But the Soviet President had made his mark on the world stage as a diplomat whose charm and personal style could make things happen where the career negotiators were deadlocked. His well-publicized trip to Oslo on a mission of personal negotiation had been stage-managed with the modern Russian flair for grabbing Western audiences and selling them on the new Soviet Union’s dedication to peace and goodwill.
At the time Tarrant had been convinced that the whole dispute with Norway had been engineered just so the President of the Soviet Union could produce another of his famed diplomatic miracles … and incidentally counteract the bad press Russia had been getting over the crackdowns on food rioters in Kiev and Smolensk. The Soviets had learned a lot about stage-managing public relations stunts from Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Then, on the fourth day of June, the unthinkable happened. In front of tens of millions of television viewers worldwide, a bomb planted in Norway’s parliament building had exploded just as the Soviet President had come forward to deliver a speech announcing the settlement of the dispute.
The act had left the world stunned. Not only had the charismatic, reform-minded Soviet President perished in that blast, but along with him numerous high-ranking Norwegian government officials and members of the Storting had died as well. Within a matter of hours there were riots in Oslo and Bergen, and an air of desperation and near-anarchy seemed to dominate Norway.
The Soviet reaction had been both swift and deadly. Declaring the bomb plot and the subsequent disorders in a neighbor country posed a direct threat to the stability of their own nation, Russian leaders announced their intention to restore order before the situation deteriorated further. Russian troops and planes were on their way into Norwegian territory within a day of that fateful assassination.
Tarrant considered himself a student of history, and he couldn’t help but draw the parallels between the events the world had just witnessed and another assassination plot years ago in a Balkan city called Sarajevo. But where it had taken over a month for open warfare to break out after the death of Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand, this time fighting erupted in a matter of hours.
What other differences would there be … and what similarities? Would Norway be another Afghanistan, or the flashpoint for the Third World War?
Tonight the crisis had just escalated one notch higher, and the world had moved one step closer to all-out war between the superpowers.
It was ironic, he thought as he finished the long communiqud and put it aside, the way the crisis had come out of nowhere. Twenty years, even ten years ago, a Soviet attack into Norway would have been unthinkable. Norway was a firm NATO ally, and though foreign troops were not permitted on Norwegian soil in peacetime, the apparatus for getting them there in a hurry was well tested. But the very air of peace and cooperation that had followed the fall of the Berlin Wall had also undermined the whole fabric of the West’s defense plans. NATO was almost a dead letter now, in shambles after fighting had erupted between Greece and Turkey and after Germany’s decision to pull out of the alliance and stand alone. The Labor government in Britain had cut back involvement in European affairs as they had cut the British defense budget, and the United States, with liberal Democrats controlling both the Congress and the Executive Branch for the first time in decades, had been just as eager to retreat into a new isolationism. The tireless pursuit of the “peace dividend” had led to closings of most of the major military bases in Europe and massive cuts in personnel and hardware.
America had hesitated when the first tanks rolled across the border. President Connally had been reluctant to make a unilateral commitment of forces, preferring to seek United Nations support for a solution, be it diplomatic or military, to the aggression in Scandinavia. Now, a week into the fighting, he had finally issued the orders to act.
Tarrant tapped the printout absently with the fingers of one hand. The gesture Connally had ordered could easily turn out to be too little, too late. Norway had not been able to put up the stiff resistance everyone had expected the nation to provide in the event of an invasion. Though both sides had been mobilized before the Soviet President’s visit to Oslo, the Norwegians had received orders to begin a general stand-down in the wake of the breakthroughs at the conference table. The crippling blow to their government had created massive confusion which the Russians, who had remained on full alert throughout, were quick to exploit. Their advance into Norway had used the kind of Air-Land battle techniques demonstrated before by the U.S. in Operation Desert Storm, encircling, cutting off pockets of resistance, using airborne and airmobile capabilities to the fullest. Amphibious operations along the vulnerable coastline had been another key factor in the rapid Russian advance.
It looked now like Norway might fall before American intervention could do anything to save the country … and CBG-14 was sailing into the middle of that inferno.
He glanced at the clock again. It was almost time for him to put in his appearance at Flag Plot and set his staff in motion to translate Washington’s orders into action. But first, he told himself as he reached for the switch on his computer terminal, he would finish the letter to his wife so it would be ready for the next COD flight.
Admiral Douglas F. Tarrant was all too aware that it might be the last letter he ever sent her.
Commander Willis E. Grant held on to his cap with one hand and hurried across the deck toward the huddled row of airplanes parked on the flight deck. In the eerie glow of work-lights they presented a nightmare appearance, with wings twisted and folded in bizarre shapes to allow them to take up the least possible space. Intruders with wings folded upward at mid-span to meet above the center of the fuselage, S-3 Viking sub-hunters with tails twisted to one side and slender wings laid flat against the top of the aircraft, the weird shape of a Hawkeye with wings tucked close in alongside its body and the huge rotating radar dome on top casting strange shadows, all of them looked like prehistoric beasts lurking in the shadows, waiting to strike. Around them the steady work of a carrier at sea went on. Grant dodged a pair of green-shirted maintenance men and narrowly avoided being run down by one of the “mules” that were used to tow planes from place to place on the deck and were driven by a blue-shirted crewman. Then he saw the newly arrived Tomcat, already tucked neatly into a row of other aircraft, with the familiar tall, spare figure of Tombstone Magruder visible near the front of the plane.
Magruder had his helmet under one arm and was bending over to examine the jet’s front landing gear assembly. Grant had seen the hard landing he’d made, and knew what that could do to the wheels. It was typical of Magruder to be concerned for his plane after he was down, a familiar echo of many shared flights.
They went back a long way, Magruder and Grant, all the way back to flight school. Over the years the two of them had been rivals in almost everything, and a lasting friendship had grown up between them along the way. Grant had won their competition for the heart of Julie Wilson, but Tombstone had been best man at their Navy wedding. Then Magruder had won the coveted assignment to Top Gun, narrowly beating out Grant in the squadron competitions for the honor. Tombstone had been a step ahead of Grant when it came to promotions, making lieutenant commander and squadron leader of VF-95 after his graduation from Top Gun. It hadn’t changed their friendship, though. Far from begrudging Magruder his advancement, Grant had been delighted for his friend. He had secretly wondered, though, if he himself hadn’t been the lucky one of the pair. What he had with Julie was something he wouldn’t have given up for all the stripes in the Navy, and by the same token there had always been a restless, questing part of Matt Magruder that was never entirely at ease no matter how much he achieved.