was short and fire-plug-built, with his blond-to-gray hair shaved to a
stubble.
The three of them, Tombstone, Brandt, and Tarrant, were standing about
the plot table, hemmed in by a number of senior aides and staff
officers.
Tarrant and his entourage had arrived by helicopter aboard the Jefferson
a few hours earlier from the Shiloh, the Aegis cruiser Tarrant used as
his headquarters, and the lot of them had crowded into the carrier’s
Flag Plot to consider the latest set of orders from Washington.
Reaching out with the stem of an unlit pipe, Captain Brandt pointed out
a line of red symbols on the map stretching down the jagged slash of the
Kola Inlet. Sayda Guba, Polyamyy, Severomorsk, Murmansk. “Wasn’t it
some CNO who called this stretch the single most valuable piece of real
estate on Earth?
Hell, the Russian SAM operators alone must be tripping over each other
there.”
“Secretary of the Navy John E Lehman said that,” Tarrant replied. “He
was referring to the whole Kola Peninsula, and he was dead right. Over
here, in this strip of what was Finland before World War II, is
Pechenga, just eighteen miles from the Norwegian border. It’s both a
commercial and a military port. And down here, just above where the
Tuloma and the Kola rivers come together, is Murmansk. That’s the
largest city north of the Arctic Circle. Population about a half
million. Ten miles further northeast is Severomorsk, headquarters for
the whole Russian Northern Fleet. Enormous naval support facilities,
shipyards, ammunition depots, that sort of thing.”
“There was a big explosion there a while back, wasn’t there?” Tombstone
asked.
“Correct. May 1984. Most of the Northern Fleet’s missile reserves went
up in one big fireball. We never did learn the number of casualties,
but the damage was extensive.
“Anyway, the Tuloma River starts to open up here, becoming the Kolskiy
Zaliv, the Kola Inlet. Eight miles north of Severomorsk is Polyamyy, on
the Polyamyy Inlet. It’s a major base for both surface ships and
submarines.
Nine miles further to the northwest is Sayda Guba. Important submarine
support facilities there.
“Right here in this region, between Polyamyy and Sayda Guba, are four
massive, underground facilities, tunnels cut right into the solid rock,
with blast doors thick enough to protect what’s inside from a nuclear
blast. The first was completed, we think, in the early 1980s. Satellite
photos show enormous structures against the hillside, with obvious
submarine support facilities outside. Our submariners call them ‘the
barns.””
“Typhoons,” Brandt said.
“That’s right. The Polyamyy complex is their primary Typhoon basing
facility. They don’t keep them all in one basket, of course. Way down
here, a good one hundred sixty miles east along the Kola Peninsula from
Polyamyy, is Gremikha. They base and supply Typhoons there too, as well
as at ports in the White Sea, but their main PLARB center is at
Polyamyy. The Russians, remember, like a tight, centralized
administration, especially when it comes to their nukes, and the
Polyamyy complex is nice and handy to Severomorsk.
“Altogether, the Russians have some forty air bases on the Kola
Peninsula, as well as hundreds of SAM sites, radar installations, supply
depots, bases for two motorized rifle divisions, and the headquarters,
barracks, and training center for the Northern Fleet’s Naval Infantry
brigade.
All of that is not counting their fleet facilities on the White Sea, at
Arkhangelsk and Severodvinsk.”
“So where the hell does Washington get off telling us to ‘close with and
shadow neo-Soviet fleet units,’ eh?” Brandt shook his bulldog head.
“What do they think, that CBG-14 is going to scare the Russkis into
being peaceful?”
“After the Battles of the Fjords, I imagine they’ll be a bit more
circumspect,” Tarrant said, his eyes twinkling. “And we’ll be backed by
CBG-7, the Eisenhower and her group, as well as Navy and Air Force
squadrons coming out of Norway. But we’re first-string this time. If
the Russkis want to play, we’ll be up to bat first.”
“Just like last time,” Tombstone said. “When we were up first against
two Soviet carrier groups. Does someone in Washington have it in for
us?”
“Political, Tombstone,” Brandt said. He made a sour face. “DACOWITS
wants a report on how their girls–excuse me, their women–stand up to