relaying orders to Maj. Harold E. Morgan, leader of the Delta Force stick. “Goddamn it! Even from subsonic from Galena it’s less than a minute to Rat Island. What the hell’s the matter with him? All right, now listen, Harry. We’re going to keep circling in this big bird till we see the FAEs. Soon as the flames the down — which won’t be long in this blizzard — you boys go. Don’t bother looking for SAS, they’ll link up with you soon as they can. Go for that exit the Tomcats’ve reported.” He pointed to the circled position on the map. “It wasn’t on the photo recon. Must be one they had up their sleeve.”
“Yes, sir,” said Morgan, knowing what the general had meant by not “looking for SAS.” It wouldn’t only be a waste of time; there might not be many left if the fuel air explosive — the deadlier cousin of napalm — spewed out anywhere near them. In any case, Morgan wasn’t about to judge Freeman for using the tremendously high overpressure created by an FAE to detonate mines so close to his own men. The court of public opinion would put him in the dock soon enough.
“Sir,” said the Starlifter’s pilot, calling out to Freeman. “Elmendorf’s reporting Bogeys rising from East Cape.” It was the Siberian side. “Look like Fulcrums.” The Mikoyan-Gurevich 29-Fs were the piece de resistance of the Siberian air arm. As Major Frank Shirer, now held prisoner by the SPETS, had found out over the Aleutians, the eighteen-thousand-pound thrust of the twin Tumansky R-33Ds-powered Mach 2.8 fighter could put the Fulcrum into a near-vertical climb position, attain a hammerhead stall/tail slide, evade enemy radar, and come out of nowhere with six deadly pylon-mounted Alamo air-to-air missiles and a drum-fed thirty-millimeter machine gun sheathed beneath the left wing.
“Then by God,” said Freeman, “Novosibirsk must be worried to risk their air force. Is Galena intercepting?” Freeman asked the pilot.
“Affirmative. F-18s. And Tomcats—’fingers four’ from Salt Lake City. They’ve been refueled midair — flying protective screen for the carrier.”
“Good,” commented Freeman.
The Starlifter’s engineer didn’t agree. “Gonna be like the Fourth of July up here.”
No one answered. He was right. And there was the danger of collision with everyone flying on instruments in the bad weather and on radio silence as much as possible; the chances of slamming into someone else were high. Even so, it was nothing compared to the risk the SAS on the ground faced if the pilots, dropping the FAEs, weren’t on the ball.
“You reached anybody down there yet?” shouted Freeman.
“No, sir,” replied the copilot. “Siberians are jamming everything. You’d need land lines to evade that lot.”
Freeman said nothing; he didn’t have to. If the SAS weren’t informed of the impending FAE drops the risk to them was even higher. If the FAEs missed them and he secured the island with Delta Force he’d be a hero, but he knew that while victory would have many parents, defeat would be an orphan — his. The president and the Chiefs of Staff were right — it was his responsibility. It came with a general’s pay.
* * *
The SPETS were no longer interested in Shirer. Any information he could give them now was null and void with the SAS trapped and about to be wiped out in the dawn’s early light. Nevertheless, the SPETS resented the American’s stubbornness in refusing to tell them anything but name, rank, and serial number. It transcended all common sense. Everyone broke sooner or later, and if you didn’t, then you outraged your captors’ assumption of omnipotence. The SPETS had orders from Dracheev not to kill the American ace Shirer, and they saw the sense in this, for when the Allied commandos failed to take Ratmanov, Shirer, whose nickname in the Western press was “One-Eyed Jack,” might be useful in a prisoner exchange. Americans were soft — always willing to trade five of yours for one of theirs.
“Last chance,” the SPETS corporal told Shirer, who was tied to a metal chair near the base of one of the ventilator shafts. “Why do they call you a one-eyed Jack?” The corporal’s English was impeccable.
The other SPETS looked at the corporal, switching to Russian. “Why are you asking him that? You know he used to be one of their Air Force One pilots. They wear the black patch on one eye so if there’s a nuclear airburst and everybody else on the plane is blinded, the pilot still has one good eye to fly the instruments. We know that — what the hell are you wasting time for?”
“I didn’t know,” the corporal answered him in Russian. “Bastards think they’re tougher than we are. Need a lesson.”
“So give it to him. But let’s hurry, eh? It’ll soon be twilight. I don’t want to miss out on the fun.”
“You won’t. Here, hold him steady!”
The corporal unslung his AK-47, rested it against the far side of the ventilator, and pinned Shirer’s arms even tighter against the chair.
“That’s it,” said the other SPETS, and took Shirer by the hair, pushing his head back hard on the top of the chair so that Shirer was forced to look up at the heavy, steel-reinforced roof of the ventilator tunnel.
“Look at me!” he commanded Shirer. Shirer, his face contorted by his previous beating and bruised from the scrape against the canopy when he’d ejected, glanced defiantly at the SPETS. He wasn’t going to tell them squat about Air Force One. In one quick movement the SPETS slipped the ballpoint pen from his pocket and drove it into Shirer’s eye.
Shirer was screaming, but the SPETS’ voice was louder, reverberating around the ventilator shaft. “That’s why you’re called one-eyed Jacks.” Grinning, the SPETS looked across at the corporal, who was slinging on the Kalashnikov. “His flying days are over, Comrade.”
“C’mon!” said the corporal impatiently. “You’ll miss the party.”
* * *
The “party” had already started in the blizzard over Ratmanov Island as F-18s, their Litton inertial navigation system and Martin Marietta AN/ASQ-173 laser spot tracker and forward-looking infrared giving the Hornets the edge above the blizzard level where the Fulcrums had to pursue them if they wanted to engage. Below, in the blizzard itself, F-15C Eagles on afterburner went into the furball as other MiGs tried to take out the big Starlifter, which was now opening its ramp once more. Freeman, the first man in the Delta Force stick, cinched the straps holding the Winchester 1200 modified riot gun to his pack, its perforated heat shield already frosting under the plastic. Freeman quickly wrapped another layer of waterproof camouflage sheet about it to prevent the four flechette cartridges and the slugging shell in the chamber from getting too cold. If the FAEs did the job properly, he wouldn’t need the flechettes until he got inside the tunnels, but a slugging shell, which could go through an engine block at three hundred yards, might come in handy on the already bomb-rattled rat ho
le covers.
“General,” Harry Morgan advised him, the major’s voice whipped away by the slipstream, “you’re not supposed to be leading, General.”
“You have any objections, Harry?” Freeman shouted, one hand on the webbing net by the door as they hit unstable air, the other hand busy tightening the oxygen mask before the helmet came down.
“Hell, no, General, glad to have you along. But Dick Norton told the that I should remind you that General Grey—”
“General Grey ordered the not to lead the drop!” Freeman shouted against the wind and roaring crescendo of the Starlifter. “Now did I lead the drop, Harry?”
“Well, not technically I guess. The SAS—”
“Right. Major Brentwood led the drop. Hell, I’m just followin’ up the rear. Besides, what kind of commander would I be, sending men down into that without going myself?”
“Yeah,” a Delta Force corporal told his buddy down the line. “But he won’t be the one at the fucking barbecue!”
“Don’t worry,” his buddy told him. “Jumpmaster tells the Tomcats are coming in with those FAEs. They can land on an angled deck in the middle of the fucking night, man. They can drop those FAE babies just where they want ‘em. Like in Iraq.”
“Iraq! Those mothers were dug in miles from us. These fuckers are only a coupla hundred yards from those limeys.”
“Don’t worry. Our carrier guys are used to putting those birds down on a postage stamp. They’re not gonna screw up.”
* * *
The Tomcats didn’t screw up. Coming in low, wings fully extended for maximum stability, they risked lower speed and more vulnerability to the Siberians’ missile and gun AA fire. The snow was now falling only lightly, and the predawn darkness above the island was filled with what seemed to be the crazed patterns of contrails from wing tips and missile stabilizers in a cacophony of sound that made it all but impossible for the Tomcats’ RIOs and pilots to hear one another. Though lighter, the snow still segmented laser designator beams so that the Paveway conversion nose assemblies attached to the FAE pods of jellied fuel could not be taken advantage of. The pilots had to rely as best they could on wind-vector corrections to aid the computer in making the low-level drop. Wind shears, always unpredictable around carriers as much as above airports, were especially so around the island, where constantly shifting pressure ridges changed gusting north winds by the millisecond. The first two FAE pods tumbled, textbook perfect, close to the cliffs, the great, rolling vomit of black-edged flame consuming at least half-a-dozen SPETS’ heavy machine-gun positions, roughly twenty-five men in all, and drowning several elevator shafts in a river of flame. Dracheev’s northern complex could no longer be garrisoned. More than five hundred SPETS beneath were now directed south to the midline where most of the SAS had landed and were now in imminent danger of being wiped out by SPETS clustered in the rocky enclaves about the hitherto unknown R1 exit.