Arctic Front

terra firma any day,” said Norton. It was getting cold on deck, even in their thermal battle fatigues, but to go back into the closed, rolling ship — to be assailed by a noxious combination of cooking odors and recycled air — was more than Norton could contemplate. He jogged feebly to get bis blood warmer, but the motion, allied with the peculiar yaw and pitch of the big “flat mother,” as the marines called the assault ship, only made him more nauseated.

“Well, Dick, Siberia’ll be all the terra firma you’ll want.” The general paused for a moment or two, listening to the heavy slushing of the ship’s wake, and nearby, though he could only see the phosphorescent tails of their wakes, the occasional sound of the other ships plowing through a heavy swell, throwing an incandescent spray of phytoplankton high above the bow that swept back in the darkness and disappeared. “Been sleeping well?” he asked Norton.

“Not too much, sir. You?”

“Yes, but I’m haunted, Dick, by dreams of Siberia. Maps of Siberia — all different scales. Recon photos as well. All keep crowding in on me. I feel—” His voice took on the tone of a father who, though reasonably sure he had done all he could to secure his children’s safety, was yet dissatisfied, even fearful— as much as Freeman could be — that he had unwittingly ignored some aspect in the planning. Left something out. “I feel as if there’s something missing…”

“Siberians, I hope,” said Norton.

Though he couldn’t see the general, Norton knew that Freeman either hadn’t heard him or was simply brushing his aide’s attempt at levity aside, too preoccupied by all the concerns that assail a commander in the hours before a landing. Amphibious assaults — well, they were right up there with pilots on night carrier landings when it came to the number of things that could go wrong. He was chagrined to remember how his own designation of Ratmanov Island as “Rat,” in an effort to raise morale, had also been responsible for a logistics officer in San Diego having sent several Hercules-hauled palettes of ammunition to the Rat Islands in the Aleutian chain instead of Alaska.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about the dreams, General,” said Norton.”Rubbish heap for nonsense, my dad used to say.”

“Did he?” asked the general.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, Norton, your father was wrong. You ignore the subconscious at your peril. Remember Patton. He had Third Army poised for the final thrust into Eastern Europe, and he knew the Krauts were on their knees. Intelligence didn’t — but Patton knew. You remember why?”

All Norton could think of was being stupid enough to have had a cup of coffee before coming on deck, wondering about his chances of keeping it down.

“The carts!” said Freeman. “Dream was full of goddamned carts.”

Norton could sense the tension in Freeman’s tone then heard the general’s field holster bumping the rail. “Nazis were out of gas, Dick. They were using carts to take away their wounded. The dream told him, Dick. It was in the dream.”

Norton heard Freeman’s radio crackle. The general was wanted on the bridge.

As Freeman headed through the darkness toward the bridge he heard a roaring so powerful he could feel its vibration. Then he saw fiery tail of a missile, quickly followed by another, spewing up from one of the Ticonderogas’ fifty-six cell-box launchers, in seven rows of eight directly forward of the guided-missile cruiser’s bridge. Both he and Norton were surprised by just how close the other ships in the carrier’s screen were. They watched the bright yellow V of the gas-propelled blast-offs fading into a side-venting column of white flame that soon turned to a dry- ice-like fog that covered the cruiser’s deck. Now another missile erupted from the deck, forming the third arc of the triple launch, the arcs shooting heavenward, the heat momentarily creating the illusion of a summer wind. The naval battle that would last for six hours was already joined as Freeman reached the bridge of the Winston Davis.

Momentarily blinded by the dim red light of the ship’s bridge, he was unable for an instant to pick up the radar relay trace of the Ticonderoga’s three eighty-mile Mk 41 missiles whose one-thousand-pound warheads were now streaking across the night sky like fiery comets toward the Siberian task force over fifty miles away. Six minutes later as the yellow arrowhead on the Ticonderoga’s Aegis screen and its target advanced toward one another on the middle vector of the triangular cone, the calm, unemotional voice of the Ticonderoga’s EWO announced, “Aegis evaluates kill.”

In response the Ottichnyy, a Sovremennyy class guided-missile destroyer, fired two solid-fuel SS-N-22, Mach 2.5 antiship missiles, killing range sixty-five miles. Launched from the Otlichnyy’s starboard quad, the missiles were more than twice as fast as the American Standard Missile salvos but were nevertheless taken out, intercepted by two five-hundred-pound-warhead Harpoons in an orange slash that could be seen by the attacking Ticonderoga’s starboard lookout and by the only radar still operational on the sinking Siberian ship — the Top Steer/Top Plate combination radar mesh atop the forward mast.

One American missile hit the destroyer between the bridge and well decks, and the Siberians’ thirty- millimeter Gatling guns completely disappeared, a smoking crater in their place. The other U.S. Standard struck the Otlichnyy’s port side midships just aft of the front dome radars, immediately knocking out most circuits and creating a fire that pinpointed the Siberian fleet’s position for the American pilots about to engage a mass of Yak-38 Forger V/STOL fighter bombers. Each of the Forger A’s were carrying 3,000 pounds of ordnance on four underwing hard points, including air-to-air Aphid missiles and 2,600-pound Kerry air-to-surface-7 missiles, as well as the much lighter, 550-pound, ten-mile-range AS-14.

But there was never any doubt of the outcome in the air, for even with over sixty Forgers plotted by the Acheson swarming toward the American task force, the F-14 pilots alone knew they would “eat them alive.” The Tomcats, at Mach 2.34, were twice as fast, their service ceiling fifty thousand feet, a good ten thousand higher than what the Forgers could pull. And as if this wasn’t enough, whereas the Forgers had a 150-mile-lo-lo-lo radius with maximum weapon load, the Tomcats’ 1500-mile range gave the American fighters that much extra time in the air, a crucial element in the titanic battle between the carriers. But the Siberians, Admiral Burke knew, were not so naive as to believe for a second that they would all permeate the American defenses. It was the Leninist strategy again: if only ten Forgers got through, they would play havoc with the American task force — their targets not the American warships but the amphibious transports. All the American naval firepower in the world could not make a landing without live marines.

In the tactical flag command center aboard the Acheson, Burke was told that the Siberian fleet had apparently stopped and was turning about. No one aboard the Acheson or any of the other American ships thought the Siberians were withdrawing simply because their radars had lit up upon seeing the Ticonderoga’s launch. Perhaps, Admiral Burke told Freeman, they were withdrawing out of the Americans’ killing range. But this would only be true for the shorter-range missiles like the Harpoons; the two Ticonderogas and other American ships had twenty-seven-hundred-pound Tomahawk cruise missiles aboard with a much greater range, and the Siberians surely knew this.

The Siberian air armada was still on screen, and now the night erupted. Over ninety-three missiles were fired by the American fleet in less than forty seconds, from every kind of mount, including track-swivel “six-packs,” and rows of armored vertical-launch “egg cartons” immediately below each Ticonderoga’s bridge, filling the night with a kaleidoscope of deadly pyrotechnics. So impressive was it that, despite the obvious dangers, petty officers throughout the fleet were obliged to threaten direst punishment — no shore leave — in order to keep some men, a number of cooks among them, below deck.

Aboard the USS Acheson, as two white dots moved toward one another on the blue screen, became one, then disappeared, the voice came once, twice, four times in fifty seconds: “Aegis evaluates kill!” There was a cheer from combat control.

“Shut up!” commanded the officer of the deck. “We’ve just started.” From the USS Acheson, the last Tomcats, F-15 Eagles, and F-18 Hornets were being hurled aloft to meet the incoming bandits, but now it was recognized that the Forgers were being overtaken by thirty Fulcrum MiG-29Cs.

This changed everything. Burke, however, confident in his air commander’s ability, turned his attention to blips now indicating sub-fired SS-N-15s, the thirty-three-mile-range Siberian equivalent of the American SUBROC missiles, beginning their arcs toward the American fleet. Quickly he looked up at the TMS — track management