'Could be better. We've lost eight Tornados trying to assist the Norwegians. We're about down to a bare minimum for local defense, and Ivan's begun to attack our northern radar installations. Sorry about what happened to your aircraft carrier, but I must say we're very happy indeed to have you chaps with us for a bit.'
Nimitz's interceptors and radar birds were split among three RAF bases. The maintenance crews were still arriving by transport aircraft, and some hitch had developed with the missiles, but the F-14s each carried a full load for one engagement, and they could use RAF Sparrows to reload. Operating off a land base, the fighter could carry a larger load of fuel and ordnance, packing a heavier punch than off a ship. The fighter crews were in a foul humor. Having used their aircraft and precious missiles to kill drones, they had returned to the formation to see the fearful results of the mistake. The total loss of life was still uncertain, but scarcely two hundred men had escaped from Saipan, and only a thousand from Foch. In terms of casualties this had been the bloodiest defeat in the history of the United States Navy, with thousands of men gone and not a single kill to offset the losses. Only the French had scored against the Backfires, succeeding with twenty-year-old Crusaders where the vaunted Tomcats had failed.
Toland sat in on their first briefing, conducted by the RAF. The fighter pilots were absolutely silent. He had trouble gauging their mood. No jokes. No whispered remarks. No smiles. They knew that the error had not been theirs, that it was not their fault at all, but that didn't seem to matter. They were shaken by what had happened to their ship.
As was he. Toland's mind kept coming back to the image of the four-inch-thick flight deck steel bent into the sky like cellophane, a blackened cavern below it where the hangar deck used to be. The rows of bags-crewmen who had died aboard the world's most powerful warship…
'Commander Toland?' An airman tapped him on the shoulder. 'Would you come with me, please?' The two men walked to the operations room. Bob noted instantly that a new raid was being plotted. The operations officer, a flight lieutenant, motioned for Toland to join him.
'One regiment, perhaps less. One of your EP-3s is snooping up there and caught their radio chatter while they were refueling north of Iceland. They'll be going for one of these convoys, we think.'
'You want the Tomcats to ambush them on the way home? The timing's going to be tricky.'
'Extremely. Another complication. They will use Iceland as a navigational check and a secure assembly point. We know Ivan has fighters there, and now it's reported that he has fighters operating from these two airfields on Iceland.'
'Is the source for this something called Beagle?'
'Ah, you've heard about that one. Yes.'
'What kind of fighters?'
'Twin tails, is what your chap reported. Could be MiG-25s, — 29s, or -31s.'
'Fulcrums,' Toland said. 'The others are interceptors. Didn't the B-52s get a look at them?' The briefing he'd just left had gone over the Air Force mission against Keflavik. More good news to cheer the troops up.
'Evidently not a good one, and superficially they are quite similar. I agree they're probably Fulcrums, and the sensible thing for Ivan to do is have the fighters establish a safe corridor for his bombers.'
'They might have to tank coming back… go for the tankers?'
'We've thought of that. But they have a million square miles of ocean to use.' The area on the chart was obvious. 'The timing for that will be damned near impossible, but we think it would be worth the effort some time in the future. For the moment our primary concern is air defense. After that, we think Ivan may be planning an amphibious operation for Norway. If his surface fleet sorties, it's our job to hammer it.'
'Raid warning, skipper,' the executive officer said. 'There's about twenty-five Backfires downbound, target unknown.'
'Well, they won't be going after the carrier group, not with twenty-five aircraft now that they're under NATO fighter cover. Where are they now?'
'Probably over Iceland. Three to five hours off. We're not the biggest convoy in range, but we are the most exposed.'
'On the other hand, if they go for all those independents out there, they can hunt undefended ships in open ocean. But I wouldn't. Our ships are carrying war materiel…' The convoy had only five SAM-equipped ships. A ripe target.
'Contrails, Doghouse, we have contrails overhead, looks like twenty or so. Passing overhead right now.'
'Can you get an ID?'
'Negative. Large aircraft with no engines visible on the wings, but I can't be sure of the type. They're pretty high, heading south. Can't gauge the speed, either-no sonic booms, though if they were busting Mach 1, we should have heard it by now.'
'Repeat your count,' Doghouse ordered.
'I count twenty-one sets of contrails, two-one sets, heading about one-eight-zero. All the fighters at Reykjavik lifted off and went north about thirty minutes before they passed overhead. They still haven't landed back here yet, but we do not know where they are. The bombers do not appear to be escorted. Nothing else new to report.'
'Roger, Beagle. Let us know when the fighters land. Might be nice to get a feel for their cycle time. Out.' The major turned to his sergeant. 'Get that one out in the printer right now. Confirm the one-regiment Backfire raid downbound, over Reykjavik right now, estimated course one-eight-zero. Possibly with fighter escort… yeah, better put that in, too.'
The NATO communications center was about the only thing working as planned. The communications satellites in their as-yet unreachable orbits over the equator were supplying information to units all over the world, and here in Scotland was one of the main 'nodes,' military parlance for a high-tech telephone exchange.
A good day for contrails, Morris saw. Just the right mixture of temperature and humidity at high altitude, it would cause condensation in the hot exhaust from aircraft engines. They could see the tracks of air traffic crossing the Atlantic. The big twenty-power binoculars usually kept on the bridge wings for surface lookout work had been moved to the flying bridge atop the forward superstructure, and his lookouts were using them to identify the aircraft. They were mainly looking for Bears, the Soviet search aircraft that scouted targets for the Backfires.
Everyone was tense, and no relief was in sight. The submarine threat was bad enough, but with the carrier group savaged the day before, the convoy was virtually naked to air attack. They were too far at sea for any hope of land-based fighter protection. Pharris had only the most rudimentary air defenses. She could barely protect herself and was of no use whatever to anyone else. The ships equipped with surface-to-air missiles were now assembling in line on the north side of the convoy, twenty miles south of the frigate, while Pharris continued her antisubmarine search. All the frigate could do was keep watch on her threat-warning instruments and radio any data developed. They were sure that Ivan would be using his own Big Bulge search radars aboard the Bears to locate and classify the target. The convoy commander's plan was to use the SAM-ships as an additional row of targets, formed up just like the merchantmen. With luck, an especially curious Bear might mistake them for unarmed ships and be lured in for a visual search. A long shot, it was the only card they had to play…
'Contact! We have a Big Bulge radar bearing zero-zero-nine. Signal strength is low.'
'Miss us, you bastard,' the tactical action officer breathed.
'Not much chance of that,' Morris said. 'Get the data to the escort commander.'
The Bear was on a southerly heading, using its radar only two minutes out of every ten as it approached the convoy. Soon another was detected slightly to the west. Plotting teams estimated their positions, and a report was sent via satellite to CINCLANTFLT in Norfolk with an urgent request for assistance. Norfolk receipted their message; ten minutes later they learned that no help was available.
Pharris manned her gun mount. The point-defense missile system and Gatling gun radar aft were switched to standby. Other radar was kept off. The radar operators in the combat information center sat nervously at their posts, fingering their switches while listening to the ESM reports and stealing an occasional look at the plot.
'Both of them probably have us now.'
Morris nodded. 'Next come the Backfires.'
The captain thought of the battles he had studied at the naval academy-early in World War II, when the
