“Nimitz is still at Southampton,” his intelligence chief pointed out. “He came into port with a severe list, and there is no drydock large enough to accommodate him. He’s tied to the Ocean Dock; he’s not going anywhere. That gives the Americans three carriers: Coral Sea, America, and Independence. Saratoga is being used for convoy escorting duties. The rest of their Atlantic Fleet carriers are in the Indian Ocean.”
Novikov grunted. That was bad news for the Indian Ocean squadron, but they were part of the Soviet Pacific Fleet. Not his problem. He had enough of his own. For the first time he faced a dilemma that he’d inflicted on the NATO navies. He had more tasks than he had ships, and sending half of his dedicated ASW forces after submarines that were already retreating didn’t help matters!
NORTHWOOD, ENGLAND
“Hello again, Admiral,” Toland said.
Beattie looked much better. The blue eyes had the gleam of crystal now and the Admiral’s back was ramrod-straight as he stood in front of his wall-sized map with his arms folded.
“How are things in Scotland, Commander?”
“Good, sir. The last two raids got chewed up. May I ask how the Doolittle force made out? One of the boats is commanded by a friend of mine.”
Beattie turned. “Which?”
“Chicago, sir. Dan McCafferty.”
“Oh. It would seem that one of the boats was damaged. Chicago and one other are escorting her out. In fact, they are raising quite a rumpus in the eastern Barents. We have indications that the Soviets are sending a sizable force after them. In any case, you’re going back to your carrier fleet, and you’re to meet with my intelligence staff so that you can bring your chaps up to date when you get there. I wanted to see you personally to thank you for that telex you sent about trailing the Backfires to their doorstep. That idea was very useful to us. You’re a reservist, I understand. How on earth did they ever let you go?”
“I put my destroyer on a sandbar once.”
“I see. You have atoned for that error, Commander.” Beattie offered his hand.
WACHERSLEBEN, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
“Stop that Goddamned truck!” Alekseyev screamed. He stood in the middle of the road, daring the vehicle to run over him. It stopped and he ran around to the cab.
“Who the hell are you?” the corporal asked.
“I am General Colonel Alekseyev,” he answered agreeably. “Who might you be, Comrade?”
“I am Corporal Vladimir Ivan’ch Maryakhin.” He managed to say this despite a mouth that hung open on seeing the General’s shoulder boards.
“Since I appear to outrank you, Corporal, you will take me and my aide to the next traffic-control point as quickly as this truck will go. Move!”
Alekseyev and Sergetov got in the back. They found a solid mass of crates, but had enough room to sit on top of them.
The General swore. “Three wasted hours.”
“It could have been worse.”
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
“It’s a major attack, sir. They just started moving on what looks like an eighty-kilometer front.”
SACEUR looked at the map impassively. It wasn’t as though they hadn’t expected this. Intelligence had predicted it twelve hours earlier from Soviet traffic patterns. He had exactly four reserve brigades that he could use in this sector. Thank God, he thought, that I managed to persuade the Germans to shorten the line at Hannover. Half his reserves had come from that, and not a day too soon.
“Main axis of the attack?” the General asked his operations officer.
“None is apparent at the moment. It looks like a general attack-”
“Pushing hard to find a weak point,” SACEUR finished the statement. “Where’s their reserve force?”
“Sir, we’ve identified elements of three divisions here south of Fölziehausen. They appear to be A units. The attack now under way appears to be mainly B formations.”
“Have we hurt them that bad?” SACEUR asked rhetorically. His intelligence officers were working hard to establish just what enemy casualties were, and he got a report every evening. B-class reserve units had started appearing at the front five days before, which was puzzling. He knew the Soviets had at least six Category-A units in reserve in the southern Ukraine, but there were no indications they were moving. Why wasn’t this force being committed to the German front? Why were they sending reservists instead? He’d been asking that question for several days, only to get shrugs from his intelligence chief. Not that I’m complaining, he thought. Those two field armies might have been enough to rupture his front entirely.
“Where’s a good place to hit back?”
“Sir, we have these two German tank brigades at Springe. The Russian attack appears to have two reserve motor-rifle divisions, with a divisional border right here, ten kilometers from them. They’ve been off the line for two days now. I wouldn’t call them well rested, but-”
“Yeah.” SACEUR was given to cutting his officers off. “Get ’em moving!”
USS REUBEN JAMES
O’Malley circled the frigate after a long morning’s search for what turned out to be nothing. Three merchant ships had died in the past three hours, two to missiles that had leaked through the convoy’s SAM defenses and one to a torpedo. Both submarines had been prosecuted, one sunk by Gallery’s helo inside the convoy itself. They were about to come within ground-based air coverage from the European mainland, and it seemed to the pilot that they’d won this battle. The convoy was getting across with acceptable losses. Thirty-six more hours to landfall.
The landing was routine, and after a trip to the head, O’Malley went into the wardroom for a drink and a sandwich. He found Calloway waiting for him. The pilot had met the reporter briefly but not really spoken with him.
“Is landing your helicopter on this little toy ship as dangerous as it looks?”
“A carrier has a slightly larger deck. You’re not doing a story about me, are you?”
“Why not? You killed three submarines yesterday.”
O’Malley shook his head. “Two ships, two helos, plus some help from the rest of the screening force. I just go where they send me. There’s a lot to sub-hunting. All the parts have to work or the other guy wins.”
“Is that what happened last night?”
“Sometimes the other guy does something right, too. I just spent four hours looking and came away empty. Maybe that was a sub, maybe not. Yesterday was pretty lucky all the way around.”
“Does it bother you, sinking them?” Calloway asked.
“I’ve been in the Navy for seventeen years and I’ve never met anybody who likes killing people. We don’t even call it that, except maybe when we’re drunk. We sink ships and try to pretend that they’re just ships-things without people in them. It’s dishonest, but we do it anyway. Hell, this is the first time I’ve actually done what my main job is supposed to be. Until now all my combat experience has been search-and-rescue stuff. I never even dropped a war-shot on a real sub until yesterday. I haven’t thought about it enough to know if I like it or not.” He paused. “It’s an awful sound. You hear rushing air. If you penetrate the hull at deep depth, the sudden pressure change inside the hull supposedly causes the air to ignite and everyone inside the boat incinerates. I don’t know if it’s true, but somebody told me that once. Anyway, you hear the rushing air, then you hear the screech-like a car throwing its brakes on hard. That’s the bulkheads letting go. Then comes the noise of the hull collapsing, hollow boom, sort of. And that’s it: a hundred people just died. No, I don’t much like it.
“The hell of it is, it’s exciting,” O’Malley went on. “You’re doing something extremely difficult. It requires concentration and practice and a lot of abstract thought. You have to get inside the other guy’s head, but at the same time you think of your mission as destroying an inanimate object. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? So, what you do is, you don’t think about that aspect of the job. Otherwise the job wouldn’t get done.”
“Are we going to win?”
“That’s up to the guys on land. All we do is support them. This convoy’s going to make it.”
FÖLZIEHAUSEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
“They told me you were dead,” Beregovoy said.
“Not even scratched this time. It startled Vanya here out of a sound sleep, however. How does the attack go?”
“Initial signs are promising. We have an advance of six kilometers here, and almost as much here at Springe. We might have Hannover surrounded by tomorrow.”
Alekseyev found himself wondering if his superior had been right. Perhaps NATO lines had been thinned so much they’d been forced to give ground.
“Comrade General.” It was the Army intelligence officer. “I have a report of German tanks at Eldagsen. He-he just went off the air.”