For everyone a storm meant time off from battle, for both sides to rest up for the next round. The Russians would have it easier. Their long-range aircraft would be down for needed maintenance, and their submarines, cruising four hundred feet down, could keep their sonar watches in comfort.
“Coffee, skipper?” Chief Clarke came out of the pilothouse, a cup in his hand with a saucer on top to keep the saltwater out.
“Thanks.” Morris took the cup and drained half of it. “How’s the crew doing?”
“Too tired to barf, sir.” Clarke laughed. “Sleeping like babies. How much longer this slop gonna last, Cap’n?”
“Twelve more hours, then it’s supposed to clear off. High-pressure system right behind this.” The long-range weather report had just come in from Norfolk. The storm track was moving farther north. Mostly clear weather for the next two weeks. Wonderful.
The chief leaned outboard to see how the forward deck fittings were taking the abuse. Every third or fourth wave, Pharris dug her nose in hard, occasionally taking green water over the bow. This water slammed into things, and the chief’s job was to get them fixed. Like most of the 1052s assigned to the stormy Atlantic, Pharris had been given spray strakes and higher bow plating on her last overhaul, which reduced but did not entirely eliminate the problem known to sailors since men first went to sea: the ocean will try very hard to kill you if you lack the respect she demands. Clarke’s trained eye took in a hundred details before he turned back.
“Looks like she’s riding this one out okay.”
“Hell, I’d settle for this all the way back,” Morris said after finishing off his coffee. “After it’s over, we’ll have to round up a lot of merchies, though.”
Clarke nodded agreement. Station-keeping was not especially easy in this kind of weather.
“So far, so good, Captain. Nothing big has come loose yet.”
“How ’bout the tail?”
“No sweat, sir. I got a man keeping an eye on that. Should hold up nice, ‘less we have to speed up.” Both men knew they wouldn’t speed up. They were making ten knots, and the frigate couldn’t run much faster than that in these seas no matter what the cause. “Heading aft, sir.”
“Okay. Heads up.” Morris looked aloft to check that his lookouts were still alert. Probabilities or not, there was danger out there. All kinds.
STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND
“Andoya. They weren’t heading for Bodo after all,” Toland said as he pored over the satellite photographs of Norway.
“How many troops on the ground do you think?”
“At least a brigade, Group Captain. Maybe a short division. Lots of tracked vehicles here, lots of SAMs, too. They’re already basing fighters at the airfield. Be bombers next-maybe there by now. These shots are three hours old.” The Russian naval force was already headed back to the Kola Fjord. They could reinforce by air now. He wondered what had happened to the regiment of Norwegians supposed to be based there.
“Their Blinder light bombers can reach us from there. Bastards can dash in and out at high-mach numbers, be bloody difficult to intercept.” The Soviets had launched a systematic attack on the RAF radar stations arrayed on the Scottish coast. Some attacks were by air-to-surface missiles, others by submarine-launched cruise missiles. One had even been by fighter-bombers with massive jamming support-but that one had been costly. RAF Tornados bad killed half of the raiders, mainly on the return leg. Twin-engine Blinder bombers could deliver their heavy bombloads after running in low and fast. Probably why Ivan wanted Andoya, Toland thought. Perfectly located for them. Easy to support from their own northern bases, and just a little too far for fighter-bombers in Scotland to counterattack without heavy tanker support.
“We can get there,” the American said, “but it means getting half our attack birds loaded up with buddy stores.”
“No chance. They’ll never release them from the reserve force.” The group captain shook his head.
“Then we have to start running a heavy patrol over the Faroes, and that keeps us from bothering Iceland too much.” Toland looked around the table. “Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together? How do we take the initiative away from these bastards? We’re playing their game. We’re reacting to their actions, not doing what we want to do. That’s how you lose, people. Ivan’s got his Backfires standing down because of this front moving across the central Atlantic. They’ll be flying again tomorrow after a good day’s rest, gunning for our convoys. If we can’t hit Andoya, and we can’t do much about Iceland, what the hell are we going to do, just sit here and worry about defending Scotland?”
“If we allow Ivan to establish air superiority over us-”
“If Ivan can kill the convoys, Group Captain, we lose the fucking war!” Toland pointed out.
“True. You’re quite correct, Bob. The problem is, how do we hit the Backfires? They appear to be flying directly down over Iceland. Fine, we have a known area of transit, but it’s protected by MiGs, laddy. We’d end up sending fighters to battle fighters.”
“So we try something indirect. We gun for the tankers they’re using.”
The fighter pilots present, two squadron operations officers had silently been watching the intelligence types talk.
“How the hell are we going to find their tankers?” one asked now.
“You think they can refuel thirty or more bombers without some radio chatter?” Toland asked. “I’ve listened in on Russian tanker ops by satellite, and I know there’s chatter. Let’s say we can get a snooper up there, and he finds out where they’re tanking. Why not then put some Toms astride their flightpath home?”
“Hit them after they tank the strike the fighter jock mused.
“It won’t do diddly for the strike today, say, but it’ll hurt the bastards tomorrow. If we succeed even once, then Ivan has to change his operational pattern, maybe send fighters out with them. If nothing else, we’ll have them reacting to us for a change.”
“And perhaps take the heat off us,” the group captain went on. “Right, let’s look at this.”
ICELAND
The map didn’t begin to show how hard it would be. The Skula River had carved a series of gorges over the centuries. The river was high, and the falls generated a cloud of spray from which a rainbow arched in the morning sun. It made Edwards angry. He’d always liked rainbows before, but this one meant the rocks they had to climb down were slick and wet. He figured it to be two hundred feet down to a floor of granite boulders. It looked a lot farther than that.
“You ever do any rock climbin’, Lieutenant?” Smith asked.
“Nope, nothing like this. You?”
“Yeah, ‘cept we mostly practice goin’ up. This here oughta be easier. Don’t worry too much about slipping. These boots hold pretty good. Just make sure you set your feet on something solid, okay? And you take it nice and slow. Let Garcia lead off. I already like this place, skipper. See that pool below the falls? There’s fish in there, and I don’t think anybody’ll ever spot us down this hole.
“Okay, you watch the lady.”
“Right. Garcia, lead off. Rodgers, cover the rear.” Smith slung his rifle across his back as he walked to Vigdis.
“Ma’am, you think you can handle this?” Smith held out his hand.
“I have been here before.” She almost smiled until she remembered who had brought her here, and how many times. She didn’t take his hand.
“That’s good, Miss Vigdis. Maybe you can teach us a thing or two. You be careful, now.”
It would have been fairly easy except for their heavy packs. Each man carried a fifty-pound load. The added weight and their fatigue affected their balance, with the result that someone watching from a distance might have taken the Marines for old women crossing an icy street. It was a fifty-degree slope down, in some places almost vertical, with some paths worn into the slopes, perhaps by the wild deer that throve here. For the first time fatigue worked in their favor. Fresher, they might have tried to move more quickly; as it was, each man was near the end of his string, and feared his own weakness more than the rocks. It took over an hour, but they made it down with nothing worse than cuts on their hands and bruises somewhere else.
Garcia crossed the river to the east side, where the canyon wall was steeper, and they camped out on a rocky shelf ten feet above the water. Edwards checked his watch. They had been on the move continuously for more than two days. Fifty-six hours. Each found himself a place in the deep shadows.
First they ate. Edwards downed a can of something without troubling to see what it was. His burps tasted like fish. Smith let the two privates sleep first, and gave his own sleeping bag to Vigdis. The girl fell mercifully asleep almost as quickly as the Marines. The sergeant made a quick tour of the area while Edwards watched, amazed that he had any energy left at all.