Part 52 (1/2)

The twelve Tomcats of the Jolly Rogers were strung on a line at thirty thousand feet. On command they activated their missile-guidance radars.

”American fighters!” shouted a number of Russian pilots. Their threat receivers instantly told the pilots that fighter-type radars were locked on their aircraft.

The Soviet fighter commander was not surprised. Surely the Americans would not risk their heavy bombers again without a proper escort. He'd ignore these and bore in for the B-52s, as his training dictated. The MiG radars were heavily jammed, their ranges cut in half and as yet unable to track any targets at all. He ordered his pilots to be alert for incoming missiles, confident that they could avoid those that they saw, and had all his aircraft increase power. Next, he ordered all but two of his reserve force to leave Keflavik and come east to support him.

The Americans needed only seconds to lock onto targets. Each Tomcat carried four Sparrows and four Sidewinders. The Sparrows went first. There were sixteen MiGs in the air. Most had at least two missiles targeted, but the Sparrows were radar-guided. Each American fighter had to remain pointed at its target until the missile hit. This ran the risk of closing within range of Soviet missiles, and the Tomcats were not equipped with protective jammers.

The Americans had taken position up-sun from the Russians. Just as their radars began to burn through the American jamming, the Sparrows arrived, the first directly from the sun, exploding its MiG in midair and warning everyone in its flight. The Soviet aircraft began radical jinks up and down, some pilots breaking into hard turns as they saw the seven-inch wide missiles racing in, but four more found their targets, and in moments there were three hard kills and one severely damaged aircraft that turned to limp for home.

The Jolly Rogers turned as soon as their missiles were spent and ran northeast with the Soviets in pursuit. The Russian commander was relieved that the American missiles had performed so poorly, yet still enraged at the loss of five aircraft. His remaining aircraft bore in on afterburner as their targeting radars began to defeat the American jamming. The American fighter escort had had its turn, he knew. Now it was his turn. They ran northeast, their visored eyes alternating between squints into the sun and quick looks at their radarscopes to pick out targets. They never looked down. The lead MiG finally had a target and launched two missiles.

Twenty thousand feet below them, s.h.i.+elded from ground radar by a pair of mountains, twelve Tomcats of the Black Aces went to afterburner, their radars shut off as the twin-engined fighters rocketed skyward. Within ninety seconds the pilots began to hear the growling signal that indicated their Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles were tracking targets. Seconds later, sixteen missiles were fired from a range of two miles.

Six Russian pilots never knew what hit them. Of the eleven MiGs, eight were hit in a matter of seconds. The commander's luck remained briefly as he jerked his fighter around, causing a Sidewinder to break lock and fly into the sun, but now what could he do? He saw two Tomcats running south, away from his remaining fighters. It was too late to organize an attack-his wingman was gone, and the only friendly aircraft he could see was to his north-so the colonel reefed his MiG into an eight-g turn and dove at the American, oblivious to the warning buzz of his threat receiver. Both Sparrows launched from the second group of Black Aces struck his wing. The MiG came apart around him.

The Americans had no time to gloat. The mission commander reported a second group of MiGs heading their way and the American squadrons regrouped to meet them, forming a solid wall of twenty-four aircraft, their radars shut down for two minutes as the MiGs raced into the cloud of jamming. The Russian second-in-command was making a serious error. His fellow pilots were in danger. He had to go to their rescue. One group of Tomcat volleyed off its remaining Sparrows; the other fired Sidewinders. A total of thirty-eight missiles closed in on eight Soviet aircraft who had no clear picture of what they were running into. Half of them never did, blotted out of the sky by American air-to-air missiles; three more were damaged.

The Tomcat pilots all wanted to close, but the commander ordered them off. They were all short of fuel, and Stornoway was seven hundred miles off. They turned east, ducking through the cloud of aluminum chaff left by the B-52s. The Americans would claim thirty-seven kills, quite a score since they had expected a total of only twenty-seven Russian aircraft. In fact, of twenty-six MiGs, only five undamaged aircraft remained. A stunned air base commander immediately began rescue operations. Soon the parachute division's attack helicopters were flying northeast, searching for downed pilots.

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC.

Thirty kilometers from Alfeld to Hameln, Alekseyev thought. An hour's drive in a tank. Elements of three divisions were making that drive now, and since the crossing had been achieved, they'd advanced a total of only eighteen kilometers. This time it was the English: the tanks of the Royal Tank Regiment and 21st Lancers had stopped his leading elements cold halfway to Hameln and hadn't budged in eighteen hours.

There was real danger here. For a mechanized formation, safety lay in movement. The Soviets were feeding units into the gap, but NATO was using its air power to the utmost. The bridges on the Leine were being destroyed almost as fast as they could be repaired. Engineers had prepared crossing points on the riverbanks, and the Russians were able to swim their infantry carriers across now, but the tanks couldn't swim, and every attempt to run them across underwater-as they were supposedly equipped to do-had been a failure. Too many units had had to be deployed to protect the breach in NATO's lines, and too few were able to exploit it. Alekseyev had achieved a perfect textbook breakthrough-only to see that the other side had its own textbook for containing and smas.h.i.+ng it. Western Theater had a total of six reserve cla.s.s-A divisions to send into the fighting. After that they would have to start using cla.s.s-B units composed of reservists, with older men and equipment. There were many of them, but they would not-could not-perform as well as the younger soldiers. The General bridled at the necessity of committing units to battle that would certainly take higher casualties than normal. But he had no choice. His political masters wanted it, and he was only the executor of political policy.

”I have to go back forward,” Alekseyev told his boss.

”Yes, but no closer than five kilometers to the front line, Pasha. I cannot afford to lose you now.”

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM.

The Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, looked at his own tally sheet. Nearly all of his reserves were committed to the fighting now, and the Russians seemed to have an endless supply of men and vehicles moving forward. His units had no time to reorganize and redeploy. NATO faced the nightmare of all armies: they could only react to the moves of their opponent, with almost no chance to launch their own initiatives. So far things were holding together-but only barely. Southeast of Hameln his map showed a British brigade. In fact it was nothing more than a reinforced regiment composed of exhausted men and damaged equipment. Artillery and aircraft were all that allowed him to prevent a collapse, and even that would not be enough if his units didn't get much more replacement equipment. More ominously, NATO was now down to two weeks of ordnance, and the resupply coming from America had been seriously impeded by attacks on the convoys. What could he tell his men? Reduce munitions expenditures-when the only thing stopping the Russians was the profligate use of every weapon at hand?

His morning intelligence brief was starting. The chief NATO intelligence officer was a German general who was accompanied by a Dutch major carrying a videotape ca.s.sette. For something this important, the intel officer knew, SACEUR wanted to see the raw data, not just the a.n.a.lysis. The Dutch officer set up the machine.

A computer-generated map appeared, then units showed up. The tape took under two minutes to display five hours of data, repeating it several times so that the officers could discern patterns.

”General, we estimate that the Soviets are sending six full divisions toward Alfeld. The movement you see here on the main road from Braunschweig is the first of them. The others come from their theater reserve, and these two coming south are reserve formations from their northern army group.”

”So you think that they are making this their main point of attack?” SACEUR asked.

”Ja.” The German General nodded. ”The Schwerpunkt is here.”

SACEUR frowned. The rational thing to do would be to withdraw behind the river Weser to shorten his defensive line and reorganize his forces. But that would mean abandoning Hannover. The Germans would never accept that. Their own national strategy of defending each home and field had cost the Russians dear-and stretched NATO forces to the breaking point. Politically they would never accept such a strategic withdrawal. West German units would fight on alone if they had to: he could see it clearly enough in the eyes of his own intelligence chief. And if somebody invaded New Hamps.h.i.+re, he admitted to himself, would I withdraw into Pennsylvania?

An hour later, half of the existing NATO reserves were heading east from Osnabrck to Hameln. The battle for Germany would be won or lost on the right bank of the Weser.

STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND.

The returning Tomcats got little rest. As soon as they landed, the British and American ground crewmen refueled and rearmed the fighters. The Russians were raiding the British northern airfields more carefully now. The American airborne radar aircraft supporting the British Nimrods and Shackletons were making life hard on the twin-engine Blinder bombers flying out of Andya in Norway. Royal Air Force Tornados flew combat air-patrol missions two hundred miles offsh.o.r.e while the American pilots rested, a few enterprising crew chiefs painted red stars underneath the c.o.c.kpits, and intelligence officers evaluated gunsight videotapes and recordings of Soviet missile radars.

”Looks like we hurt them,” Toland judged. The kill claims were too high, but with fighter pilots they always were.

”Bet your a.s.s!” replied the commander of the Jolly Rogers. The Navy commander chewed on a cigar. He claimed personal credit for a pair of MiGs. ”Question is, will they reinforce? It worked once, but they won't fall for that gag again. You tell me, Toland: can they replace what we culled out?”

”I don't think so. The MiG-29 is about the only fighter they can stage out that far. The rest of those are in Germany, and they've taken a beating there, too. If the Russians decide to cut loose some MiG-31s, I think they can reach that far, but I don't see them releasing their prime bomber-interceptor for this kind of mission.”

The Jolly Rogers's skipper nodded agreement. ”Okay. Next step then is we put a combat air patrol close to Iceland and start beating on those Backfire raids for-real.”

”They might just come looking for us, too,” Toland warned. ”They have to know now what we did, and where we did it from.” The commander of VF-41 looked out the window. One of his Tomcats sat half a mile away between two piles of sandbags. Four missiles were visible on the airframe. He fingered the Ace of Spades emblem on his chest and turned back.

”Good. If they want to fight us on our turf, in our radar cover, fine.”

ALFELD, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY.

Alekseyev left his helicopter on the outskirts of the town and climbed into yet another BMP infantry carrier. Two ribbon bridges were operating. Fragments of at least five others littered the riverbanks, along with countless burned-out tanks and trucks. The commander of 20th Tanks rode with them.

”NATO air attacks are murderous,” General Beregovoy said. ”I've never seen anything like it. Even with our SAMs they close in. We get our share, but it's not enough, and things only get worse as we approach the front.”

”What progress have you made today?”