at the stupidity of modern politics. Time and time again, the U.S.
Marines had come under vicious, slashing attack, not by a foreign enemy
but by American politicians eager to cut military budgets, or to
eliminate what they saw as Pentagon waste.
There’d been waste in the military, there was no denying that, though
Rivera had always felt that the military all too often became a
scapegoat for congressmen trying to divert attention from waste closer
to Capitol Hill. In recent years, however, things had gotten out of
hand. During some of the sillier periods of the Clinton Administration,
attempts had been made to eliminate the Marines entirely, or at least to
pare them back; one move still being debated called for eliminating
Marine artillery, with the idea that artillery should be strictly the
prerogative of the U.S. Army. By that way of thinking, letting the
Marines field their own artillery, even for counterbattery fire, was a
needless duplication of effort.
In the same spirit of efficiency, they’d blocked letting the Marines buy
their own modern M-1A1 tanks, forcing them to continue relying on relic
M60s.
Another target, one not yet successfully hit, had been Marine Air; after
all, why should the Marines have their own combat aircraft when America
had an Air Force?
Of course, those ideas had been fielded by the same folks who thought
that the Navy should lose its strike aircraft. The blind, stupid REMFs
who made such suggestions, Rivera decided bitterly, had never been in a
foxhole with enemy artillery ranging in on their position.
The bombardment of the Marine position continued, gouts of mud and smoke
thundering into the sky with each shrieking rattle of incoming fire.
Moments later, though, a Marine sheltering nearby poked his head up and
shouted, “Here come the A-6s!”
“Go Marines!” another voice echoed, but Rivera already had his
binoculars pressed to his face, studying the gray, blunt-nosed planes
howling down over the Kola Inlet from the north. “Those aren’t
Marines,” he yelled, reading the block letters printed on each fuselage.
“They’re Navy!”
“Go Navy! Go Navy!” Traditional interservice rivalries were forgotten
as the Intruders skimmed the hilltops above Polyamyy in a north-to-south
run, coming in impossibly low. Bombs spilled from wing pylons, flashing
in the sun as they tumbled end-for-end … and then the hill above
Polyamyy vanished in a volcanic eruption of churning orange flame,
fireballs boiling hundreds of feet into a smoke-splashed sky.
“Not bad, for squids,” Larson said with a casual shrug. “Marines
would’ve come in lower.”
But it was better than “not bad,” Rivera knew. Those A-6s had been dead
on target, and the pounding of the 1/8 and 3/8 positions had instantly
ceased.
Raising the radio receiver to his ear again, he began to pick out
targets among the ships and subs clustered in the water below his
position, calling them back to the battle-management people waiting
offshore.
In the distance, as the hilltop continued to burn, the first Marine
Super Stallions were already touching down outside of Polyamyy itself.
1230 hours
Kandalaksha Command Center
Kola Peninsula
“I thought you said you would be ready!” Karelin thundered into the
mouthpiece of the red telephone he held clenched in one hand. “You
should have been at sea by now!”
“We are ready, Comrade Admiral,” Chelyag’s voice replied. “We have been
ready for the past eight hours. But the Americans-”
“Audacious Flame cannot wait on the Americans, and it cannot wait on
you!
If your vessel is ready to put to sea, then go! Immediately!”
“Sir, there are reports of American Marines landing on the heights above
cavern Three. Our forces are scattered or in retreat. A Naval Infantry
colonel told me five minutes ago that there is fighting inside Polyamyy
now!
The skies above the Kola Inlet are commanded by their planes! It is
twenty-five kilometers to the open sea. We would never make it all the
way!”
Karelin paused, then took a deep breath, forcing himself to stay calm.
Chelyag could have no idea of what was at stake here. “Listen carefully
to me, Comrade Captain. Your original orders called for you to reach a
strategic bastion before surfacing and carrying out the final part of