“You’re full of good news,” observed Nimitz’s commander, air group, known as the CAG. “What about the other base facilities, like fuel?”
“The fuel depot right on the base was destroyed in the attack, but the base tank-farm was not, and neither was the new terminal at Hakotstanger. Unless somebody takes it out, we’ve left the Russians enough jet fuel to operate for months.”
“How solid is all this?” Baker wanted to know.
“We have an eyeball report from a Navy P-3 crew who surveyed the damage immediately after the attack. The RAF sent two recce birds for a look-see. The first one got good shots of Keflavik and the surrounding area. The second didn’t make it back, reason unknown.”
“SAMs.” The CAG really looked unhappy now.
Toland nodded. “A good bet. The photos show vehicles consistent with the presence of a reinforced Soviet Air Rifle division. Icelandic radio and TV are off the air. The Brits report contact with ham radio operators on the Icelandic coast, but nothing at all is coming out of the southwest corner of the island. That’s where most of the people are, and it looks to be completely under Soviet control. We’re getting some intel information, but it can’t last.”
“What you’re telling us is that we can’t expect raid warning from the Norwegians, and we’ve lost our picket fence at Iceland. What other assets do we have?” Svenson asked.
“Evidently something. I’ve been told to expect possible raid warning from an asset code-named Realtime. If a large force of Soviet aircraft leaves Kola, we ought to know about it.”
“What’s Realtime?” the CAG asked.
“They didn’t tell me that.”
“Submarine.” Baker smiled thinly. “Jesus protect him when he transmits. Well, Ivan sent his bombers against Iceland yesterday. Anybody wonder where they’ll be coming today?”
“In case anyone wants it, my official intelligence estimate is, right here,” Toland said.
“Always nice to have a professional opinion,” the CAG observed acidly. “We ought to head north and pound on those Russians” -by training and experience the CAG was an attack pilot- “but we can’t do that until we deal with the Backfires. What is the strength of the threat to us?”
“I’m assuming no assistance from the Air Force units. With Soviet Naval Aviation alone we have six regiments of strike aircraft, three each of Backfires and Badgers. One regiment of Badger jammers. One regiment of Bear reconnaissance birds. Add some tanker assets to that. Twenty-seven aircraft to the regiment. That’s about a hundred sixty strike aircraft, each of which can carry two or three air-to-surface missiles.”
“Those Badgers will have to stretch to get here. The round trip must be a good four thousand miles, even if they cut across Norway. Those are tired old birds,” CAG said. “What about their satellites?”
Toland checked his watch. “There will be a RORSAT pass over us in fifty-two minutes. They got us twelve hours ago, too.”
“I hope the Air Force gets its act together with their ASAT pretty soon,” Svenson said quietly. “If Ivan can real-time that satellite intelligence, they don’t need those damned Bears. They can figure our course easily enough, and it’s only a four-hour cruise down here for them.”
“Try a course change as it passes overhead?” CAG wondered.
“Not much point in it,” Baker replied. “We’ve been heading east for ten hours. They can’t miss that, and we can only do twenty knots. We can give them a plus-minus of eighty miles. How long does it take to fly that?”
Toland noted that Svenson and the CAG didn’t like that decision, but neither disputed the point. He’d been told that Baker wasn’t a man to argue with, and wondered if that was a good trait in a combat commander.
HILL 152, ICELAND
Edwards took some solace in having predicted the cold front’s arrival properly. The rain had come exactly on time, just after midnight. If there was anything to make the worst situation worse still, it was a steady cold rain. The showers were intermittent now, a ceiling of gray clouds two thousand feet over their heads, blown along by thirty-knot winds toward Iceland’s mountainous center.
“Where are the fighters?” Edwards asked. He swept Reykjavik airport with his binoculars, but couldn’t find the six fighters he’d reported on the previous evening. All the transports were gone also. He saw one Soviet helicopter and some tanks. There was very little traffic on the streets and roads he could see. Certainly not much for a Monday morning. Surely the commercial fishermen would be driving to their boats? “Anybody see them lift out?”
“No, sir. Weather we had last night, the whole Russian Air Force could have come in and left.” Sergeant Smith was annoyed too, mainly with the weather. “Could be in those hangars, maybe.”
About 2300 the previous night, they’d observed a streak of light like that of a rocket taking off, but whatever it had been aimed at had been lost in a rain shower. Edwards had not reported that, halfway wondering if it might have been lightning.
“What’s that? That’s no tank. Garcia, check it out-five hundred yards west of the terminal.” The lieutenant handed the glasses over.
“Okay. That’s some kinda tracked vehicle. Looks like it has some sort of-not a gun, there’s three of them. Rocket launcher, maybe.”
“SAMs,” the sergeant commented. “How much you wanna bet that’s what we saw shot off last night?”
“E.T., phone home.” Edwards started putting his radio together.
“How many launchers and what type?” Doghouse asked.
“We see one launcher, possibly three missiles on it. We can’t tell the type. I wouldn’t know the difference anyway. They might have fired off a missile last night about 2300 local.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell us?” Doghouse demanded.
“‘Cause I didn’t know what it was!” Edwards nearly yelled. “Goddammit! We’re reporting on everything we see, and you don’t even believe half of what we tell you!”
“Settle down, Beagle. We believe you. I know it’s hard. Anything else happening?”
“He knows it’s hard,” Edwards told his men. “Can’t see much activity at all, Doghouse. Stiff early, but we’d expect civilian traffic on the streets.”
“Copy that. Okay now, Edwards, real fast, what’s your father’s middle name?”
“Doesn’t have one,” Edwards said. “What-”
“The name of his boat?”
“The Annie Jay. What the hell is this?”
“What happened to your girlfriend Sandy?”
It was like a knife in the guts. The tone of his voice answered for him. “You go and fuck yourself!”
“Copy that,” the voice replied. “Sorry, Lieutenant, but you had to pass that test. We have no further orders for you yet. Tell you the truth, nobody’s decided what to do about you. Stay cool and avoid contact. Same transmission schedule. If you get tagged and they try to make you play radio games, start off every transmission with our call sign and say that everything is going great. Got that? Going great.”
“Roger. If you hear me say that, you know something’s wrong. Out.”
KEFLAVIK, ICELAND
The major commanding the Air Force detachment was enjoying himself despite having been up for over thirty hours. Keflavik was a magnificent base, and the paratroopers had captured it nearly intact. Most importantly, the Americans had thoughtfully stored their maintenance equipment in protective shelters dispersed throughout the base, and all of it had survived. As he watched from the smashed control tower, a half-dozen sweeper trucks were brushing the last fragments from runway nine. In thirty minutes it would be safe to use. Eight fuel bowsers sat filled and ready on the field, and by the end of the day the pipeline should be repaired. Then this would be a fully functional Soviet air base.
“How long before our fighters arrive?”
“Thirty minutes, Comrade Major.”
“Get the radar operating.”
The Soviets had packed most of the equipment for a forward air base in one of the Fucik’s barges. A mobile long-range radar was now operating just west of the main runway intersection, plus a van from which ground controllers could direct radar intercepts of incoming targets. Three truck-vans of spare parts and air-to-air missiles were on the base, and three hundred maintenance personnel had been flown in the previous day. A full battery of SA-11 missiles guarded the runways, plus eight mobile antiaircraft guns and a platoon of infantrymen armed with handheld SAMs for low-flying raiders. The only hangup had been with the SAMs, and the replacements flown in a few hours ago had already been loaded on the launcher vehicles. Any NATO aircraft that came waltzing into Iceland was in for a rude surprise, as a Royal Air Force Jaguar had discovered the night before, shot out of the sky over Reykjavik before its pilot could react.
“Runway nine is cleared for operation,” the radio operator reported. “Excellent! Now get them working on one-eight. I want every strip operational by this afternoon.”
HILL 152, ICELAND
“What’s that?” Edwards saw it first for a change. The wide silver wings of a Badger bomber skirted in and out of the lower cloud layer. Then something else. It was smaller, and it disappeared back into the clouds.