CARRIER 6: COUNTDOWN By Keith Douglass

commanded gradually widened.

“We’re clear to port now,” he said, speaking into a telephone handset.

“Ahead slow.”

“Ahead slow, Captain” came the reply from the officer at the helm in

Pravda’s control center.

The huge submarine picked up momentum, gliding through the filthy water

with a sullen chug-chug-chug of her enormous screws. Chelyag remembered

again Karelin’s voice as he’d ordered the Pravda out of the cavern and

into the hellfire outside. Reach the Barents Sea? They would be lucky

if they cleared Polyamyy Inlet and made it to the main channel. Admiral

Marchenko had been sending down hourly reports. That last one had

spoken of Marines on the hillside directly above Pravda’s hiding place.

But there was no refusing Karelin’s orders. Chelyag would do as he’d

been commanded, clear Tretyevo Peschera, then fire missile number one,

already targeted on Chelyabinsk. After that … well, their survival

depended entirely on the Frontal Aviation units now closing on Polyamyy

from the south.

He brought the telephone to his mouth again. “Commander Mizin. Pass

the word ashore to open the cavern doors.”

“Yes, Comrade Captain.” There was a pause. “Captain? We have a message

from Admiral Marchenko.”

“Read it to me.”

“He says … ‘Good luck, Pravda. Go with God.””

Chelyag could almost see the sneer, the curl to Mizin’s lip, as he

recited the message. His First Officer was a good atheist, a man who’d

hoped with an almost religious passion that the return of no-nonsense

hard-liners to power in Moscow would mean an end to the religious mania

that had exploded throughout the nation during the days of Gorbachev and

Yeltsin.

Evidently, he’d been disappointed.

“Tell Admiral Marchenko, ‘Thank you. Message received and very much

appreciated.””

And what, he wondered, did Mizin think of that?

1317 hours

Tomcat 200

Over the Kola Inlet

“We’re coming up on the coast,” Tomboy said over the ICS. “Feet dry.”

“More or less,” Tombstone replied. “We’re not over land yet.”

He’d swung far out to the east of the carrier battle force, skimming

past the Marine amphibious fleet, then cutting south down the Kola Inlet

itself.

The mouth of the gulf was four miles across here. East were the low,

rounded hills of the island of Ostrov Kildin. Military-looking

settlements were scattered along both coastlines, among bare-faced

cliffs and gleaming patches of ice and snow. Ice still sheeted over

much of the waterway, though the center of the narrow gulf had been kept

open by icebreakers.

Smoke coiled away into the sky to the right. The western shore of the

inlet at this point was held by American forces, the east by Russians.

A large ship–Tombstone thought it might be a destroyer–lay

half-submerged in the shallows near the west bank, beneath a greasy pall

of smoke and surrounded by ice. Beyond, helicopters darted,

insect-like, beneath the writhing tendrils of high-altitude contrails.

“Ninety-nine aircraft, ninety-nine aircraft” sounded over the tactical

frequency. “This is Echo-Whiskey Two-one. We’re picking up large

numbers of bogies coming in from the south, probably from the airfields

at Kirovsk and Revda. This could be a general attack.”

“What, more bandits?” Tomboy asked. “You’d think they’d be running out

of MiGs by now.”

“Haven’t you heard, Tomboy? They’ve got an inexhaustible supply.

Somewhere they’ve got factories cranking out MiGs as fast as we can

shoot them down. Check weapons.”

“Hot and ready. Shame the bird farm was out of AIM-54s.”

“That’s okay. We’ll just have to sucker them in close.”

“Wonderful plan, CAG. You have anything else in mind?”

Tombstone was scanning the surface of the water. Sunlight flashed from

a silvery something skimming over the inlet. “Yes, actually. Let’s

ride in with that A-6 flight down there.”

“That’ll be Red Hammer One,” his RIO told him. “Some of our boys off

the Jeff.”

“Good enough. We’ll ride shotgun for them for a ways. Call the leader

and let him know we’re here.”

“Rog.”

More Russian aircraft, mustering to the south. Obviously, the

hammer-blow air and cruise-missile strikes over the past twenty-four

hours had not been as successful as originally thought. That was often

the pattern in modern warfare; high-tech weapons were wonderfully

destructive and accurate … but the enemy always seemed to have

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