News that the Marines were ashore at Narvik had come as a shock to
Ivanov–almost as great a shock as the orders that he attack the American
beaches immediately. Kreml and Soyuz working together would have been more
than a match for the Jefferson, but Khenkin had thrown away the opportunity by
attacking before Ivanov could reach him. Now the American carrier had been
joined by at least two Marine LHA assault ships, small carriers, each capable
of carrying twenty Harrier jump jets. The odds had just shifted dramatically
in favor of the Americans.
And worse was on the way. Soviet spy satellite reconnaissance had showed
that the main strength of the American fleet had not yet reached the landing
areas. The carrier Eisenhower, freed at last from her North Atlantic station,
was still a thousand kilometers to the west, north of the Faeroes, while the
Kennedy was still off the east coast of Britain, fourteen hundred kilometers
to the south.
There was still one chance, however. Both the Eisenhower and Kennedy
battle groups were coming at flank speed, like the Americans’ proverbial
cavalry to the rescue, but it would be another twenty-four hours at least
before they would be within air strike range, and in that time much could
happen. In the early evening of the twenty-fifth, responding to directives
from Moscow, the Kiev battle group had departed its station in the Barents Sea
and rounded North Cape, sorteing toward the Narvik landings. When the
American ships escorting the Marine force detected the Kiev task force’s
movement, they would almost certainly respond by moving north.
The Russian fleet admiral listened to the wind and rain blasting against
his portholes. Kreml’s meteorology department predicted that the storm would
last all night, offering excellent cover all the way from Bergen to the
Lofoten islands. By sailing north at full speed, using the storm for cover,
Ivanov thought he just might be able to catch the Americans off guard.
With quickening excitement, he studied the map. It might work. It would
work. The American escorts would be pulled out of position by the Kiev’s
movements in the north, and the approaches to the Vagsfjord would be clear.
He could round the northern tip of Andoya with Kreml, the mighty Kirov-class
battle cruisers Tallinn and Irkutsk, and a dozen smaller warships by–he
consulted the map, walking up the Norwegian coast and past the Lofoten Islands
with a pair of calipers–yes! By noon tomorrow.
The only possible obstacles along the way were a scattering of Norwegian
vessels near Trondheim–the storm would take care of them–and the Jefferson
battle group, last reported at anchor in the Vestfjord. Ivanov scowled.
Always it was the Jefferson. Most likely, though, the troublesome enemy
carrier would be drawn away to the north. And if not …
He smiled. If not, well, Jefferson’s air assets must have been sharply
reduced in the battle that morning, her pilots, her officers exhausted by a
week of hard fighting. Alone, Jefferson would be no match for the Soviet
Baltic Fleet. And once his ships reached the American anchorage at Vagsfjord,
a few hours would suffice to reduce the U.S. invasion force to a scattering of
flaming, sinking hulks. The Marines ashore would be trapped, their supplies
from the sea cut off. It would be, Ivanov thought smugly, the greatest defeat
of American naval forces since Pearl Harbor … a defeat that would end a war,
rather than begin it. With an entire Marine division forced to surrender or
be destroyed, the Americans would have no stomach for further fighting. They
would withdraw, and Scandinavia would remain the new bastion of Soviet arms, a
decisive threat against Europe, a monument to the triumph of the Russian
Empire over the West.
Admiral Ivanov reached for the telephone that connected him to Kreml’s
command center. The orders had to be given immediately.
0530 hours Zulu (0630 hours Zone), 26 June
U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
Vestfjord
Once again, Jefferson had taken refuge in a Norwegian fjord. This time,
her shelter was within the Vestfjord, the broad reach of the waters between
the Lofoten Islands and the mainland, fifty miles north of Bodo.
Fighting ashore continued, though reports, on the whole, were