Red Storm Rising (1986) (30 page)

They had practiced this task eight times in the past month. Some flight crews had been sleeping with their aircraft. Others were summoned from their quarters, no more than four hundred yards away. Those aircraft just back from patrol had their fuel tanks topped off, and were pre-flighted by the ground crews. Marine and Air Force guards not already at their posts rushed to them. It was just as well that the attack had come at this hour. There was only a handful of civilians about, and civilian air traffic was at its lowest. On the other hand, the men at Keflavik had been on double duty for a week now, and they were tired. Things which might have been done in five minutes now took seven or eight.

Edwards was back in his meteorological office, wearing his field jacket, flak jacket, and “fritz” style helmet. His emergency duty station—he could not think of his office as a “battle” station—was his assigned post. As if someone might need an especially deadly weather chart with which to attack an incoming bomber! The service had to have a plan for everything, Edwards knew. There had to be a plan. It
didn’t
have to make sense. He went downstairs to Air-Ops.

 

“I got breakaway on Bandit Eight, one—two birds launched. The machine says they’re AS-4s,” a Sentry controller reported. The senior officer got on the radio for Keflavik.

Twenty miles southwest of Keflavik, the “
Doctor Lykes
” was also a beehive of activity. As each Soviet bomber squadron launched its air-to-ground missiles, its commander transmitted a predetermined codeword that the
Fucik
copied. Her time had come.

“Rudder left,” Captain Kherov ordered. “Bring his bow into the wind.”

A full regiment of airborne infantry, many of them seasick from two weeks aboard the huge barge-carrier, was at work testing and loading weapons. The
Fucik’s
augmented crew was stripping the falsework from the aftermost four “barges,” revealing each in fact to be a Lebed-type assault hovercraft. The six-man crew of each removed the covers over the air intakes that led to the engines they had tended with loving care for a month. Satisfied, they waved to the craft commanders, who lit off the three engines in each of the aftermost pair.

The ship’s first officer stood at his elevator control station aft. On a hand signal, an eighty-five-man infantry company plus a reinforced mortar team were loaded into each craft. Power was increased, the hovercraft lifted up on their air cushions and were winched aft. In another four minutes, the vehicles were resting on the barge-loading elevator that formed the stem of the Seabee vessel.

“Lower away,” the first officer ordered. The winch operators lowered the elevator to the surface. The sea was choppy, and four-foot waves lapped at the
Fucik
’s bifurcated stem. When the elevator was level with the sea, first one, then the other Lebed commander increased power and moved off. At once, the elevator returned to the topmost deck while the first pair of hovercraft circled their mothership. In five more minutes, the four assault craft moved off in box formation toward the Keflavik Peninsula.

The
Fucik
continued her turn, returning to a northerly course to make the next hovercraft trip a shorter one. Her weather deck was ringed with armed troops carrying surface-to-air missiles and machine guns. Andreyev remained on the bridge, knowing this was where he belonged, but wishing he were leading his assault troops.

“Kef-Ops, the bandits are all turning right back after launching their ASMs. So far it’s been two birds per aircraft. We got fifty—make that fifty-six inbound missiles, and more are being launched. Nobody behind them, though. I repeat, nothing behind the bomber force. At least we don’t have any paratroopers headed in. Hunker down, guys, we now have sixty inbound missiles,” Edwards heard as he came through the door.

“At least they won’t be nukes,” said a captain.

“They’re shooting a hundred missiles at us—they don’t fuckin’
need
nukes!” replied another.

Edwards watched the radar picture over the shoulder of one of the officers. It was eerily like an arcade game. Big, slow-moving blips denoted the aircraft. Smaller, quicker blips were the Mach-2 missiles.

“Gotcha!” hooted the enlisted radar operator. The leading Eagle had gotten within missile range of the Badgers and exploded one with a Sparrow missile—ten seconds
after
it had launched its own missiles. A second Sparrow missed its separate target, but a third appeared locked on it. The first fighter’s wingman was just launching at yet another Russian. The Soviets had thought this one out, Edwards saw. They were attacking from all around the northern littoral, with lots of space between the bombers so that no single fighter could engage more than one or two. It was almost like—

“Anybody check the geometry of this?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” The captain looked around. “How come you aren’t where you belong?”

Edwards ignored the irrelevancy. “What’s the chance they’re trying to draw our fighters out, like?”

“Expensive bait.” The captain dismissed the idea. “You’re saying they might have launched their ASMs from farther out. Maybe they don’t fly as far as we thought. Point is, those missiles are ten minutes out now, the first of them, with about a five- or seven-minute delay to the last. And not a Goddamned thing we can do about it.”

“Yeah.” Edwards nodded. The Air-Ops/Met building was a two-story frame structure that vibrated every time the wind hit fifty knots. The lieutenant took out a stick of gum and started chewing on it. In ten minutes a hundred missiles, each carrying about a ton of high explosives—or
a nuclear warhead
—would start falling. The men outside would get the worst of it; the enlisted men and the flight crews trying to get the airplanes ready to race off. His assigned job was merely to keep out of the way. It made him a little ashamed. The fear he could now taste along with the peppermint made him more ashamed.

The Eagles were now all airborne, racing north. The last of the Backfires had just launched their missiles and were turning back northeast at full power as the Eagles raced at twelve hundred knots to catch up. Three of the interceptors launched missiles, and they succeeded in killing a pair of Backfires and damaging a third. The “Zulu” fighters which had scrambled off the deck could not catch the Backfires, the commanding controller on Sentry One noted, cursing himself for not having sent them after the older, less valuable Badgers, some of which they might have caught. Instead, he ordered them to slow down, and had his controllers vector them toward the supersonic missiles.

Penguin 8, the first of the P-3C Orion antisubmarine warfare aircraft, was rolling now, down runway two-two. It had been on patrol only five hours before, and its flight crew was still trying to shake off the sleep as they rotated the propjet aircraft off the concrete.

“Tipping over now,” the radar operator said. The first Russian missile was almost overhead, beginning its terminal dive. The Eagles had hit two of the incoming missiles, but courses and altitudes had been against them, and most of their Sparrows had missed, unable to catch the Mach-2 missiles. The F-15s orbited over central Iceland, well away from their base, as each pilot wondered if he’d have an airfield to return to.

Edwards cringed as the first landed—or didn’t land. The air-to-surface missile had a radar-proximity fuse. It detonated twenty meters off the ground, and the effects were horrific. It exploded directly over International Highway, two hundred yards from Air-Ops, its fragments ripping into a number of buildings, the worst hit being the base fire station. Edwards fell to the floor as fragments lashed through the wooden wall. The door was torn off its hinges by the blast and the air filled with dust. A moment later, at the Esso facility a hundred yards away, a fuel truck exploded, sending a fireball towering into the sky, and dropping burning jet fuel for blocks around. Electrical power was immediately lost. Radars, radios, and room lights went out at once, and battery-powered emergency lights didn’t come on as they were supposed to. For a terrified moment, Edwards wondered if the first missile really might have been a nuke. The blast had rippled through his chest, and he felt sudden nausea as his body tried to adjust to the sensations that assaulted it. He looked around and saw a man knocked unconscious by a falling light fixture. He didn’t know if he was supposed to buckle his helmet strap or not, and somehow this question seemed enormously important at the moment, though he didn’t remember why.

Another missile landed farther away, and then for a minute or so the sounds blended into a series of immense thunderclaps. Edwards was choking from the dust. It felt as though his chest would burst, and impulsively he bolted for the door to get fresh air.

He was greeted by a solid wall of heat. The Esso facility was a roaring mass of flames which had already engulfed the nearby photo lab and base thrift shop. More smoke rose from the enlisted housing area to the east. A half-dozen aircraft still on the flightline would never leave it, their wings snapped like toys from the blast of a missile that had exploded directly over the runway crossroads. A smashed E-3A Sentry burst into flames before his eyes. He turned to see that the control tower had been damaged, too, all its windows gone. Edwards ran that way, not thinking to take his jeep.

Two minutes later, he entered the tower breathlessly to find the crew all dead, torn apart by flying glass, the tiled floor covered with blood. Radio receivers were still making noise over desk-mounted speakers, but he couldn’t seem to find a working transmitter.

“What the hell is that?” the Orion pilot said. He turned his aircraft violently to the left and increased power. They had been orbiting ten miles out from Keflavik, watching the smoke and flames rising from their home field, when four massive objects passed under them.

“It’s a—” the copilot breathed.
“Where
—”

The four Lebeds were moving at over forty knots, bouncing roughly over the four- to five-foot waves. About eighty feet long and thirty-five wide, each had a pair of ducted propellers atop, immediately forward of a tall,’aircraft-type rudder painted with the Soviet naval ensign, a red hammer and sickle over a blue stripe. They were already too close to shore for the Orion to use any of her weapons.

The pilot watched incredulously as he approached, and any doubts he had ended as a 30mm cannon fired at them. It missed wide, but the pilot jerked the Orion around to the west.

“Tacco, tell Keflavik ASW Ops they got company coming. Four armed hovercraft, type unknown, but Russian—and they gotta be carrying troops.”

“Flight,” the tactical coordinator reported back thirty seconds later. “Keflavik is off the air. ASW Ops Center is gone; the tower is gone, too. I’m trying to raise the Sentries. Maybe we can get a fighter or two.”

“Okay, but keep trying Keflavik. Get our radar lit off. We’ll see if we can find where they came from. Get our Harpoons lit off, too.”

Edwards was surveying the damage through binoculars when he heard the message come in—and could not answer it.
Now what do I do?
He looked around and saw one useful thing, a Hammer Ace radio. He took the oversized backpack and ran down the steps. He had to find the Marine officers and warn them.

The hovercraft raced up Djupivogur Cove and came to land a minute later less than a mile from the airbase. The troopers gratefully noted the smoother ride as their craft spread out to line abreast, three hundred yards between them as they tore across the flat, rocky gorse toward the NATO air base.

“What in the hell—” a Marine corporal said. Like a dinosaur coming to the picnic, a massive object appeared on the horizon, apparently coming overland at high speed.

“You! Marine, get over here!” Edwards screamed. A jeep with three enlisted men stopped, then raced toward him. “Get me to your CO fast!”

“CO’s dead, sir,” the sergeant said. “CP took a hit, Lieutenant—fuckin’ gone!”

“Where’s the alternate?”

“Elementary school.”

“Go, I gotta let them know, we got bad guys coming in from the sea—shit! You got a radio.”

“Tried calling, sir, but no answer.” The sergeant turned south down International Highway. At least three missiles had landed here, judging by the smoke. All around, the small city that had been the Keflavik air base was a loose collection of smoking fires. A number of people in uniforms were running around, doing things that Edwards didn’t have time to guess at. Was anybody in charge?

The elementary school had also been hit. The third of the building still standing was a mass of flame.

“Sergeant, that radio work?”

“Yes, sir, but it ain’t tuned into the perimeter guards.”

“Well, fix it!”

“Right.” The sergeant dialed into a different frequency.

The Lebeds halted in two pairs, each a quarter mile from the perimeter. The bow door on each opened, and out rolled a pair of BMD infantry assault vehicles, followed by mortar crews who began at once to set up their weapons. The 73mm guns and missile launchers on the minitanks began to engage the Marine defensive positions as the reinforced company in each vehicle advanced slowly and skillfully, using their cover and taking advantage of their fire support. The assault force had been handpicked from units that had fought in Afghanistan. Every man had been under fire before. The Lebeds immediately turned crablike and sped back to sea to pick up yet more infantrymen. Already, elements of two elite airborne battalions were engaging a single company of Marines.

The frantic words on the platoon radio nets were all too clear. The base electrical supply was cut, and along with it the main radios. The Marine officers were dead, and there was no one to coordinate the defense. Edwards wondered if anyone really knew what the hell was going on. He decided that it probably didn’t matter.