Part 20 (2/2)

”Let's have a positive att.i.tude check.”

”I positively hate this f.u.c.king place!”

”Let's have a negative att.i.tude check.”

”I don't like this f.u.c.king place!”

”Let's have a short att.i.tude check.”

”f.u.c.kit!” Everyone had a good laugh. They needed it.

”Nice to see that we're all maintaining our equilibrium,” Edwards observed. The short, scrawny officer had become instantly popular on his arrival two months earlier. A native of Eastpoint, Maine, and a graduate of the Air Force Academy, his gla.s.ses prevented him from flying. His diminutive size-five-six and a hundred twenty pounds-was not designed to command respect, but his infectious grin, ready supply of jokes, and recognized expertise at making sense of the confused North Atlantic weather patterns had combined to make him an acceptable companion for anyone at Keflavik. Everyone thought he would make one h.e.l.l of a TV weatherman one day.

”MAC Flight Five-Two-Zero, roger. Roll her out, Big Guy, we need the room,” said a tired controller. A few hundred yards away, a C-5A Galaxy cargo plane began to accelerate down runway one-eight. Edwards took a pair of binoculars to watch. It was hard to get used to the fact that something so monstrous could actually fly.

”Any word from anywhere?” Simon asked Edwards.

”Nope, nothing since the Norwegian report. Lots of activity at Kola. You know, I picked a h.e.l.l of a time to come here to work,” Mike replied. He went back to checking the calibration of his digital barometer.

It had started six weeks before. The Soviet Naval and Long-Range Aviation groups based at a half-dozen airfields around Severomorsk had exercised almost continuously, flying attack-profile missions that could have been directed at nearly anyone or anything. Then two weeks before, the activity had been cut way back. That was the ominous part: first they drilled all their flight crews to perfection and then they went to a stand-down maintenance period to make sure that every bird and every instrument was also fully operational . . . What were they doing now? An attack against Bod in Norway? Or Iceland maybe? Another exercise? There was no telling.

Edwards lifted a clipboard to sign off for having checked his tower instruments that day. He could have left it to his enlisted technicians, but they were backstopping the aircraft techs with the fighter squadron, and he could handle it for them. Besides, it gave him an excuse to visit the tower and- ”Mr. Simon,” the senior enlisted controller said rapidly. ”I just copied a Flash from Sentry One: Warning Red. Many bandits inbound, sir. Approaching from due north to northeast-Sentry Two is checking in . . . they got 'em, too. Jesus. Sounds like forty to fifty bandits, sir.” Edwards noted that the inbounds were being called Bandits instead of the usual Zombies.

”Anything friendly coming in?”

”Sir, we got a MAC C-141 twenty minutes out, eight more behind it at five-minute intervals, all inbound from Dover.”

”Tell them to turn back, and get an acknowledgment! Keflavik is closed to all inbounds until further notice.” Simon turned to his telecommunications man. ”Tell Air-Ops to radio SACLANT that we're under attack, and to get the word out. I-”

Klaxons erupted all around them. Below, in the early-morning shadows, ground crewmen pulled red-flagged safety pins off the waiting interceptors. Edwards saw a pilot drain a Styrofoam cup and begin to strap himself in tight. The starter carts next to each fighter belched black smoke as they generated power to turn the engines.

”Tower, this is Hunter Leader. We're scrambling. Clear those runways, boy!”

Simon took the microphone. ”Roger, Hunter Leader, the runways are yours. Scatter Plan Alpha. Go for it! Out.”

Below, canopies were coming down, chocks were pulled away from wheels, and each crew chief gave his pilot a smart salute. The shriek of jet engines changed to a roar as the aircraft started to roll awkwardly off the flight line.

”Where's your battle station, Mike?” Simon asked.

”The met building.” Edwards nodded and headed for the door. ” 'Luck, guys.”

Aboard Sentry Two, the radar operators watched a broad semicircle of blips converging on them. Each blip had ”BGR” painted next to it, plus data on course, alt.i.tude, and speed. Each blip was a Tu-16 Badger bomber of Soviet Naval Aviation. There were twenty-four of them, inbound for Keflavik at a speed of six hundred knots. They had approached at low alt.i.tude to stay below the E-3A's radar horizon, and, once detected, were now climbing rapidly, two hundred miles away. This mission profile enabled the radar operators to cla.s.sify them instantly as hostile. There were four Eagles on Combat Air Patrol, two of them with operating AWACS, but it was close to changeover point and the fighters were too low on fuel to race after the Badgers on afterburner. They were directed to head for the incoming Russian bombers at six hundred knots, and could not yet detect the Badgers on their own missile-targeting radars.

Sentry One off Cape Fontur reported something worse. Her blips were supersonic Tu-22M Backfires, coming in slowly enough to indicate that they were heavily loaded with external ordnance. The Eagles here also moved off to intercept. A hundred miles behind them, the two F-15s kept on point defense over Reykjavik had just been topped off from an orbiting tanker and were charging northeast at a thousand knots while the remainder of the squadron was even now leaving the ground. The radar picture from both AWACS aircraft was being transmitted by digital link to Keflavik's fighter-ops center so that ground personnel could monitor the action. Now that the fighters were rotating off the ground, the crews for every other aircraft at the air station worked frantically to ready their birds for flight.

They had practiced this task eight times in the past month. Some flight crews had been sleeping with their aircraft. Others were summoned from their quarters, no more than four hundred yards away. Those aircraft just back from patrol had their fuel tanks topped off, and were pre-flighted by the ground crews. Marine and Air Force guards not already at their posts rushed to them. It was just as well that the attack had come at this hour. There was only a handful of civilians about, and civilian air traffic was at its lowest. On the other hand, the men at Keflavik had been on double duty for a week now, and they were tired. Things which might have been done in five minutes now took seven or eight.

Edwards was back in his meteorological office, wearing his field jacket, flak jacket, and ”fritz” style helmet. His emergency duty station-he could not think of his office as a ”battle” station-was his a.s.signed post. As if someone might need an especially deadly weather chart with which to attack an incoming bomber! The service had to have a plan for everything, Edwards knew. There had to be a plan. It didn't have to make sense. He went downstairs to Air-Ops.

”I got breakaway on Bandit Eight, one-two birds launched. The machine says they're AS-4s,” a Sentry controller reported. The senior officer got on the radio for Keflavik.

MV JULIUS FUCIK.

Twenty miles southwest of Keflavik, the ”Doctor Lykes” was also a beehive of activity. As each Soviet bomber squadron launched its air-to-ground missiles, its commander transmitted a predetermined codeword that the Fucik copied. Her time had come.

”Rudder left,” Captain Kherov ordered. ”Bring his bow into the wind.”

A full regiment of airborne infantry, many of them seasick from two weeks aboard the huge barge-carrier, was at work testing and loading weapons. The Fucik's augmented crew was stripping the falsework from the aftermost four ”barges,” revealing each in fact to be a Lebed-type a.s.sault hovercraft. The six-man crew of each removed the covers over the air intakes that led to the engines they had tended with loving care for a month. Satisfied, they waved to the craft commanders, who lit off the three engines in each of the aftermost pair.

The s.h.i.+p's first officer stood at his elevator control station aft. On a hand signal, an eighty-five-man infantry company plus a reinforced mortar team were loaded into each craft. Power was increased, the hovercraft lifted up on their air cus.h.i.+ons and were winched aft. In another four minutes, the vehicles were resting on the barge-loading elevator that formed the stern of the Seabee vessel.

”Lower away,” the first officer ordered. The winch operators lowered the elevator to the surface. The sea was choppy, and four-foot waves lapped at the Fucik's bifurcated stem. When the elevator was level with the sea, first one, then the other Lebed commander increased power and moved off. At once, the elevator returned to the topmost deck while the first pair of hovercraft circled their mothers.h.i.+p. In five more minutes, the four a.s.sault craft moved off in box formation toward the Keflavik Peninsula.

The Fucik continued her turn, returning to a northerly course to make the next hovercraft trip a shorter one. Her weather deck was ringed with armed troops carrying surface-to-air missiles and machine guns. Andreyev remained on the bridge, knowing this was where he belonged, but wis.h.i.+ng he were leading his a.s.sault troops.

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND.

”Kef-Ops, the bandits are all turning right back after launching their ASMs. So far it's been two birds per aircraft. We got fifty-make that fifty-six inbound missiles, and more are being launched. n.o.body behind them, though. I repeat, nothing behind the bomber force. At least we don't have any paratroopers headed in. Hunker down, guys, we now have sixty inbound missiles,” Edwards heard as he came through the door.

”At least they won't be nukes,” said a captain.

”They're shooting a hundred missiles at us-they don't f.u.c.kin' need nukes!” replied another.

Edwards watched the radar picture over the shoulder of one of the officers. It was eerily like an arcade game. Big, slow-moving blips denoted the aircraft. Smaller, quicker blips were the Mach-2 missiles.

”Gotcha!” hooted the enlisted radar operator. The leading Eagle had gotten within missile range of the Badgers and exploded one with a Sparrow missile-ten seconds after it had launched its own missiles. A second Sparrow missed its separate target, but a third appeared locked on it. The first fighter's wingman was just launching at yet another Russian. The Soviets had thought this one out, Edwards saw. They were attacking from all around the northern littoral, with lots of s.p.a.ce between the bombers so that no single fighter could engage more than one or two. It was almost like- ”Anybody check the geometry of this?” he asked.

”What do you mean?” The captain looked around. ”How come you aren't where you belong?”