Illustrious. Idiot, the pilot said to himself. You shouldn't have dropped the first torp! All he could do now was ping.
'Skipper, the torp just went to continuous ping. It seems to be closing the target, ping interval is shortening. Hull-popping noise, the sub is changing depth again, coming up, I think.'
O'Malley saw a disturbance in the water. Suddenly the spherical bow of the Victor came through the surface- the submarine had lost depth control trying to evade the fish. What followed a moment later was the first warhead explosion O'Malley had ever really seen. The submarine was sliding back down when a plume of water appeared a hundred feet from where the bow had poked up.
'Romeo, Hammer, that was a hit-I saw the sunuvabitch! Say again, that's a hit!'
Morris checked with his sonar officer. They hadn't picked up the Russian torpedo's homing sonar. It had missed.
Captain Perrin scarcely believed it. The Oscar had taken three torpedo hits so far and still there were no breaking-up noises. But the machinery noise had stopped, and he had the submarine on his active sonar. Battleaxe closed at fifteen knots when the black shape appeared amid a mass of bubbles on the surface. The captain ran to the bridge and put his binoculars on the Russian ship. The sub was a bare mile away. A man appeared atop the submarine's sail, waving wildly.
'Check fire! Check fire!' he screamed. 'Ship Control, bring us alongside quick as you can!'
He didn't believe it. The Oscar showed a pair of jagged rents on her upper hull and floated with a 30-degree list from the ruptured ballast tanks. Men were scrambling out of the sail and the forward deck hatch.
'Bravo, Romeo. We just killed a Victor-class inshore. Please advise your situation, over.'
Perrin lifted the phone. 'Romeo, we have a wounded Oscar on the surface, the crew is abandoning ship. He fired two missiles. Our Sea Wolves splashed one. The other hit India in the bows. We are preparing to conduct rescue operations. Tell November that he may continue his promenade. Over.'
'Way to go, Bravo! Out.' He switched channels. 'November, this is Romeo, did you copy Bravo's last transmission, over?'
'Affirmative, Romeo. Let's get this parade to the beach.'
General Andreyev took the report from the observation post himself before handing the radiophone to his operations officer. The American landing ships were now five kilometers from Akranes lighthouse. They'd proceed probably to the old whaling station in Hvalfj' rdur to wait their chance.
'We will resist to the end,' the KGB colonel said. 'We'll show them how Soviet soldiers can fight!'
'I admire your spirit, Comrade Colonel.' He walked over to the corner and picked up a rifle. 'Here, you may take this to the front yourself.'
'But-'
'Lieutenant Gasporenko, get the colonel a driver. He's going to the front to show the Americans how Soviet soldiers fight.' Andreyev watched with dark amusement. The chekist could not back down. After he was gone, the General summoned his divisional communications officer. All long-range radio transmitters except for two would be destroyed. Andreyev knew he could not surrender yet. His troopers would have to pay a bill in blood first, and the General would suffer for every drop. But he knew it would soon reach a point at which further resistance was futile, and he would not sacrifice his men for nothing.
It was over for a while. The second attack had nearly done it, Mackall thought. The Russians had run their tanks flat-out and gotten to within fifty yards of the American positions, close enough that their old, obsolete cannon had destroyed half of the troop's tanks. But that attack had faltered on the brink of success, and the third attack at dusk was a halfhearted affair executed by men too tired to advance into the kill zone. He could hear the noise behind him of another action under way. The Germans west of the town were under heavy attack.
'General Beregovoy reports a heavy counterattack from the north-towards Alfeld.'
Alekseyev accepted the news impassively. His gamble had failed. That's why it's called gambling, Pasha
Now what?
It was very quiet in the map room. The junior officers who plotted the movements of friendly and enemy forces had never talked much, and now were not even looking over to the other map sectors. It was no longer a race to see whose forces got to their objectives first.
The word you're looking for is gloom, Pasha The General stood next to his operations officer.
'Yevgeny Ilych, I am open to suggestions.'
He shrugged. 'We must continue. Our troops are tired. So are theirs.'
'We're throwing inexperienced troops against veterans. We have to change that. We will take officers and NCOs from the A units that are off the line and use them to beef up the C units now arriving. These reservists must have experienced combat soldiers to leaven their ranks, else we send them like cattle to the slaughter. Next, we will temporarily suspend offensive operations-'
'Comrade General, if we do that-'
'We have enough strength for one last hard push. That push will be at the time and place of my choosing, and it will be a fully prepared attack. I will order Beregovoy to escape the best way he can-I cannot trust that order to the radio. Yevgeny Ilych, I want you to fly to Beregovoy's headquarters tonight. He'll need a good operational brain to assist him. That will be your assignment.' I'll give you a chance to redeem yourself, you traitorous bastard Use it well. More importantly, it got the KGB informer out of the way. The operations officer walked off to arrange transport. Alekseyev took Sergetov back into his office.
'You're going back to Moscow.'
42. The Resolution of Conflict
'Amazing what a pair of fives can do.. '
'What's that, General?' his intelligence chief inquired. SACEUR shook his head, looking at the map with confidence for once. Alfeld held — a couplet, the General thought. The Germans to the west had taken a murderous pounding, but while their lines had bent, they hadn't broken. More help was on the way. A tank brigade was en route to reinforce them. The newly arrived armored division was pressing south now to isolate this Russian division from those on the Weser. The farthest-advanced Russian divisions had shot out their supply of surface-to-air missiles, and NATO air power was blasting their positions with grim regularity.
Aerial reconnaissance showed the open ground east of Alfeld to be a charnel house of burned-out tanks. Reinforcements were heading there also. Ivan would be back, but skies were clearing again. The full weight of NATO aircraft was coming into play.
'Joachim, I think we've stopped them.'
'Ja, Herr General! Now we'll begin to drive them back.'
'Father, General Alekseyev has ordered me to tell you that he does not think it possible to defeat NATO.'
'You are certain?'
'Yes, father.' The young man sat down in the Minister's office. 'We failed to achieve strategic surprise. We underestimated NATO's air power-too many things. We failed to prevent NATO's resupply. Except for that last counterattack it might have worked, but… There is one more chance. The General is suspending offensive operations in preparation for a final attack. To do this-'
'If all is lost, what is this you're talking about?'
'If we can damage the NATO forces sufficiently to forestall a major counteroffensive, we will hold on to our gains, enabling you-enabling the Politburo to negotiate from a position of strength. Even this is uncertain, but it is the best option the General sees. He asks that you put it to the Politburo that a diplomatic settlement is necessary, and quickly, before NATO recovers its strength sufficiently for their own offensive.'
