Ramsey cursed himself for not going slower on the bug-out, as he and the last marine dropped their Bergens and emptied their mates’ ammunition pouches of full mags and grenades. Stepping quickly over to the nearest Russian he rolled the body face down before removing the pin from a grenade and wedging it underneath, spring-arm uppermost. The marines then made off to the north, abandoning their Bergens were they’d dropped them.
The route the marines took brought them close to a stream, so Sgt Ramsey swerved towards it when he heard the water, the engine noises were getting louder and if the ambushers had not been alone then they could easily have already been cut off. From what he recalled of the ground beyond the wood there was precious little cover and the banks of the stream might just keep them out of sight.
Their breath fogged the frosty air as they pounded on downhill, and from behind them they heard shouts as more enemy troops found the bodies at the ambush site.
A loud explosion silenced the shouts moments later, as the body of the booby-trapped soldier was rolled over by a comrade seeking to discover if the man were still alive. It minimised the chances of pursuit and instilled fear into an enemy growing confident in the hunt.
They were coming to the edge of the pinewood and could see by the grey pre-dawn light that the six hundred odd metres of scrubland to the next woodland began only seventy or so metres away. Ramsey slowed, lowering himself down the bank into the icy water that came up to his knees, and the marine with him followed suit. The banks showed signs of the heavier flow of water that would have been present earlier in the month, when waters from the spring thaw would have swollen it. Both men crouched forward at the waist in order that only their heads appeared over the edge as they moved more slowly to the edge of the trees, where they halted. Ramsey paused for a moment as he looked around, and satisfied that there were no enemies yet in sight he took a pace forward. In the poor light he failed to see the two grenades, wedged between submerged boulders and linked together by a length of tripwire below the surface. The commander of the BTR had placed similar crude booby traps at another half a dozen likely routes that he did not have the manpower to cover. Sergeant Ramsey looked down when he felt the resistance against his left shin, thinking it was a trapped branch, and then the pressure against his leg disappeared as the pins slipped out. The young marine behind Ramsey was looking to his left when the grenades went off, peppering him with shrapnel, one piece of which entered below his ear, travelling upwards into his brain. He never even heard the sound of the explosion that killed him.
Sgt Ramsey was thrown forward by the double blasts, almost losing his grip of the M-16 as the freezing water closed over him. His ears rang but the right one seemed to be on fire as he pushed himself back up into the air, a thousand red hot needles seemed to be sticking in him. He pulled himself to the bank and rolled onto his back before reaching up to feel his ear, but it was gone, torn off along with a portion of scalp and his hand came away bloody. He had a pain in his right hip but he bent his knees to stand anyway, or at least he thought he had. Flopping unexpectedly onto his left side he saw with surprise that his left leg below the knee was held in place only by a strip of flesh. His camouflaged trousers were shredded below the thigh and also saw that the pebble bank on which he lay was wet with blood, leaking from a dozen wounds. He rolled onto his back again, feeling the onset of shock but focusing his mind to keep it at bay, shock kills and he needed to remain calm whilst he worked out how he was going to give himself first aid. The pain had not come yet but it would, and soon.
He was gripping his rifle in both hands and taking deep breaths, allowing his training to surface through the threatening trauma, when at that moment a figure appeared on the opposite bank. Acrid smoke from the explosions hung in the air, and the enemy soldier was stood on the edge of the bank looking to his left, upstream of Ramsey toward the scene of the blasts. When the soldier looked to his right, downstream, his weapon did not follow his eyes but he started to bring it around when he caught sight of the marine sergeant, aiming a weapon of his own right at him. Ramsey shot the soldier through the midriff; he folded in the middle with an audible “Ooph!” and sat down heavily before flopping face forward off the bank and into the stream with a splash, to struggle feebly for a moment before going still.
Whoever they were, they weren’t trained infantry thought Ramsey as a second soldier showed himself, visible only from the top of his shoulders to his helmeted head, craning his neck to see where the shot had come from. Ramsey took quick careful aim before shooting this second man in the face and a faint red halo appeared behind as it snapped back, dropping out of view as its helmet spun off to land with a thud out of sight.
To his left was a boulder that would offer more cover than he presently had, but before he could crawl towards it six objects flew from beyond the far bank to land in the stream with a splash, or clattering against the rocky bank he lay against.
Ramsey stared at the fragmentation grenade that came to rest just out of arms reach of him; he had time to announce a disgusted oath.
“Oh… shit,” and then it went off.
The seas off the cape are some of the most dangerous on the planet, often stormy and always carrying fragments of the northern ice pack, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the time of year.
In the dark, the Tarantula, fast missile attack craft had their radars on low power as they surged ahead, an estimated fifteen minutes from optimum launch range. The first wave would take out the outlying NATO picket ships; the second wave the inner, leaving the carriers vulnerable to the Backfire bombers, fighter-bombers, destroyers and frigates that would follow.
Aboard the task force the ships went to high NBC state, as the Super Etendards approached their own release points and their Anémone radars painted over the fast attack craft.
To the southwest of the French strike aircraft, the Rafale M advanced interceptors hugged the shoreline just above the waves in line astern, throttles as far back as safety would allow. The Russian airborne controllers aboard the lumbering and aged A-50s had watched them emerge from the NATO jamming and sprint toward the mainland, to all intents to the assistance of the Norwegians. Radar cannot see through mountains and there was too much happening for them to waste time with what became of the tracks that disappeared and did not reappear on the other side of the high terrain. The A-50s had the Super Etendards heading fast and low to the east, out of the electronic haze of jamming produced by the AE-6Bs, so they took over the Tarantulas’ air defence fire control systems and the boats increased speed from thirty knots to forty. The Tarantulas' SA-N-8 Gremlins could accelerate to 1.7 Mach in under four seconds, but had a range of just 7km so the A-50s vectored in a pair of S37s. They would not arrive in time to prevent the French strike from launching, but the eight Frenchmen could not be carrying enough weapons to make an impression anyway.
The RNAF F-16s and RAF Hawks suddenly disengaged from the battle above Banak and beat feet to the west, leaving the battered Russian fighter bombers an open goal.
To the north of Banak, the flight of three S37s noted with satisfaction the departure of the NATO fighters and the unwavering orbits of the AWAC, JSTARS and their escorts. They had moved into trail as they crossed the northern tip of Norway, threading through narrow valleys, and across fjords but now the open ocean was in sight. As they crossed the high cliffs to begin their transit of the Atlantic their threat receivers screeched the warning that they had been locked-up by infrared missiles. The Russians’ Saturn/Lyulka Al-41F engine nozzles altered direction as the fighters broke left, right and upwards, discharging flares as they did so. The French pilots could not match the turns, but they were already in knife fighting range when the Russians cleared the coastline, each S37 had three Magic II high velocity heat seekers chasing them, they ignored the slow moving flares, tearing past at 2.7 Mach.