by Andy Farman
North Atlantic, 200 miles south of the Faeroes: 2033hrs, same day.
Any notions that the Russians would try to sneak past the Royal Navy anti-submarine warfare group were quickly dispelled as dusk was falling. Since the afternoon, the Merlins and Sea Kings caught fleeting glimpses of the enemy on their sonars at extreme range, but like will-o-the-whisp’s they disappeared when they tried to lock them down. The senior ASWO, aboard the Illustrious was in agreement with the operators in the helicopters, these contacts were diesels, and as such more elusive than the nuclear boats. Of the big nuclear powered vessels there was as yet no trace, and it was assumed that the diesels constituted the van of the enemy force. The big fear was that the force had divided into smaller units, sent out to search different sectors of a necessity, due to the hugely degraded satellite coverage. The only known RORSAT the enemy still had up at the moment wouldn’t cover the upper reaches of the North Atlantic for another twelve hours.
At 2015hrs the first missiles had broken the surface and headed for the British surface warships. Sixteen missiles from a single source that had been quickly attacked and sunk, as had another diesel that began emitting radar energy and transmitting radio messages during the attack.
HMS Edinburgh had hardly worked up a sweat as her air defence systems swatted the dozen inbounds from the sky, well before they had closed to critical range. All twelve had climbed to two thousand feet and flown diverging courses, an obvious sign that the Russian submariners had no up to date intelligence on NATO positions. The defenders were still congratulating themselves when the next attack came fifteen minutes later, from five widely spaced vessels and on evasive courses that would terminate close to the Type 42 destroyer, using targeting data gathered by the sacrificed submarine that had plotted HMS Edinburgh’s position on radar, backtracking her missiles. Merlins and Sea Kings, heading back to their patrol areas after running for cover with the first launches, scattered once more. Most went east or west, getting out of the way, whilst those nearer the carrier headed for her deck.
Four vessels launched almost simultaneously, the fifths missiles were not breaking the surface until her sister ships ordnance were all in the air. Edinburgh’s air defence team went to high gear, plotting and launching on the inbounds, which were altering altitude, course and speed every minute or so.
To reach Edinburgh the missiles passed between the frigates HMS Cumberland and Campbeltown, entering the edges of their air defence zones. The first six missiles detected the warships radar energy and altered course, four going for the Campbeltown and two at her sister ship, leaving the destroyer to cope with the forty-six remainder. Illustrious came up with the destroyer, lending its own Phalanx gun to the defence, ten minutes later its magazine had expended all but eighteen rounds in destroying the ten missiles that got inside the missile engagement range.
The last eight missiles, flying almost a minute behind the main wave, were connected to one another by microwave link. Those additions, plus their ultra-sensitive proximity sensors, were upgrades added just prior to departing Murmansk. HMS Cumberland quickly splashed the first pair launched at her, and she sent Sea Darts after the last group of missiles as they entered the western edge of her air defence envelope. Only the last Russian weapon could be attacked due to the extreme range, and Cumberland’s targeting system only predicted a 30% chance of interception. However the defending missiles were detected a quarter mile away by the tail-end-charlie who flashed a signal to the others. The signal triggered a chain of actions that took less than a thousandth of a second to complete, ending with an electronic impulse reaching Krypton switches in the weapons innards.
Haddon’s Rock: 2112hrs, same day.
Not since the 1960’s had the subterranean complex been filled with so many people and a rich variety of languages and accents seemed to add life to the cold grey concrete walls and passages. The tanned skins of the delegates from the Pacific Rim countries were in sharp contrast to the pallid, prison-like pallor’s of the Americans, most of whom had not seen the sun for many days.
The President had prepared himself for a night of informal meetings and little sleep, but to his surprise there were few delegates with national axes to grind, the war had given focus and unity to the threatened nations.
Any hope of an early night were dashed by the hand written note Admiral Gee passed to him as he made small talk with the PM of New Zealand. It simply stated ‘News from the Atlantic’ and he was wearing a neutral expression so the president excused himself and headed for his office with the admiral in tow. Joe Levi was waiting outside as they arrived, a printout in his hands and a look that matched the admirals, but that changed once they were away from public view.
“Okay…what’s happened?” asked the President.
“Sir, at precisely twenty oh five hours the Royal Navy anti-submarine warfare group made contact with the enemy force…the reds used nukes Mr President.”
His scientific advisor listened grimly as Mike Gee continued.
“Multiple weapons were used and the Brits took heavy losses…their carrier, an air defence destroyer and a frigate are still capable of limited offensive operations, but they lost two frigates and most of their aircraft to the effects…”
“Actually HMS Campbeltown is still afloat.” Joseph interrupted. “…she’s only sinking quite slowly by the stern, but so heavily irradiated that her crew will be dead by this time tomorrow.” Then he realised he had not allowed the admiral to finish, and muttered “Sorry Mike.”
Admiral Gee wasn’t put out, and merely shrugged.
“Joe has the data downloaded from Illustrious it seems that the total yield was no more than ten megatons but the radiation count is out of proportion to that…the weapons probably all had a cobalt casing.”
“It was quite an ingenious solution to the problem of trying to defeat modern air defences with old systems.” Joe explained. “ If you score a hit on a nuke in flight it will make a mess for years to come, but the warhead won’t detonate…so here they are with a bunch of old systems carrying one meg apiece…or thereabouts, and little chance of doing any real harm with them. They appear to have rigged them all to go off at once, and produce a lot of radiation while they were at it.
The President was getting used to receiving bad news; he did just wish that for once he’d get something he could feel good about.
“No chance at all that the soviets nuclear cupboard is now empty, I suppose?”
Admiral Gee shook his head.
“I very much doubt it sir…our best estimate is that we have whittled down their subs to between twelve and sixteen hulls…if they had nukes to use on the Illustrious group, then they will certainly have some remaining for the convoy.”
“What shape are the rest of them in…the Brit ships?”
“Something on par with sailing through a super tornado…180mph winds, sixty foot waves, hull plates buckled and leaking, plus degraded electrical systems due to the EMP and a lot of ratings who were topside have sustained damage to their eyes.” Admiral Gee tried to picture what it must have been like in the vessels sickbays, trying to provide some level of comfort to young men and women writhing in the agony caused to their optical nerves. All the while the ships were being pounded by the mountainous seas that resulted from the explosions.
“Okay Mike.” The president’s voice snapped the naval officer out of his imaginings. “If we order the convoy onto a more southerly course they may just avoiding the subs, but it would add another day onto their sailing time. Can we hold out that long in Germany?”
“Supplies are again reaching critical levels sir…they have us outnumbered but our weaponry and equipment makes the difference, but once the ordnance runs out there will be no stopping them. We haven’t been able to snuff out the airborne foothold they have on the western banks of the rivers, and we are only making slow progress in Helmstedt and Braunschweig. And on that note…I have been informed that SACEUR has authorised the use of large fuel air weapons against
both those towns. The Brits of their 3rd Mech, a Dutch armoured brigade and the French 2REP, the Foreign Legion paratroopers, together they are the only regular reserve he has left to form a blocking force if the reds break out. SACEUR has ordered the French and Dutch to link up with the Brits, which should happen tomorrow night.” Admiral Gee had spent an hour on the phone with SACEUR as the Canadian ran through his ‘worst possible scenario’ should NATO fail to hold at its present line, it didn’t make for easy listening.
“We have our own 4th Mechanised Brigade of the 1st US Armoured Div out of the line for refit. They fought off the airborne dropped behind them whilst resisting the crossing down south on the Elbe and took a beating…they are at half strength and they are going west to reconstitute. If the line breaks at the Elbe then they will be in a position to join with the blocking force. SACEUR is also about to order forces from Norway to reinforce Germany, the British 40 and 44 Royal Marine Commando units…”
“Do they have armour?” interrupted the President.
“No sir, they aren’t set up like the USMC.”
“So we will have what…a handful of infantry heavy brigades to stop a whole bunch of armoured divisions?”
“If our line at the Elbe breaks…yes Mr President, but please bear in mind the Reds motor rifle and tank units aren’t anywhere close to full strength anymore.”
The President mulled all that over in his mind
Consequently those German towns are going to be flattened in order to free up the Brits.”
“What the hell is a large fuel air…I thought they were all big?”
“True enough Mr President, but the ones he signed off on are so big a C130 makes the drops.”
“When?” was the Presidents’ only question.
“As soon as we can deliver them from stateside sir.”
North Atlantic: 0013hrs, 14th April.
Only the wakes of the nearest ships were able to tell Admiral Mann’s eyes that his great vessel was not alone in the night. He stood on the bridge wing staring off into the distance with his arms wrapped around himself, in an attempt to ward off the bitter cold.
He had earlier received a call from the president and had taken it in his office, with the door closed and his staff sat outside for the duration. It had not been the easiest of moments in his life, knowing the fate of Europe, if not the free world, would stand or fall on his decision of how to proceed, now that they knew how the enemy intended to deal with his command.
He was very aware that the president was not alone during the call, and that his military advisors would have been scribbling comments down on paper, and showing them to the president. Whether or not those comments had been critical or supportive, the president had heard him out without interruption, listening to the reasons for his intended course of action, ending the call with a sombre
“Admiral, you are the man on the spot and know the risks better than I. The next forty-eight hours will show whether or not you are right…and our prayers go with you all.”
Admiral Conrad did not know what the presidents’ reaction would have been, had he once more requested permission to employ nuclear depth charges. When the skies had shrouded 90% of the planet, and the snow had come again after their first use, Conrad had felt a sick panic in his gut, like someone playing with a match who starts a major conflagration they have no hope of stopping. He shook his head now as he thought about it; no he couldn’t, not again. He had opened Pandora’s Box once and maybe they could survive the consequences, but he dare not lift that lid a second time.
The rain started without any preliminary spitting, the heavens opening and reducing visibility even further, as it poured down upon the solitary figure, adding its weight to an already crushing burden.
Edwin Andrew Air Base, Mindanao, Philippines: 0141hrs, same day.
There was a great deal of activity on the runways and taxiways, all taking place with the very minimum of illumination. B2 Spirit bombers were lined up along the taxiways awaiting the word to launch, but they weren’t the fore runners of this operation, the first of those had taken off hours before.
An impressive number of tankers from the 909th Air Refuelling Squadron, late of Yokota AFB but now based at Hickam AFB in Hawaii, and the 161st Air Refuelling Wing from Sky Harbor in Phoenix, were out ahead of them in a long stream of KC-135Es, a long line that initially ran south from Mindanao before curving in a loop to India. The Air National Guardsmen and women were carrying out the complex refuelling plan along the route that gave Singapore and Chinese dominated or occupied areas a wide birth. With a range of over 11,000 miles, the 120,000lbs of transferable fuel each carried would see the bombers with their human loads into China and from there to Hickam AFB where they would revert back to their primary role, ready for the next stage. C5s were enroute to Hickam from Whiteman AFB with the bombers launching gear and ordnance, the ground crews would be on their way to Hawaii within two hours of the last B2 leaving the ground.
The first pair of bombers were still configured for the role they had been designed for, they would precede the way into China, and as a last resort would wild weasel the hell out of any air defences that detected their charges. In the third bomber in line for take-off, Major Dewar had his fingers triple crossed that no defensive action by the bombers would be necessary, because their mission was as good as doomed if it was.
Special Forces soldiers are trained to rely on their own abilities, and those of their teammates, but the two-dozen troops were now locked away in the dark, reliant on other people’s skills and the vagaries of chance.
Further east, quite a long way closer to the US West Coast, the sole surviving warship of Britain’s flag waving mission to the Far East, crept along 900 fathoms below the surface.
The turn-around time in a Pearl Harbor almost devoid of its warships and fleet auxiliaries had been eerie, conducted amidst row upon row of empty berths those occupants were now at sea, either on active operations or stood out of sight of land for security reasons. Aside from the dangers of missile attacks on the facilities, HMS Hood had seen evidence of other threats as she passed a birth where the superstructures of two destroyers protruded above the waves, their hulls breached by saboteurs’ limpet mines on the first day of the war. The only other warship they’d seen had been whilst the replenishment was in full swing, the crew and base personnel working like a huge pit-stop crew. A frigate had steamed slowly past with her bilge pumps straining, the vessel listing slightly to starboard and seawater pouring from additional hose nozzles. Her upper works bearing the scars of modern warfare at sea, its bridge reduced to buckled and jagged steel, scarred by fire.
Hood had entered harbour just before sunset and tied up in the dark, with little in the way of fanfare. On the quayside to meet them had been a USN staff officer with ‘eyes only’ orders and despatches for the captain, two armed SPs for the Chinese aviator, and a female captain accompanying a priest, who had another pair of SPs in tow, which had seemed quite bizarre at the time.
HMS Hood’s captain had debriefed the service personnel, and both civilian’s rescued from the attack by the Chinese Han class submarine, the two sole survivors of the USN/RN battle group that had been centred on the USS John F Kennedy, and two tourists who had stumbled in on the aftermath.
After signing for, and then locking away the orders, the captain had learnt the purpose of the odd foursome, and then sent for Lt Nikki Pelham, leaving her with the USN captain and priest in his cabin whilst they carried out their difficult task.
The young female aviator had been ashen faced as she’d left the vessel, there were no tears but they would come later, in the meantime the SPs assured that no press parasite got anywhere near her enroute to Hickam and a military flight stateside.
The Brits had departed for the embassy in their wake, and in all, the captain had time only for the briefest of farewells to each of his passengers before getting on with readying his command for war again.
A pre-dawn departure followed by a h
igh-speed run of almost fifteen hundred miles had brought them to within sixty miles of the edge of their patrol area, but now they were back in the stealth business.
Southwest London, England: 0423hrs.
Following the onset of war a great number of people had left the capital, but they amounted to less than one percent of the total population. Not everyone had a second home to escape to, and most Londoners had to work for a living, global nuclear conflict or not.
The Right Honourable Matthew St Reever’s Esq had spent the previous weeks in the Cotswolds, there was little for a former shadow cabinet minister to do with a coalition government in power, so he and his wife had made a holiday of it.
The sudden death of the Prime Minster in the Atlantic had ended the holiday, and to his great surprise he found himself in office, it came as a surprise because only hours after the death he had been given the name of the new defence minister, prior to the reshuffle announcement, and it had not been his.
The Minister had rushed up to the alternative seat of government site, below ground in northeast England, where he found that his new colleagues were well versed in the intricacies of the Human Rights Act, and could find their way around a spread sheet, but their attitude was that of battlefields being ‘other’ people’s domains. The defence ministers own military experience was limited to a year in the Eton College Army Cadet Corps, but he had taken his shadow post seriously, put himself about and had a serious respect for the nations fighting men and women. Unlike his colleagues, when he said “Army or “Navy” they did not sound like four letter expletives.