Pharris manned her gun mount. The point-defense missile system and Gatling gun radar aft were switched to standby. Other radar was kept off. The radar operators in the combat information center sat nervously at their posts, fingering their switches while listening to the ESM reports and stealing an occasional look at the plot.
“Both of them probably have us now.”
Morris nodded. “Next come the Backfires.”
The captain thought of the battles he had studied at the naval academy-early in World War II, when the Japanese fleet had had air superiority, or when the Germans had used long-range Condors to circle convoys, radioing their positions to any interested party, and not a thing the Allies back then could do about. He’d never expected to be in the same fix. The same tactical situation repeating itself after forty years? It was absurd, Morris told himself. Absurd and terrifying.
“We have a visual sight on a Bear, just over the horizon at two-eight-zero,” the talker said.
“Director, use your optics to track the target aft,” the tactical action officer said at once. He looked over to Morris. “Maybe he’ll fly close enough for a shot.”
“Don’t light off any radars just yet. He might just wander into somebody’s missile envelope if he’s not careful.”
“No way he’ll be that dumb.”
“He will try to evaluate the convoy defenses,” Morris said quietly. “He can’t have them visually yet, not quite yet. Then for a while all he’ll be able to see is bumps with wakes behind them. Not easy to identify a ship from an airplane, mister. Let’s see just how curious this guy is . . .”
“Aircraft just changed course,” the talker reported. “Turning east towards us.”
“Air action starboard! Right standard rudder. All ahead full! Come to new course one-eight-zero,” Morris ordered immediately. He turned south to lure the Bear closer to the SAM ships. “Illuminate the target. Weapons free! Engage when he gets within range.”
Pharris heeled hard to the left as she changed course. Forward, the five-inch gun mount rotated clockwise as the ship brought her stem across the target bearing. As soon as the gun mount was unmasked, firecontrol radars gave it a target solution, and the long-barrel gun elevated to thirty degrees and locked on the target. The point-defense missile mount on the fantail did the same.
“Target is at thirty thousand feet, range fifteen miles and closing.”
The escort commander still had not authorized a missile launch. Better to have Ivan shoot his missiles first, before he knew what lay in his path. Data from the carrier battle was already out to the fleet. The big Russian air-to-surface missiles were not especially hard targets to hit, since they ran straight for their targets, though you did have to react in a hurry: they were mighty fast. He figured that the Bear was still doing a target evaluation and did not yet know the strength of the escort force. The longer he was kept in the dark, the better, because the Backfires would not have much time to loiter this far from their bases. And if the Bear came in just a little closer . . .
“Commence firing!” the TAO shouted.
Pharris’s gun mount went to full-automatic mode, firing a round every two seconds. The Bear was barely within range of her gun, and there was scant chance of a kill, but it was time to give him something to worry about.
The first five rounds fell short, exploding harmlessly a mile from the Bear, but the next three came closer, one exploding only two hundred yards from his left wing. The Soviet pilot instinctively turned right to evade. That was a mistake. He didn’t know that the nearest row of “merchantmen” carried missiles.
Seconds later, two missiles launched and the Bear immediately dove to evade, a shower of chaff in her wake as she headed right for Pharris, which gave the frigate’s gun crew another chance to score a kill. They fired off twenty new rounds as the plane approached. Perhaps two were close enough to damage the bomber, but there was no visible result. The missiles came in next, tiny white darts trailing columns of gray smoke. One missed and detonated in the chaff cloud, but the second detonated a hundred yards away from the bomber. The warhead expanded explosively like a watchspring, breaking into thousands of fragments, and several ripped into the Bear’s port wing. The massive propJet lost power in one engine and suffered major wing damage before the pilot regained control just outside Pharris’s gun range. She headed off north, trailing smoke.
The other Bear remained discreetly out of everyone’s range. The raid commander had just learned a lesson that he’d pass on to his regimental intelligence officer.
“More radars coming on. Down Beats!” warned the ESM technician. “I count ten-count is increasing. Fourteen-eighteen!” the air-search radar operator sang out next.
“Radar contacts, bearing zero-three-four, range one-eight-zero miles. I count four targets, now five-six targets. Course two-one-zero, speed six hundred knots.”
“Here come the Backfires,” TAO said.
“Radar contact!” came the next call. “Vampire! Vampire! We have inbound missiles.”
Morris cringed inwardly. The escorts all switched on their radar transmitters. Missiles trained out on the incoming targets. But Pharris was not part of that game. Morris ordered his ship to flank speed, turning north to race away from the missiles’ probable target area.
“The Backfires are turning back. The Bear is holding position. We have some radio chatter. Now twenty-three inbound missiles. Bearing changing on all contacts,” TAO said. “They’re all headed for the convoy. Looks like we’re in the clear.”
Morris could hear the crew in the Combat Information Center take one deep collective breath. He watched the radar display with marginal relief. The missiles were streaking in from the northeast, and the SAMs were coming up to meet them. The convoy was again ordered to scatter, the merchantmen racing away from the center of the target. What followed had an eerie resemblance to an arcade game. Of the twenty-three Soviet-launched missiles, nine broke through the SAMs and dove into the convoy. They hit seven merchantmen.
All seven were lost. Some disintegrated at once under the hammering impact of the thousand-kilogram warheads. The others lingered long enough for their crews to escape with their lives. The convoy had left the Delaware with thirty ships. Only twenty were left, and there was almost fifteen hundred miles of open ocean between them and Europe.
GRAFARHOLT, ICELAND
Two Backfires ran short of fuel and decided to land at Keflavik. Behind them was the damaged Bear. It circled Reykjavik waiting for the Backfires to clear the runway. Edwards reported it in as a propeller aircraft with a damaged engine. The sun was low over the northwestern horizon, and the Bear gleamed yellow against the cobalt-blue sky.
“Stay on the air, Beagle,” Doghouse ordered. Three minutes later, Edwards saw why.
This time there was no standoff jamming to warn the Soviets. Eight FB-111s swept in over the rocks, southwest from the island’s rocky center. They skimmed down the bottom of Selja Valley in elements of two, their green and gray camouflage making them almost invisible to the fighters circling overhead. The lead pair turned due west, with another pair half a mile behind it. The remaining four went south around Mt. Hus.
“Holy shit.” Smith saw them first, two fast-moving tail fins to the south. Just as Edwards found them, the lead aircraft popped up and launched a pair of TV-guided bombs. The wingman did the same, and both attackers turned north. The four bombs homed in on the transformer station below them, and all landed within the fence perimeter. As though a single switch had been thrown, every light in view went out. The second pair of Aardvarks roared low over Highway 1, blazing over the rooftops of Reykjavik to line up on their target. The leader lofted his own smart-bombs, and his wingman broke left for the airport tankfarm on the waterfront. Moments later, the control tower exploded, along with a hangar, and Rockeye cluster-bombs blew the fuel tanks apart. Caught by surprise, the Russian gun and missile crews fired too late.
The defense troops at Keflavik were surprised, too, first by the sudden loss of electrical power, then by the bombers, which arrived only a minute later. Here, too, the control tower and hangars were the primary targets, and most came apart under the impact of two-thousand-pound bombs. The second team found two parked Backfires and a missilelaunch vehicle for their Rockeyes to hit, and sprinkled more softballsized bomblets over the runways and taxiways. Meanwhile, the FB-111s continued west on afterburner, with gunfire and missiles chasing them-and fighters. Six Fulcrums dove for the retreating Varks, whose protective jammers filled the sky with electronic noise.
Free of their ordnance loads, the American bombers blazed away at seven hundred knots, a scant hundred feet over the wavetops, but the Soviet fighter commander would not turn away from this one. He’d seen what they had done to Keflavik, and he was furious at having been caught unaware despite having his fighters aloft. The Fulcrums had a slight speed advantage and closed the gap slowly. They were over a hundred miles offshore when their missile radars burned through the Americans’ jamming. Two fighters immediately launched missiles, and the American aircraft jinked up, then down to lose them. One FB-111 took a hit and cartwheeled into the sea, and the Soviets were preparing a second volley when their threat receivers came on.