Northern Fury- H-Hour

by Bart Gauvin

  “It’s Halifax. North Atlantic duty for us.”

  CHAPTER 76

  1050 EST, Sunday 13 February 1994

  1450 Zulu

  Naval Air Station Norfolk, Virginia, USA

  LIEUTENANT ABBY SAVAGE went through her pre-flight checklist rapidly while Buck went through the procedures of warming up the helicopter’s engines. The aircraft’s five-blade rotor was beginning to rotate as Savage, who looked and felt like the perfect size for the cramped cockpit, finished her checks and said, “Alright, let’s stop wasting time. We get confirmation that our flight plan was approved?”

  Looking over, Buck nodded with a, “Roger. Good to go,” in his slow Texas twang.

  “Angel Flight, this is Angel Lead,” Abby called over the radio to the other three Sea King crews, “taking off now. Follow me out.” As the pitch of the Sea King’s engines increased to a roar, Abby said to Buck, “Okay, let’s get going. There’s people in the water who need our help.”

  Savage’s helicopter dipped its nose as it rose, then pivoted over the landing pad and gained speed, flying northeast, toward New York. Behind, the three other birds lifted off one at a time under the leaden gray skies blanketing Chesapeake Bay. As the flight followed the ribbon of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, Abby saw two white vees that ended at a pair of gray Navy ships just transiting the point where the bridge dipped down into the sub-channel tunnels.

  “Those are the ready ships from Norfolk,” Savage heard Buck say. “Hayler and Sides. They’re headed north too.”

  None of them had planned to fly today. Abby and her husband, a Marine captain who commanded a rifle company in 6th Marines at Camp Lejeune, had been sleeping in late, finally enjoying a precious weekend together while the Navy had them posted to different duty stations. Then the phone rang. Abby took the call on her apartment’s landline while her husband, Will, received the alert on his pager a few minutes later: DEFCON One, all hands recalled to duty immediately. They had dressed and parted with a hurried kiss, neither of them knowing what crisis had ruined their weekend.

  Abby found out soon enough. The mission briefing she and her fellow pilots received had been “abbreviated,” to say the least. Rushed might have been a better description, but under the circumstances the helicopter pilots understood. The squadron commander hadn’t known much, other than that World War Three had apparently kicked off in Europe and there were burning and sinking ships all up and down both US coasts. There was a question about whether Abby’s flight would go north to assist with the wrecks outside New York, or south, where several ships were sinking outside Savannah and Charleston. The news of the stricken cruise ship off Long Island had settled that detail quickly.

  Interestingly, there had as yet been no attacks around the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, either towards the huge US naval base at Norfolk, nor further up the bay near the Capital. That, at least, was good news, Abby thought, though it did mean she and the rest of her squadron was out of position to respond quickly to any of the disasters. Haste was essential if they were going to do any good. The Navy pilot pushed her bird to its limits as they flew through skies busy with civilian aircraft heading to any airport with space, and with military aircraft headed out to clean up the first hours of war.

  CHAPTER 77

  1055 EST, Sunday 13 February 1994

  1455 Zulu

  Piper Cherokee 213R, over the Jersey Shore near Asbury Park, New Jersey

  YURI WAS FRETTING, the cramped and drafty cabin making him feel more and more claustrophobic. He didn’t want to die in this aluminum and plexiglass tube. The magnitude of what he’d done was starting to dawn on him. A few minutes after they transmitted his contact report, a bright flash on the gray water caught his attention. Looking down, he saw a dark column of oily smoke rising from a container ship heading north towards New York.

  Other smoke columns began to mar the gloomy horizon around them. Instantly he realized he’d played a critical role in something far more serious than a non-standard intelligence-gathering exercise. His blood ran cold. How can the Americans fail to find us and shoot us down? The question assaulted his mind, pushing out thoughts of anything else. Yuri both envied and despised the Spetsnaz pilot up front who continued to fly the aircraft, seemingly oblivious to the danger they were in.

  A few minutes ago, their commercial radio crackled to life. Yuri’s English skills were poor, but the pilot translated that the American authorities were ordering all aircraft to land, and that he thought it best they put down as well. Silently Yuri wondered why they hadn’t landed an hour ago. What happened next justified his trepidation.

  They were descending and had just gone feet dry over the Jersey Shore, en route back to the abandoned airfield. Yuri was distracting himself with powering off the radar and erasing the radio’s special digital communication codes when their Piper Cherokee buffeted violently, as if struck by a powerful downdraft. He looked up through the plane’s front windscreen just in time to see the glowing tailpipe of an F-16 fighter roar directly overhead, so close that he felt he could have reached out the window and run his fingers along the jet’s underbelly.

  The Spetsnaz pilot pulled at the stick to regain control of the Piper, but Yuri’s attention was squarely on the American fighter as it circled around to get back on the smaller plane’s tail. They know who we are! Yuri panicked. They know what we’ve done! His insides clenched. This was not the excitement he’d been expecting when he volunteered for this assignment. All he’d wanted was to get away from the monotony of his naval bomber regiment in dull, frozen Murmansk, not end up dead on some American beach.

  “Get us down! Get us down! They are going to shoot us!” he yelled forward to the pilot.

  “Calm down,” the Spetsnaz man said, his voice taught. “We’re almost there.”

  Yuri watched the fighter until the Piper’s fuselage blocked his view, but he imagined the lethal jet still circling, leveling out behind their tail. At that moment he was sure his life had reached its end. Closing his eyes, he waiting for the missile or the cannon shells to rip him and this flimsy airplane apart.

  A cry almost escaped from Yuri’s throat as his seat bumped violently. He opened his eyes, and nearly laughed with relief as they decelerated down the damp, grassy runway. Reaching the end of the landing field, the pilot turned the plane like a race car, veering off towards the old abandoned hangar. Yuri heard the American fighter jet thunder impotently overhead. I might actually live through this, he thought.

  “Darkstar, this is Jackpot Two-Four, I lost them,” the F-16’s pilot reported, clearly frustrated. “He landed on a grass strip a few miles inland.” Master Sergeant Troy Funk noted that Jackpot Two-Four was circling over Asbury Park at a thousand feet altitude. The pilot went on, “Two guys jumped out of the Piper at a run. There’s a second plane on the ground, also a barn and a couple cars. Can you get a call into the Jersey State Police or something? These guys are getting away.”

  “We’ll see what we can do, Two-Four,” answered Funk, “but for now come around to bearing zero-five-zero, angels five. We’ve got another one of those suspicious contacts, not responding to our calls. Looks like he’s heading your way, over.”

  Jackpot Two-Four flew back out over the water and banked to get onto the suspicious aircraft’s tail. At the same time, the fighter’s pilot keyed his radio on the commercial emergency frequency and called, “Unidentified Beechcraft, this is the Air National Guard fighter that just did a close pass on you. You are instructed to alter course twenty degrees to the left and land at Lakewood County Airport. Respond, over.”

  Silence. The Beechcraft maintained its slow course towards the improvised airstrip where the other two suspicious contacts had landed.

  Two-Four’s pilot called, “Darkstar, this guy’s not responding. What are your instructions, over?”

  Funk replied: “Two-Four, we have just received authority to pros
ecute. You are authorized and instructed to shoot down that contact.”

  “Roger that, Darkstar,” acknowledged the pilot. “Engaging with guns.”

  Yuri tossed his duffle bag into the back of their rented Ford Bronco when a tearing sound like some angry god ripping his table cloth caused the Russian’s head to jerk upward. The sight that accompanied the sound horrified him.

  He saw brilliant white puffs appeared like magic from wingtip to wingtip of the Beechcraft, the third radar snooper of their team. Yuri stared, transfixed as the small airplane slowly flipped onto its back and plowed nose-first into a copse of trees at the edge of the clearing. Pieces of metal flew off and cartwheeled in several directions. Then a growing, throaty roar forced his eyes upward once again just in time to see the dagger-like shape of the American fighter jet streak overhead, waggling its wings in victory.

  “Let’s go Yuri!” his Spetsnaz crewmate was saying, giving his shoulder a shove to encourage him into the Bronco. “We need to clear the area, NOW!”

  Yuri needed no further encouragement. As the Bronco’s engine revved to life, he prayed to a God he hadn’t believed in a few hours ago, begging to be spared the fate that had befallen the other crew.

  CHAPTER 78

  1100 EST, Sunday 13 February 1994

  1500 Zulu

  US Coast Guard Sandy Hook Station, Ft. Hancock, New Jersey

  AT THE SANDY Hook Watch Center, Commander Ingalls and his staff were more or less oblivious to the drama going on in the skies above. Their interest remained fixed on the sea, and those in peril on it. I need more assets if I’m going to rescue the people out there, Ingalls thought for the hundredth time that hour. His eyes narrowed at the marker indicating the Navy destroyer smack in the middle of the disaster that, so far, was doing nothing to help. The Coast Guard officer intended to change that.

  “Your radios up yet, Lieutenant Shin?” Ingalls asked his Navy liaison. The younger man and his three sailors had been laboring over the past few minutes to set up a bank of radios and computers, wiring them to antennae that one of the sailors had erected outside the watch center’s windows.

  “Just loading the frequency now sir,” Shin answered and after a few moments. “Okay, ready for a radio check.”

  The Navy officer took a hand-mic from one of his sailors and, depressing the talk button, said, “Destroyer Mahan, destroyer Mahan, this is,” he looked up questioningly at Ingalls. The Coast Guard officer mouthed “Sandy Hook,” and Shin, nodding, went on, “this is Coast Guard Station Sandy Hook. Radio check, over.”

  Both men waited through several seconds of silence, then the radio crackled, “Sandy Hook, this is Mahan. We read you five by five, over.”

  Shin nodded, then handed the mic to Ingalls and asked, “You wanted to talk to them, sir?”

  Ingalls grabbed the hand-mic and called, “Mahan, Sandy Hook. We’ve got a lot of people in the water and we were hoping you can assist at some of the wreck sites. There’s a sinking container ship about eight miles to your northeast. Think you could help them out, over?”

  Ingalls waited for a response, which took longer in coming than he thought it would. Finally, the speaker crackled, a different voice: “Sandy Hook, this is Mahan Actual. Negative on your request. I apologize, but the area here is not yet safe. We just barely dodged a few missiles ourselves, and we need to get the shooters before we can worry about rescue operations. We’re currently prosecuting a contact, one of the subs that launched those missiles. Once we’ve killed him, we’ll see what we can do.”

  Ingalls was both surprised and frustrated. At once he knew that the captain of the Mahan was doing the right thing, hunting the enemy, but at the same time he was leaving people, civilians, in the water.

  “I’ve got a P-3 patrol bird that just arrived on station to support us,” Mahan’s captain went on apologetically, referring to the four-engine sub-hunting aircraft that were the mainstay of the US Navy’s aerial ASW force. “That should speed things up considerably. Over.”

  Commander Ingalls nodded, though it pained his conscience as a professional rescue-man for a big capable ship like the Mahan to be so close to sailors in need and not help. He pushed that aside. So this is what war is like, he thought, frustration turning into angry determination.

  Pressing the transmit button again he said, “Understood, Mahan. Good hunting. Get those bastards for us!”

  CHAPTER 79

  1105 CST, Sunday 13 February 1994

  1505 Zulu

  B Company 1-114 Infantry National Guard Armory, Freehold Township, New Jersey, USA

  THE MOOD IN the motor pool was grim as the guardsmen tossed equipment into the boxy M113 armored personnel carriers. Sergeant First Class Bert Martinez watched as his charges made the transition from citizen to soldier. The men loading the vehicles were dressed in the mottled green, brown, and black battle dress uniforms of the US Army, but in their civilian lives they were plumbers, teachers, construction workers, grocers, and any number of other everyday professions. Martinez was a local police officer, having retired from the regular army two years ago. Today, though, they were soldiers.

  New Jersey’s governor, in office less than a month, had called up her state’s entire contingent of National Guard units immediately after receiving word of the attacks in New York City and off the coast. Martinez understood the angry looks he saw on the faces of the men of his platoon. Many of them had friends, even family, in the city, and all had seen the dramatic news footage of the carnage on the bridges and tunnels in Manhattan. More troubling to Martinez, an infantryman for twenty years, were the ambushes outside several police precincts. The NYPD wasn’t releasing information about how many officers they’d lost, but the Guardsman knew that a few of the resulting firefights had been ugly.

  Seeing something he didn’t like, Martinez called a guardsman atop one of the armored personnel carriers. “Hey Bill, stow that fifty inside the track. We’ll mount the M60s instead. Wherever we’re going, I don’t see us rock’n the Ma Deuce.”

  The other man nodded and lowered the big .50 caliber M2 machinegun back down into the belly of the M113, while another soldier heaved the smaller M60 machinegun onto the vehicle’s roof where it could be mounted on the track’s pintle mount. Other soldiers were carrying green ammunition cans out of the armory and stowing them in the vehicles. That was how Martinez knew that this was serious. B Company’s CO was notoriously skittish about issuing ammunition to his weekend warriors. Drawing live ammunition and getting to roll out of the motor pool into suburban New Jersey, Martinez mused. The world has really gone mad in the past few hours! Which made the NCO wonder, where they’d be taking that ammunition

  The answer arrived with an overly loud, “Hey Sarge!” and a slap on the back as Martinez’s lieutenant arrived from the company CP. The old soldier struggled not to cringe. “Sarge” was not an acceptable way to refer to a sergeant in the US Army, but no matter how many times Martinez quietly corrected Second Lieutenant Kirby, the young extrovert never seemed to get it. Despite that, Martinez couldn’t bring himself to dislike the officer. Kirby was green but eager, having just completed the Infantry Officer Basic Course at Ft. Benning a couple months ago. Martinez, a Gulf War veteran who’d seen his share of both good and bad lieutenants over the years, could always work with someone who showed motivation, and Kirby showed plenty of that.

  “Any news, sir?” Martinez asked as the younger man looked towards the men loading their platoon’s four M113s.

  “Yep!” Kirby said, too enthusiastically. “The whole company is getting sent to important spots around the local area. Third Platoon is staying here as the reserve, First Platoon is heading over to the ammo supply point at Ft. Dix, and we’re going to the Coast Guard Station at Sandy Hook.”

  “Sandy Hook?” Martinez wondered. “That’s almost thirty miles away.”

  “Yeah,” Kirby responded, “the CO
wants us to get on the road quick. Do we have everyone?”

  “Watts, Silva, and Handler still haven’t showed up,” Martinez reported, “but at this point, sir, I recommend we roll without them. They can catch up later.”

  “Sounds good Sarge!” Kirby said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  “Roger, sir,” Martinez said, again working not to cringe. Then he yelled, “Second Platoon! Pack it up! Convoy brief in five minutes!”

  Taking a column of tracked APCs thirty miles along suburban New Jersey roads was going to be interesting, to say the least. He would have said exciting, but the news footage from New York City had everyone worrying about their loved ones. No one was safe anywhere anymore.

  Eighteen miles to the north, the van carrying Volkhov and his assault team was creeping across the Edison Bridge from Perth Amboy to South Amboy amid unusually heavy traffic. Sitting in the front passenger seat, the Spetsnaz officer’s face remained coldly impassive. Behind this mask, however, his emotions were a violent mix of rage and elation. The elation stemmed from the news bulletins he was hearing over their van’s radio. It was clear from the panicky American newsmen that the other teams around the city had achieved almost complete success. True, the American police had somehow thwarted the attack on the George Washington Bridge, but otherwise it appeared that nearly every attack had achieved its aim. Indeed, from what the radio newsman was saying about the Manhattan Bridge, that attack had far exceeded expectations. All successful, except my own, that is, he raged in frustration.

  Volkhov had given himself and his team what he had judged to be the most difficult mission, And I botched it. Here they were, stuck in the panicked traffic streaming away from the embattled city, while their target, the rescue command center at Sandy Hook, continued its operations unmolested.

  They were supposed to hit their target at the same time as the other attacks started on Manhattan. The stolen battery had laid waste to that idea, and they’d been lucky to get off Manhattan Island before the other teams’ attacks began to close off access to the City. Now they were over three hours late and still far from the objective.