Red Storm Rising (1986) (55 page)

“Makes sense. When you gonna radio in?”

“I should have done that a long time ago, I just don’t want to climb those damned rocks.”

“Lieutenant, I’m just a dumbass grunt, but insteada doing that, why don’t you just walk downstream about half a mile? You oughta be able to track in on your satellite that way, right?”

Edwards turned to look north. Walking about that far would lower the angle to the satellite as well as climbing . . . why didn’t
I
think of that?
Because like any good Air Force Academy graduate, you thought in terms of up-and-down instead of sideways.
The lieutenant shook his head angrily, noting the sergeant’s sly grin before he lifted the radio pack and heading down the canyon’s rocky floor.

“You’re very late, Beagle,” Doghouse said at once. “Repeat your status.”

“Doghouse, things are just terrible. We had a run-in with a Russian patrol.” Edwards explained for another two minutes.

“Beagle, are you out of your Goddamned mind? Your orders are to avoid, repeat avoid, contact with the enemy. How do you know that somebody doesn’t know you’re there? Over!”

“They’re all dead. We rolled their vehicle over a cliff and set fire to it. We made it look like an accident, just like on TV. It’s all over, Doghouse. No sense worrying about it now. We are now ten klicks from where it happened. I’m resting my men for the rest of the day. We will continue our march north tonight. This may take longer than you expect. The terrain is rugged as hell, but we’ll do our best. Nothing more to report. We can’t see much from where we are.”

“Very well. Your orders are unchanged, and please don’t play white knight again—acknowledge.”

“Roger that. Out.” Edwards smiled to himself as he repacked the radio. When he got back to the others, he saw that Vigdis was stirring in her sleep. He lay down beside her, careful to stay a few feet away.

“Bloody cowboy—John Wayne rescuing the settlers from the bloody red Indians!”

“We weren’t there,” said the man with the eye patch. He fingered it briefly. “It is a mistake to judge a man from a thousand miles away. He was there, he saw what was happening. The next thing is, what does this tell us about Ivan’s troops?”

“The Sovs do not exactly have an exemplary record for dealing with civilians,” the first man pointed out.

“The Soviet airborne troops are known for their stem discipline,” the second replied. Formerly a major in the SAS, and invalided out, he was now a senior man with the Special Operations Executive, the SOE. “Conduct like this is not indicative of well-disciplined troops. That may be important later on. For the moment, as I told you earlier, this lad is turning out very nicely indeed.” He said it without a trace of smugness.

The flight in was bad enough. They’d come in aboard a light bomber, racing in at low level to a military airport east of Berlin, no more than four staff members to an aircraft. All had arrived safely, but Alekseyev wondered how much of it was skill and how much luck. This airfield had clearly been visited by NATO aircraft recently and the General already had his doubts about what his colleagues in the Air Force had told him about their ability to control the sky even in daylight. From Berlin a helicopter took his party to CINC-West’s forward command post outside Stendal. Alekseyev was the first senior officer to arrive at the underground bunker complex, and he did not like what he found. The staff officers present were too concerned with what the NATO forces were doing and not concerned enough with what the Red Army was supposed to be doing to them. The initiative had not been lost, but his first impression was that the danger was real. Alekseyev located the command operations officer and started assembling information on how the campaign was going. His commander arrived half an hour later, and immediately took Alekseyev into his office.

“Well, Pasha?”

“I have to see the front at once. We have three attacks under way. I need to see how they are going. The German counterattack at Hamburg was repulsed, again, but this time we lack the forces to exploit it. The northern area is currently in stalemate. Our deepest penetration to date is just over one hundred kilometers. The timetable has gone completely to hell, losses are far higher than expected—on both sides, but worse for us. We have gravely underestimated the lethality of NATO antitank weapons. Our artillery has been unable to suppress them enough for our forces to achieve a major breakthrough. NATO air power is hurting us badly, especially at night. Reinforcements are not getting forward as well as we expected. We still have the initiative in most areas, but unless we achieve a breakthrough, that may not last more than another few days. We must find a weakness in NATO lines and launch a major coordinated attack soon.”

“The NATO situation?”

Alekseyev shrugged. “Their forces are fully in the field. Further reinforcements are coming in from America, but from what our prisoners have told us, not so well as they expected. My impression is that they are stretched very thin in some areas, but we have not as yet identified a major area of weakness. If we can find one, and exploit it, I think we can rupture the front and stage a multidivisional breakout. They can’t be strong everywhere. The German demand for forward defense compels the NATO forces to try and stop us everywhere. We made the same mistake in 1941. It cost us heavily. It must be doing the same to them.”

“How soon do you wish to visit the front?”

“Within the hour. I’ll take Captain Sergetov with me—”

“The Party man’s son? If he’s hurt, Pasha . . .”

“He’s an officer in the Soviet Army, whatever his father might be. I need him.”

“Very well. Keep me posted on where you are. Send the operations people in. We have to get control of this whorehouse.”

Alekseyev commandeered a new Mi-24 attack helicopter for his reconnaissance. Overhead, a flight of agile MiG-21 fighters guarded the General as the helicopter skimmed low over the treetops. He eschewed the seat, instead crouching by the windows to see what he could. A lifetime of military service had not prepared him for the destruction that lay on the landscape below him. It seemed that every road held a burned-out tank or truck. The major crossroads had gotten particularly severe attention from NATO air power. Here a bridge had been knocked out, and immediately behind it a company of tanks waiting its repair had been savaged. The charred remains of aircraft, vehicles, and men had transformed the neat, picturesque German countryside into a junkyard of high-technology weapons. As they crossed the border into West Germany, things only got worse. Each road had been fought for, each tiny village. He counted eleven smashed tanks outside one such village, and wondered how many others had been pulled off the battlefield for repair. The town itself was almost totally destroyed by artillery and resulting fires. He saw only one building that looked like it might be habitable. Five kilometers west, the same story was repeated, and Alekseyev realized that a whole regiment of tanks had been lost in a ten-kilometer advance down a single road. He began to see NATO equipment, a German attack helicopter identifiable only from the tail rotor that stuck out from the circle of ashes, a few tanks and infantry carriers. For both sides the proud vehicles manufactured at the greatest expense and skill were scattered on the landscape like trash thrown from a car window. The Soviets had more to expend, the General knew, but how many more?

The helicopter landed at the edge of a forest. Just within the treeline, Alekseyev saw, antiaircraft guns tracked them all the way to the ground. He and Sergetov jumped out, ducking under the still-turning main rotor as they ran into the trees. There they found a cluster of command vehicles.

“Welcome, Comrade General,” said a dirty-faced Red Army colonel.

“Where is the divisional commander?”

“I’m in command. The General was killed day before yesterday by enemy artillery fire. We have to move the CP twice a day. They are becoming very skilled at locating us.”

“Your situation?” Alekseyev asked curtly.

“The men arc tired, but they can still fight. We are not getting sufficient air support, and the NATO fighters give us no rest at night. We have about half our nominal combat strength, except in artillery. That’s down to a third. The Americans have just changed tactics on us. Now, instead of attacking the leading tank formations, they are sending their aircraft after our guns first. We were badly hurt last night. Just as we were launching a regimental attack, four of their ground-attack fighters nearly wiped out a battalion of mobile guns. The attack failed.”

“What about concealment!” Alekseyev demanded.

“Ask the devil’s mother why it doesn’t work,” the colonel shot back. “Their radar aircraft can evidently track vehicles on the ground—we’ve tried jamming, we’ve tried lures. Sometimes it works, but sometimes not. The division command post has been attacked twice. My regiments are commanded by majors, my battalions by captains. NATO tactics are to go for the unit commanders, and the bastards are good at it. Every time we approach a village, my tanks have to fight through a swarm of missiles. We’ve tried rockets and artillery to suppress them, but you can’t take the time to blast every building in sight—we’d never get anywhere.”

“What do you need?”

“Air support and lots of it. Get me the support to smash through what’s opposing me, and I’ll give you your damned breakout!” Ten kilometers behind the front, a tank division was waiting for this very unit to rupture the front—but how could it exploit a breakthrough that was never made?

“Your supply situation?”

“Could be better, but we’re getting enough forward to supply what we have left—not enough to support an intact division.”

“What arc you doing now?”

“We launch a two-regiment attack just over an hour from now. Another village, named Bieben. We estimate enemy strength as two understrength battalions of infantry, supported by tanks and artillery. The village commands a crossroads we need. Same one we tried to get last night. This assault should work. Do you wish to observe?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’d better get you forward. Forget the helicopter unless you want to die. Besides”—the colonel smiled—“I can use it to support the attack. I’ll give you an infantry carrier to get you forward. It will be dangerous up there, Comrade General,” the colonel warned.

“Fine. You can protect us. When do we leave?”

The calm sea meant that
Pharris
was back on port-and-starboard steaming. Half the crew was always on duty as the frigate held her station north of the convoy. The towed sonar was streamed aft, and the helicopter sat ready on the flight deck, its crew dozing in the hangar. Morris slept also, snoring away in his leather bridge chair, to the amusement of his crewmen. So, officers did it, too. The crew accommodations often sounded like a convention of chainsaws.

“Captain, message from CINCLANTFLT.”

Morris looked up at the yeoman and signed for the message form. An eastbound convoy one hundred fifty miles north of them was under attack. He walked back to the chart table to check distances. The submarines there were not a threat to him. That was that. He had his own concerns, and his world had shrunk to include them only. Another forty hours to Norfolk, where they would refuel, replace expended ordnance, and sail again within twenty-four hours.

“What the hell’s that?” a sailor said loudly. He pointed to a low-lying trail of white smoke.

“That’s a missile,” answered the officer of the deck. “General quarters! Captain, that was a cruise missile southbound a mile ahead of us.”

Morris snapped upright in his seat and blinked his eyes clear. “Signal the convoy. Energize the radar. Fire the chaff.” Morris ran to the ladder to CIC. The ship’s alarm was sounding its strident note before he got there. Aft, two Super-RBOC chaff rockets leaped into the sky and exploded, surrounding the frigate with a cloud of aluminum foil.

“I count five inbounds,” a radar operator was saying. “One’s heading toward us. Bearing zero-zero-eight, range seven miles, speed five hundred knots.”

“Bridge, come right full rudder to zero-zero-eight.” the tactical action officer ordered. “Stand by to fire off more chaff. Air action forward, weapons free.”

The five-inch gun swiveled slightly and loosed several rounds, none of which came near the incoming missile.

“Range two miles and closing,” reported the radarman.

“Fire four more Super-RBOCs.”

Morris heard the rockets launch. The radar showed their chaff as an opaque cloud that enveloped the ship.

“CIC,” called a lookout. “I see it. Starboard bow, inbound—it’s gonna miss, I got a bearing change. There—there it goes, passing aft. Missed us by a couple hundred yards.”

The missile was confused by the chaff. Had its brain had the capacity to think, it would have been surprised that it struck nothing. Instead, on coming back to a clear sky, the radar seeker merely looked for another target. It found one, fifteen miles ahead, and altered course toward it.

“Sonar,” Morris ordered, “check bearing zero-zero-eight. There’s a missile-armed sub out there.”

“Looking now, sir. Nothing shows on that bearing.”

“A five-hundred-knot sea-skimmer. That’s a Charlie-class sub, maybe thirty miles out,” Morris said. “Get the helo out there. I’m going topside.”

The captain reached the bridge just in time to see the explosion on the horizon. That was no freighter. The fireball could only mean a warship had had her magazines exploded by a missile, perhaps the one that had just missed them. Why hadn’t they been able to stop it? Three more explosions followed. Slowly the noise traveled across the sea toward them, reaching
Pharris
as the deep sound of an enormous bass drum. The frigate’s Sea Sprite helicopter was just lifting off, racing north in the hope of catching the Soviet sub near the surface. Morris ordered his ship to slow to five knots in the hope that the lower speed would allow his sonar to perform just a little better. Still nothing. He returned to CIC.