The General controlled his temper. So, a small thing that no one had thought of. Aboard ship, fires are fought with saltwater. They should have asked for the naval variant of this rocket. It was always the small things.
“Divide your launchers as planned. Place all the usable missiles at the Reykjavik airport, and the ones you think you can fix at Keflavik. I’ll order the replacement rockets to be flown in. Is there other damage?”
“Apparently not. The radar antennae were covered with plastic, and the instruments inside the vehicles were safe because the vehicles themselves were sealed. If we get new rockets, my battalion is fully ready. We’ll be ready to travel in twenty minutes. Sorry, Comrade.”
“Not your fault. You know where you are to go?”
“Two of my battery commanders have already checked the routes.”
“Excellent. Carry on, Comrade Colonel.” The General climbed back up the ladder to the bridge to look for his communications officer. Within two hours a plane loaded with forty SA-11 surface-to-air missiles was rolling off Murmansk’s Kilpyavr airfield bound for Iceland.
20 – The Dance of the Vampires
USS NIMITZ
Toland had been a busy fellow for the past twelve hours. The data on Iceland came in slowly, one confusing piece at a time, and even now he didn’t have enough to call a clear picture. The group’s orders had been changed, though only after too many hours of indecision. The mission to reinforce Iceland was a washout. For the past ten hours the battle group had been heading due east toward friendly air cover from England and France. Someone had decided that if the Marines could not go to Iceland, then they might find useful employment in Germany. Bob had expected them to be diverted to Norway, where a Marine Amphibious Brigade was already in place, but getting them there could prove difficult. A furious air battle had been raging over northern Norway for almost twenty hours, with losses heavy on both sides. The Norwegians had started the war with scarcely a hundred modem fighters. They were screaming for help, but there was no help for anyone as yet.
“They’re not just chewing the Norwegians up,” Toland observed. “They’re driving them south. Most of the attacks are on the northern bases, and they’re not giving them any breather at all.”
Chip nodded. “That figures. Gives their Backfires a straighter shot at us. Briefing time.”
“Yeah.” Toland packed up his notes and walked again toward flag country. It was easier this time.
“Okay, Commander,” Admiral Baker said. “Start with the peripheries.”
“Nothing much seems to be happening in the Pacific as yet. The Soviets are evidently putting a lot of diplomatic pressure on Japan. The same story they’ve given the rest of the world-it’s all a German plot.”
“Horseshit,” Baker observed.
“True enough, Admiral, but it’s a plausible enough story that Greece is refusing to honor its treaty commitments, and a lot of neutral and third-world countries are buying it. Anyway, the Russians are making noises about giving the Sakhalin Islands back if they play ball-or pounding hell out of them if they don’t. Bottom line: Japan is not allowing any bases on its soil to be used for offensive strikes against the Soviet Union. What we have in Korea is needed there. The only carrier group we have in the Western Pacific is centered on Midway. They’re well out to sea at present, and they don’t have the moxie to go after Kamchatka alone. There’s some air activity in the South China Sea west of the Philippines, but nothing major yet. Cam Ranh Bay appears to be empty of Soviet shipping. So the Pacific is quiet, but that won’t last long.
“In the Indian Ocean, somebody launched a missile attack against Diego Garcia, probably a submarine. Not much damage-just about everything there was sent out to sea five days ago-but it got their attention. At last report, their 10 squadron was at fifteen-north, ninety-east, a long way from our guys, and heading south.
“No activity at all on NATO’s southern flank. The Turks aren’t about to attack Russia on their own hook, and Greece is staying out of what they call ‘this German-Russian dispute.’ So Ivan has a secure southern flank, too, and so far it looks like he’s happy enough to keep it that way. So far the Russians are only fighting in Western Europe and against selected American installations elsewhere. They are telling anyone who’ll listen that they don’t even want to fight us. They’ve even guaranteed the safety of American tourists and businessmen in the Soviet Union. Supposedly, they’re flying them all out through India. We’ve underestimated the political dimension here, sir. So far it’s working for them.
“Okay. In Europe their operations began with from twenty to thirty Spetznaz commando attacks throughout Germany. For the most part they were defeated, but they scored big in two places. The port of Hamburg has been blocked. A pair of merchantmen was scuttled in the main channel, and the team that pulled it off got away clean. The same thing was attempted in Bremen-they blocked one channel partially and burned three ships at one of the container terminals. This team didn’t get away. The other attacks were against nuclear weapons storage sites, communications posts, and one big one against a tank site. Our guys were ready for it. We took losses, but those Spetznaz troops got chewed up in most cases.
“The Soviet Army attacked west just before dawn yesterday. The good news here is that the Air Force pulled something really wild. That new Stealth fighter we’ve been hearing rumblings about is in squadron service, and it was used to raise a lot of hell behind Russian lines. The Air Force says they’ve got air superiority, or something close to it, so Ivan must have taken a big hit. Whatever they did, the initial Russian attack was not as powerful as expected. They’re moving forward, but as of midnight nothing more than fifteen kilometers, and in two places they got stopped cold. So far no word on nukes or chemical weapons. Losses are reported heavy on both sides, especially up in northern Germany, where they moved the farthest. Hamburg is threatened. The Kiel Canal may have been hit with an airborne or airmobile attack, we’re not sure, but part is under Russian control. That situation is a little confused. A lot of activity on the Baltic, too. The fast attack boats of the German and Danish navies claim to have beaten up hard on a combined Soviet and East German attack, but again things are pretty confused.”
Toland went on to describe the situation in Norway.
“The direct threats against us are from submarines and aircraft. Ivan’s subs have been pretty busy. We have reports of twenty-two merchant ships sunk. The worst was Ocean Star, a Panamanian-flag passenger liner coming back from a Med cruise. Eight hundred miles northwest of Gibraltar she took a missile hit, type unknown, but probably from a Juliet. She burned, lots of casualties. Two Spanish frigates are moving in for the search-and-rescue.
“We have three submarines reported close to our course track, an Echo, a Tango, and a Foxtrot. There could be more, but intelligence reports have most of them south and west of us. When Iceland got neutralized, we lost the G-I-UK SOSUS line, and that will allow Ivan’s subs an easier access to the North Atlantic. SACLANT is dispatching subs to block the gaps. They’ll have to hustle; we have reports of numerous Soviet submarines heading for the Denmark Strait.”
“How many subs have we taken out?” Svenson asked.
”Lajes and Brunswick claim four kills. The P-3s got off to a good start. The bad news here is that one Orion is missing, and another reported being shot at by a sub-launched missile. This is being evaluated now, and we expect something firm by noon. In any case, the main threat to us now appears to be from aircraft, not subs. That could change by tomorrow, though.”
“One day at a time. Get to Iceland,” Baker ordered.
“The reports we had yesterday were correct. Evidently a regimental-sized unit came in by sea, and the rest of its division was airlifted in, starting around 1400 hours. We have to assume they’re all in by now.”
“Fighters?” Svenson asked.
“None reported, but it’s possible. Iceland has four usable airfields–”
“Wrong, Toland, it’s three,” Baker said harshly.
“Beg pardon, sir, four. The big base is Keflavik. Five runways, two of them over ten thousand feet long. We built the place to stage B-52s out of, and it’s quite a facility. Ivan got it virtually intact. His attack was planned deliberately not to crater the runways. Second, they have the civilian airfield at Reykjavik. The longest runway there is about two thousand meters, plenty big enough for fighters, and it’s got a city wrapped around it. Hitting that place means running the risk of civilian casualties. On the north side of the island is Akureyri, one hard-surface strip. The fourth one, Admiral, is old Keflavik, about two miles southeast of the current NATO air base. It shows on the maps as unusable, but I ran into a guy who put in two years on Iceland. That strip is usable, certainly for rough-surface-capable aircraft like our C- 130. The base personnel use it for racing their go-carts and sports cars. He thinks you could use fighters out of there, too. Finally, every city on that island has a gravel strip for their domestic airline. The AUG-23 and several other Russian fighters have a rough-field capability, and could use any one of those.”