“Where are the convoys Henry, anything to spoil Grease Spot?”
The convoys’ positions came up on the screen, which had altered to depict the Atlantic.
“They should make port in seven days… if all goes well and the river don’t rise… .” He drawled, meaning if nothing else goes wrong. “Admiral Mann has full discretion, if you can’t trust Conrad Mann sir, you can’t trust anyone.”
The President held up his mug and looked over at an aide who hustled over and took it from him.
“Put sugar in it this time!”
The head of his secret service detail opened his mouth to protest but the President shot him a look and a growled. “Stifle it, Mike… and not one word to my wife or the witch doctor, unless of course you want to be humping an M-16 around Germany come this time tomorrow!”
“Don’t listen to him Mike… ” Chuckled General Shaw, “… but if he fires your ass there’s always room in the Marine Corps for a good man.”
“No offence General, but if I get fired I’ll run against him as a Republican.”
The chuckle turned into a full-blown guffaw.
“If anyone knows where the bodies are buried, it has gotta be the secret service detail!”
“Damn straight!” replied the agent with a grin.
“Ok, ok, ok… beat it everyone, reconvene in one hour after I have spoken to SACEUR and the Chancellor.”
CIC aboard the USS Gerald Ford was humming with activity when Admiral Mann entered. A digital map of the Atlantic showed the position of all known merchant shipping, surface combat groups, submarines and air traffic.
To the north, HMS Ark Royal sat in the van of the Canadian convoy; older Mk 6 Sea Kings flying off the decks of container ships augmenting her sub hunting Merlins.
Half of the convoy screen was Canada’s own warships, and the Admiral smiled to himself when he remembered how startled the news services had been at the beginning of the year when HMCS Vancouver had seized a sanctions busting tanker in the Arabian sea. The thought that the other nation occupying the North American landmass would do anything warlike had seemed faintly ridiculous. It had given satirists new material and they had set to with glee. One punster had written a spoof interview.
“You’re kidding, right? Canada has a warship?” asked the United States Defence Secretary. “Like for war?”
“Does Canada know?” he had added.
The Canadian fleet wasn’t a secret it was just characteristically modest, as the Canadian people are, whilst being extremely professional.
Ten of Canada’s Halifax class multi role frigates were now carrying out ASW duties, four of her Iroquois class destroyers were air defence pickets whilst two Victoria class SSK’s, HMCS Chicoutimi and HMCS Windsor ranged ahead, looking for Red Banner boats.
Canada also had ships with the second remaining Royal Navy carrier, HMS Illustrious and her ASW group, ranging the Atlantic independently, as was Spain’s VTOL carrier Principe de Asturias, with her own Harriers and ASW Hughes 500M and Sea King helicopters.
Plugging the gap between Iceland and the North Cape had been taken on by
France, Norway and Denmark, but three Polish warships numbered among the European ships there, receiving replenishment in all things from their neighbours, defying repeated orders to return to home ports.
The 38,000-ton nuclear powered French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle was providing air cover for France's own helicopter carrier the Jeanne d'Arc, released from duty as a training ship, and the rest of the ASW ships of the group.
Charles De Gaulle’s Rafale M and Super Etendards provided the big stick, whilst three E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft told them where to swing it.
Her AS-565 Panther and Dauphin helicopters joined the effort in stopping further surges or infiltrations of enemy submarines into the Atlantic sea lanes.
Britain’s HMS Invincible had performed the air cover duty for the scratch team guarding the North Cape at the start of the war, but her compliment of Sea Harriers had been too small for the task. Invincible now lay on the seabed, along with half of the original surface combat ships and submarines, the victims of torpedoes; air launched anti-ship missiles and nuclear mines.
The sluggish start in maritime air patrols was improving day by day as reactivated airframes, from the so-called boneyards, were collected by reservists and flown to bases and naval air stations.
USN Orions, Canadian CP-140 Auroras and British Nimrods did what they could in the north, flying out of air stations in Nova Scotia, Keflavik and Aldergrove in Northern Ireland.
The south and east of the shipping lanes got their maritime patrol coverage from off a small island and from European soil. On Pico, one of the nine volcanic islands that form the Azores, eight hundred miles to the west of Portugal, the USN had returned to the naval air station at Lajes that had been disestablished on 30th September 1993, when the Soviets had been deemed a spent force.
The newly arrived Orions from the States eased the pressure on the crews based at NS Rota, in Spain.
Portugal’s Esquadra 601, the ‘Lobos’ (Wolves) were flying around the clock out of Lajes too, as well as Montijo near Lisbon and Ovar, further north on the mainland.
To the south of USS Gerald Ford’s convoy, USS Wasp and USS Iwo Jima carried SH-60B Sea Hawk ASW helicopters amongst its CH-46E Sea Knight, UH-1N Iroquois and MH-53E Sea Dragon troop carriers, adding to the Texas convoy’s ASW cover.
Submarines were the great threat at the moment, and would remain so until they drew closer to Europe. The air threat would be dealt with by the RN’s Fleet Air Arm Sea Harriers, Iwo Jima and Wasp’s AV-8B Harriers and the Gerald Ford’s own air wing.
Canada had been prevailed upon to allow the New York convoy to draw abreast of it by slowing their own, in that way the ultra-secret, Operation Grease Spot, would be more effective.
Most projections of an old Red Army invasion of Europe had included the simultaneous invasion of Norway, Denmark and Sweden. With Scandinavia neutralised, her airfields would then have held a deadly threat to any convoys from North America. The only reason that this had not happened now was simply that the new Red Army did not have the resources that the old one had had.
Apart from their own four attack boats and the Canadian long range patrol SSKs, the Royal Navy had four SSNs employed also. The submarines had been doing their jobs well, without yet firing a shot.
Conrad Mann stood before the big screen, peering at icons a day’s sailing away.
“Have all ‘Pointers’ acknowledged my ‘make for the hills’?” he asked.
“USS Twin Towers acknowledged receipt twenty minutes ago admiral, she’s the last. The position she was at when she transmitted put her still within ‘Bravo’ but on the eastern edge.”
“Rick Pitt’s cutting it fine… I hope he’s running at flank.” He turned from the board to face the room. “Okay, Grease Spot is a go, the TT’s skipper knows the score, and they will have to take their chances CAG, you launch at 1800.”
A silence had fallen over the battlefield west of the airport whilst both sides honoured a two hour cease-fire.
One hundred and seventy-two paratroopers of the 82nd, captured when the airport had been overrun were to be reunited with their comrades. Most of the returning 82nd men were wounded, but all had been taken care of whilst in captivity.