Unlike the previous occasion when the Guards had been subject to this ordeal, the Brigade artillery and mortar platoon did not wait for ground forces to show themselves before getting to work. Shoot ‘n scoot took place as soon as the Hungarian gun lines were identified.
In the battalion CP a signaller answered a field telephone. Lt Col Reed looked over at him expectantly as he spoke. “Sir that was No.1 Company CP reporting that the bridge is down.”
“Thank you… call them back and ask if the boats tied up on the far side are ok.” Six aluminium assault boats had been left for the troops left behind to get off the ‘island’ if, or rather when, the bridge was destroyed.
1 Company’s reply left the C.O none the wiser, there was too much smoke and dust in the air from the barrage for them to be able to see clearly.
Far to the west of the river line, in a wooded valley on the Belgian border, General Allain sat quietly amidst the bustle of his headquarters. He watched the symbols identifying enemy units and types move about on a 12x12, plasma screen before him.
His job at the moment was that of trying to second guess the enemy commander, was he forging forwards everywhere, looking for a weak spot to exploit, or, had he already decided where to concentrate his main effort, and the rest was merely a supporting act?
JSTARS was still trying to sort out the wolves from the sheep across the Elbe. After half an hour of firing they had a fair idea of which suspected gun lines were bogus, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be used later on.
The last few days had given both sides time to catch their wind and replace equipment lost earlier in the conflict, and the JSTARS operators had completed their count of the artillery pieces involved so far. According to them, either the enemy was short on artillery, or they had not yet committed all they had at this stage. It was just one of the many variables SACEUR was dealing with tonight.
Above SACEURs head lay a rather non-descript Belgian Army depot for construction materials, and in between was fifty feet of reinforced concrete and a series of titanium lined blast doors.
An infantry heavy mechanised company stood guard above ground, whilst a platoon of Canadian military police provided close protection for the general and his staff below ground.
The bunker was proof against all but a five megaton near miss, of within half a mile distant, or a 2 megaton direct hit, and it would take the best part of a battalion to storm the site, however the prize would be long gone by the time they’d fought and blasted their way to the inner sanctum, via an escape tunnel.
The KGB had acquired the building plans for that site, and others like it, back in the eighties from a traitor within NATO Headquarters. Several plans for destroying the site existed, as did others for taking SACEUR alive or dead.
The Charles de Gaulle took up its new station eight miles west of the Spanish carrier Principe de Asturias, as the task force reconfigured to ASW formation, from what had been a more air defence conscious one. Yesterday they had circled the wagons and beaten off air and surface attacks, but now they had a different threat coming their way.
Bernard was confident, well 90 % confident anyway, that HMS Temeraire had eliminated the air threat from the Pechenga airfields with her TLAMs. A satellite pass would have given them a damage assessment, if it were not for the cloud cover, or alternatively a post-strike recce, but the British observation post had gone off the air and Bernard refused to risk another aircraft. Replacements for the losses in the air battle would not begin to arrive until the following day, but a strong CAP was up covering the helicopters, just in case. The CAP was covering rescue efforts too, attempting to locate downed fliers. One thing this war was good at, he thought, was reducing the numbers of trained men and women who could fly the aircraft or fulfil the myriad other jobs that no raw conscript could do.
The replenishment at sea had been carried out hours earlier, re-stocking the ships magazines and stores that had been almost emptied in defeating the air attacks.
His helicopters were prosecuting half a dozen contacts, the Norwegian shore based ASW squadrons were doing the same with a couple more, and he would have liked to think that they were on top of every submarine out there, but that probably wasn’t the case. Their early warning advantage had gone when the Russians had taken out the choppers and fixed wing units on station, the task force lost 40 % of its rotary wing anti-submarine force and a third of the fixed. Worse still, by the time they had regained air superiority, the threat was almost knocking at the door of the task force.
Seagull One One, the NH-90 NFH medium lift ASW helicopter off the frigate Guépratte was experiencing a problem not considered when the crew had been training, too many contacts. It made the process of singling out one from the pack more time consuming, the overlapping acoustic signatures were proving very frustrating. In the past twenty minutes they had dropped on one contact, and succeeded only in destroying a submarine launched torpedo decoy.
Their neighbour to the south, a Portuguese Sea King, had been more successful, killing an old Victor 1 on their second attempt. The Sea King had departed to reload and the NH-90’s pilot was growing irritable with his operator in the back. “Dordogne has scored, so has St Nazaire, and now that Portuguese!”
“Well good for them pilot… and so will we if you just get off my back. Depending on what weapons these boats are carrying, they could be in range of our ships already, so with respect sir… shut up, lift the dipper and take us a kilometre north.” The operator was working on firming up their best contact so far; he needed a triangulation to be certain. If there had not been so many contacts the helicopters could have worked in pairs, making the work twice as easy.
Muttering under his breath the pilot raised the machine, and the Thales DUAV4-UPG dipping sonar beneath it.
“I may have something but it keeps disappearing below the layer when he hears us.”
“Why would he keep coming above the layer, he’s safer below it isn’t he?”
“Because… sir, below the layer is too deep for him to fire!” He turned the aircraft north, keeping the speed down in order to prevent the dipper oscillating dangerously. Lowering the sonar back below the surface, he resisted the urge to make some sarcastic comment to his operator.
“Okay… 156’, six hundred metres, he’s above the layer again, he must be planning to launch.”
“Right, get the dipper up, we’re going to drop on him… send as such to Sandman!”
Their intention was broadcast to Charles de Gaulle and their neighbours while the dipping sonar was winched up clear of any dropping torpedoes, this allowed the other helicopters to get their delicate equipment out of the water.
“Dropping… drop, drop, drop… weapon away!”
Relieved of its last item of ordnance the aircraft rose a couple of feet before the pilot caught it, and the MU90 torpedo disappeared into the black depths with a splash.
Although the dipping sonar had been raised the operator was listening in on one of the sonar buoys that they had dropped on the contact earlier.