by Bart Gauvin
“What?” Ingalls nearly shouted, “Where?”
“The Air Force is saying they saw a cutter eat a missile southeast of Montauk just a minute ago. The only ship we have out there is Tahoma, inbound this morning from Kittery, Maine. They say,” the Air officer licked his lips, “they say there’s nothing left. It’s gone, sir.”
“My God,” muttered Ingalls. Two cutters and crew gone in as many minutes. “How many aboard Tahoma?”
“Ninety-eight, sir,” was the somber response.
“Sir, that’s not the worst of it,” the air officer was saying.
“Not the worst of it?” Ingalls asked, incredulous and practically shouting. What could be worse than losing two cutters and nine other ships in a single morning?
“No sir.” Air was shaking his head. “Darkstar also reports their pilot saw the QE 2 take two missiles. They say she’s burning.” The silence that followed was heavy, interrupted by radio chatter.
Then the tinny call came through on the rescue frequency, a British accent: “Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is the Queen Elizabeth 2, we have suffered an explosion,” a pause in the relay, “Belay that, two explosions. Missiles, I think. We’re taking on water, we’re on fire, and sinking by the stern.” To the Brit’s credit he didn’t sound as shaken and shocked as he probably was, “I’m ordering everyone into the lifeboats, but many were destroyed in the blast. We have two-thousand three-hundred fifteen souls aboard.” A pause and then repeat: “Mayday, mayday.”
CHAPTER 70
0920 EST, Sunday 13 February 1994
1320 Zulu
USCGC Adak, off Breezy Point, Entrance to Outer New York Harbor
“WANDERER IS PULLING up to the trawler now to assist your boarding party, Adak.” Sandy Hook was relaying instructions to Jackson. “Stay on those leakers. The FBI will want them, over.”
All in all, Jackson thought, the watch center was doing a pretty good job of playing quarterback to the growing chaos around the harbor. The commander on the other end of the radio was clearly tense but taking the unfolding disaster in stride. The Coast Guard lieutenant looked out the starboard window of his cutter’s wheelhouse and assessed the small boat, about a hundred and fifty yards ahead. Frantic distress calls coming over the radio filled the background with buzzing, distracting noise. The only thing he knew that he could do for sure was catch the escapees from the Trogg, now motoring towards the shore in a small boat.
The eastern side of the channel leading into the Harbor ended in a triangle of scrub and marsh grasses. Breezy Point was a very apt name; the weather-beaten spit of sandy beach was defined by a rocky seawall and was otherwise barren. The fleeing RHIB, passed north around the seawall into the calmer waters of Coney Island Channel and turned to cut across Adak’s bow towards Brighton Beach, but seeing the flashing lights of NYPD squad cars waiting for them they veered sharply south towards the back side of Breezy Point instead. Jackson watched as the RHIB motored up onto the sand and shuddered to a stop.
Several dark-clad figures piled out into the lapping waves, two of them dragging the limp figure of another up the slope before dropping him behind a bush. A hundred yards beyond, two NYPD patrol cars were bouncing down the beach from the Breezy Point Surf Club, sirens blaring out over the water, blue and red lights flashing. Adak’s captain shifted his binoculars and watched as one of the patrol cars bounced to a stop, its front wheels stuck in the soft beach sand. Sweeping his glasses back to the figures on the beach, Jackson watched as another man retrieved something from the boat. It’s a gun! he realized quickly.
Before Jackson could lift his radio to call a warning, he heard the staccato burst of an automatic rifle crack across the breaking surf. The gunman, standing next to the small boat, was aiming and firing at the lead patrol car, which slid to a halt as bullet holes spider-webbed its windshield. An NYPD officer leaned behind the open door of his stuck patrol car and returned fire with a pistol, but the match was hopelessly uneven, especially as three other boatmen retrieved rifles and sprinted the few yards to the brush. As they started to maneuver against the police officers, they looked more like soldiers than seamen.
Looking through his binos, Jackson knew what he had to do. We’re at war, ships are sinking outside the harbor mouth, and Dallas and Tahoma are gone. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a bunch of terrorists… No. Enemy soldiers kill more people, my people, in front of me.
Calling to the Coast Guards manning the M2 machineguns on either side of the wheelhouse, Jackson shouted, “Gunners, engage those hostiles! Weapons release!”
The starboard .50 caliber machinegun roared out with the steady rhythm of a jackhammer. Jackson watched the tracers of the first burst reach out towards the RHIB and stitch a row of white puffs into the surf. The police officer from the second squad car was now out as well, having slid across his passenger seat. He was clearly wounded, one of his arms hanging limp, but the other hand rested a pistol in the vee between the car body and the open passenger-side door. Jackson saw the pistol buck once just as the machinegun next to him let loose a second burst. This one connected with a shooter standing ankle-deep in water next to the RHIB, a thumb-sized round catching him between the shoulder blades and slamming him face-first into the lapping waves. Where are the other three? Jackson continued to scan.
Several loud pings against Adak’s hull announced that at least one of the enemy gunmen was returning fire against the cutter. Jackson finally fixed the man in his glasses. The Coast Guard lieutenant flinched as a round pinged off the wheelhouse.
“Gunner!” he shouted, “Gunman, halfway up the beach, firing towards us. Two more running away behind him!”
Then the .50 cal let go with another of its jackhammer bursts. Tracers reached out towards the enemy gunman. Watching, Jackson was sure the man would be hit, but the bullets only kicked up puffs of wet sand all around him. The man flinched and began backing towards the vegetation.
Jackson shifted his attention to the two other gunmen. They were moving, crouched over, through the high beach grass, clearly trying to gain an angle on the police officers. The Coast Guard lieutenant maneuvered his cutter to unmask the second machinegun, then shouted to his port M2 gunner to engage. As he did so he saw the two men pause and crouch. One reached down into a cargo pocket and retrieved an object. He manipulated it with both hands for a moment, then his right hand stretched back behind him in a classic thrower’s profile. Grenade! Jackson realized in a flash, he’s going to throw a grenade at that nearest squad car!
The gunman’s arm began to move forward in a throw, but in that instant the port-side gunner pressed his thumbs into his machinegun’s butterfly trigger, letting loose a long burst towards the shoreline. Jackson saw tracers lance into the grenade thrower, and the man collapsed straight downwards as if he was a puppet whose strings had suddenly been cut by some invisible scissors.
The second gunman flattened himself into the beach grass as soon as the .50 caliber bullets began to kick up earth around him. Now Jackson saw him spring upwards as if he had landed on a beehive just before the earth around him erupted into an inverted cone of flying sand and brush. The grenade’s explosion threw the man backwards, and Jackson saw the body arc through the air. Only then did his ears register that sharp crack of the detonation as it swept across the water.
Jackson was stunned at the damage his crew was inflicting on the gunmen ashore, then realized that this was point blank range for the .50 cal. Well, don’t take a knife to a gunfight, take a bigger gun, he thought with a grim, clench-jawed smile. He saw the fourth and final enemy fighter take a round fired by one of the police officers. The man staggered, then turned towards the squad cars and tried to bring his assault rifle up to his shoulder. A final burst from the starboard M2 knocked him down for good before he could fire another shot. Then the beach was quiet except for the receding echoes of the gunfire resonating in his ears. The entire battle had laste
d less than two minutes.
A moment passed, then Jackson grabbed the hand mic with one hand, reaching with his other to switch the radio’s frequency to the universal police band as he did so.
“Officers on Breezy Point, officers on Breezy Point,” he called, “this is the Coast Guard cutter Adak just offshore. Do you read me, over?”
He saw the officer in the passenger side of the nearest squad car, the one whose arm appeared to be limp, set his pistol on the seat and reach inside for his own hand mic. A moment later Jackson heard, “Coast Guard,” the man was breathing heavily, “Coast Guard, this is Car Three-One. Thanks for the assist, over.”
The other officer was now advancing towards the bodies in the sand and scrub, hatless and with his pistol held out in front of him. Jackson watched him approach the spot where the grenade had exploded, then stop and turn away. The man retched twice, then moved quickly past the grisly scene towards the surf, where the bodies of the other two gunmen lay motionless. Before he got there, however, something caused him to turn to the side and examine a small clump of low brush. The patrolman keyed the radio on his shoulder, and heard, “Uh, Sergeant, we’ve got a guy ovah heah. He’s, uh, he’s missing an ahm.” Jackson registered the voice’s thick New York accent. It brought him back to all the NYPD cops who had walked beats in his Brooklyn neighborhood growing up.
“Missing an arm?” the other officer called over the net. “Is he alive?” More sirens were approaching from the direction of the Breezy Point Surf Club.
“Yeah,” responded the other police officer, “he’s breathing. Tourniquet on the ahm. Looks real professional.”
That’s the owner of the arm the chief found on the Trogg, Jackson knew.
He keyed his own radio and said, “Car Three-One, we’ve got the arm to match your guy. The FBI is looking for these yahoos. Maybe we can piece things together for them.”
Back aboard Trogg, Chief Everfield was on deck, the rest of his boarding party now watching him from their RHIB, a safe fifty yards across the water. He saw Wanderer come alongside. Before the chief knew what was happening, a stocky man from the pilot boat scrambled aboard and strode purposefully up to him.
“What the hell are you doing here?” challenged the chief, indignant that a civilian would dare enter his domain without permission.
“Can it, Chief,” the newcomer shot back, unfazed. “I’m ex-Navy, EOD. I’m here to disarm that bomb of yours. Where is it?”
The chief was taken aback. He shook his head and started saying, “No. I can’t let you—”
“Chief,” the other man cut in, his voice rising with annoyance, “are you going to show me where that scuttling charge is, or do I have to find it myself?”
Everfield nodded, recognizing another professional in the way the man carried himself, assured but not cocky. He led the Wanderer crewman down into the bow of the trawler. Seconds ticked by, then a minute. Then the two men emerged on deck. The stocky ex-Navy man was carrying a large package in his arms, like someone would a beer cooler. He seemed relaxed, even cheerful.
0925 EST, Sunday 13 February 1994
1325 Zulu
US Coast Guard Sandy Hook Station, Ft. Hancock, New Jersey
At Sandy Hook, Ingalls noted with satisfaction the report from Adak that the leakers from Trogg had been dealt with. Amid the chaos of desperate radio calls from sinking ships, this was a small victory.
“Get on the horn to Adak,” Ingalls ordered his surface ops officer. “Tell them we’ve got a tug en route to bring the Trogg in. I want them to rendezvous with it and make sure they don’t stumble across any of those mines, got it?”
The harried operations officer nodded and made the call.
At Breezy Point, Lieutenant Jackson was reporting police and EMTs swarming over the carnage. The one-armed man had been loaded into an ambulance with two NYPD officers and whisked off to the nearest hospital. The other four gunmen needed no hospital, only a coroner. More interesting than their corpses, though, was the equipment they’d been carrying: Soviet-made AK-type assault rifles, Soviet-made hand grenades, and, in the RHIB, Soviet-made blocks of military-grade explosives. The FBI was now present to relieve the Coast Guard and the NYPD of jurisdiction, and Ingalls was happy to let them sort through the mess. He had his own problems to deal with.
After the loss of Dallas and Tahoma, Adak, smallest of the three by far, was the only asset in New York harbor and was needed to rescue the hundreds of people that were in the water. No. Thousands, Ingalls reminded himself. First Adak would hand the trawler over to the FBI and then mark the extent of the minefield. We’re going to have to deal with those mines sooner rather than later, thought Ingalls sourly. Clearing a harbor channel full of mines was not a scenario he felt prepared to deal with on his own.
“Riley,” he called over to his air operation officer, “Call around to the military bases, see if any of them have anybody with mine-clearing experience. I’m going to call up to District One HQ in Boston to see what resources they can push us to start clearing the channel. If World War Three really just kicked off in Europe, we’re going to need this harbor open stat, no matter who’s on the offensive.”
He reached for his desk phone, but before he could grasp the receiver it began to ring. He snatched it up and answered, the conversation was quick and he hung up with a, “Roger.”
“Okay everyone, listen up. In case anybody had any doubts after three dozen missiles just tore the guts the of our shipping around here. We are at war, right here in our own backyard.” He let that sink in for only a moment. “The sector commander and station chief are on their way in. More importantly, we now fall under the command of CINCLANT, along with the rest of First, Fifth, and Seventh Districts, effective immediately.” He pronounced the abbreviation “CINCLANT,” commander-in-chief, Atlantic, as “Sink-lant.” The three Coast Guard Districts on the US eastern seaboard now fell under the command of the US Navy.
CHAPTER 71
1427 CET, Sunday 13 February 1994
1327 Zulu
Tromsø Lufthavn, Tromsø, Norway
KAPTEIN JAN OLSEN’S F-16 touched down on the icy runway north of Tromsø, causing eddies to swirl in the clouds of snow that skittered low across the tarmac. He’d never been so aware of the absence of other jets. Jan reversed the thrust to slow his fighter, then rolled onto a turn-off mid-way down the runway. He robotically followed the directions of a ground crewman who guided him into one of the small airport’s civilian hangars, where an ad-hoc crew was waiting to refuel and re-arm his Falcon. Olsen pulled his canopy release as he entered the hangar, an icy blast of wind was a reminder that he was in Norway, north of the Arctic Circle. The wind died as the F-16 rocked to a stop and the hangar doors closed. Then he ripped off his oxygen mask in a sudden burst of anger and powered down his jet’s systems.
As the sounds in the cockpit died away, Jan let out a long, ragged breath. Then he looked at his watch. Thirteen thirty. The war is only ninety minutes old, he realized. The weight of what had unfolded in that time hit him like a hammer blow. True, he had shot down three Soviet fighters and damaged another, but the loses were hard to take. He’d heard of two other downed Norwegian jets, and three of the six pilots who had flown up to Banak with him the previous night also gone. Five pilots in less than two hours! We’ve got less than twenty-five in the whole squadron! Jan raged. Those five included Bjorn, his closest friend in the squadron. He and Bjorn had been flying together since flight school.
To make matters worse, he had just landed at Tromsø, about two hundred and fifty kilometers west of Banak, where he’d started this fateful day. Where he was supposed to be. Despite the losses he and his fellow pilots were inflicting on the Soviets, they had still lost control of the airspace in the far north.
Olsen pounded his fist onto his thigh in rage and frustration. Then he did it again, and again, though in his anger he was still carefu
l not to strike any of the instruments around him. The faces of his friends flashed before him, as if the heads-up display in front of him were a movie screen. It was hard to pinpoint what he was angrier at: The Russians, the war engulfing his country, or his friends and comrades who would never come home again. Or maybe he was just frustrated with his own government for not giving them more planes, better planes. His anger and frustration dwindled slowly, leaving him a sad ragged shell. A ground crewman leaned into the cockpit without a word and unbuckled Jan from his seat, allowing the pilot to climb out onto a ladder, now hanging from the aircraft. On the ground, Olsen barely acknowledged the crew. He located what he was searching for and headed for a small office on one side of the hangar.
Tromsø Lufthavn, like most of the airfields in Northern Norway, was not a true military airfield. Rather, it was a dispersal field to which jets could fly in wartime so that minimal numbers of aircraft were on the ground at the larger bases like Bardufoss and Orland. Large concentrations of parked aircraft were inviting targets, vulnerable to destruction in a surprise attack or, worse, a nuclear strike. The Royal Norwegian Air Force stored limited stocks of weapons and ammunition at these dispersal fields, but the facilities were primitive at best. Olsen strode into the small office, where an air force lieutenant was manning the HF radio and a telephone.
“I need orders for my next mission,” Olsen told the man, without introduction.
The lieutenant looked up, saw Olsen in his flight suit and carrying his helmet, and nodded, “We’re re-arming your aircraft now. Your squadron CO left a message a few minutes ago for you to call Bardufoss on arrival.”
Olsen nodded back. “Any idea what about?” he asked.
The other man shook his head. Then he said, “The Russians have been hitting us hard and pushing us back.” The man broke off, scanning Jan’s face. “I’m sorry, you know that better than I. The other squadrons are on their way up from the south, and the Americans are sending some F-15s from England.”