The Backfires were still hurting the convoys, and badly. After considering Navy prodding, the Air Force was starting to base fighters in Newfoundland, Bermuda, and the Azores. Supported by tankers borrowed from the Strategic Air Command, they were trying to maintain a combat air patrol over those convoys they could reach. There was no hope of actually breaking up a Backfire raid, but they could start thinning the Bears out. The Soviets had only about thirty of the wide-ranging Bear-D reconnaissance aircraft. Roughly ten flew every day with their powerful Big Bulge radars turned on to guide the bombers and submarines in on the convoys, which made them relatively easy to find, if a fighter could be put out there to find them. After much experimentation, the Russians had fallen into a predictable pattern of air operations. They would be made to pay for that. Tomorrow the Air Force would have a two-plane patrol over six different convoys.
The Russians would be made to pay a toll for basing aircraft on Iceland, too.
"I make it a regiment, say twenty-four to twenty-seven aircraft. All MiG-29 Fulcrums," Toland said. "We never seem to see more than twenty-one on the ground. I figure they're running a fairly steady combat air patrol, say four birds aloft almost around the clock. They also appear to have three ground-based radars, and they're moving them around a lot. That probably means that they're set up for ground-controlled intercepts. Any problem jamming the search radars?"
A fighter pilot shook his head. "With the right support, no."
"So we'll just have to flush the MiGs off the ground and kill some." The commanders of both Tomcat squadrons were with Toland, examining the maps. "Want to keep clear of those SAMs, though. From what the guys in Germany say, the SA-11 is very bad news."
The first Air Force effort to flatten Keflavik with B-52s had been a disaster. Follow-up efforts with smaller, faster FB-111s had harassed the Russians but could not put Keflavik totally out of business. SAC was unwilling to part with enough of its fastest strategic bombers to do this. There still had not been a successful mission against the main fuel-storage site. It was too close to a populated area, and satellite photos revealed that the civilians were still there. Of course.
"Let's get the Air Force to try another B-52 mission," one fighter jock suggested. "They come in like before, except..." He outlined some changes in the attack profile. "Now that we have our Queers with us, it might work out all right."
"If you want my help, Commander, you might at least be a little polite about it." The Prowler pilot in the room clearly didn't like to have his forty-million-dollar aircraft referred to by that nickname. "I can knock those SAM radars back some, just keep in mind that SA-11 has a backup infrared tracker system. You get within ten miles of the launchers, they have an even-money chance of smoking your Tomcat right out of the sky." The really nasty thing about the SA-11, pilots had learned, was that it left almost no exhaust trail, which made it very hard to spot, and it was even harder to evade a SAM you couldn't see.
"We'll stay clear of Mr. SAM. First time, gentlemen, we got the odds on our side." The fighter pilots started putting a plan together. They now had solid intelligence of how Russian fighters operated in combat. The Soviets had good tactics, but they were also predictable. If the American aircraft could contrive to present a situation for which the Russians were trained, they knew how Ivan would react to it.
STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
He had never expected it to be easy, but neither had Alekseyev expected NATO air forces to have control of the night skies. Four minutes after midnight, an aircraft that had never registered on their radar had obliterated the radio transmitter station for CINC-West's headquarters. They'd only had three alternate stations, each more than ten kilometers from the underground bunker complex. Now they had one, plus a mobile transmitter that had already been bombed once. The underground telephone cables were still being used, of course, but advances into enemy territory had made telephone communications unreliable. Too often, the cables strung by Signal Corps troops were being destroyed by air attack and badly driven vehicles. They needed the radio links, and NATO was systematically eliminating them. They'd even attempted an attack on the bunker complex itself-the decoy site set exactly between two transmitter stations had been hit by eight fighter-bombers and liberally sprinkled with napalm, cluster munitions, and delay-fused high explosives. If the attack had been on the real complex, the ordnance experts said, there might have been casualties. So much for the skill of our engineers. The bunkers were supposed to withstand a near-miss from a nuclear warhead.
He now had a full fighting division across the Leine-the remains of one, he corrected himself. The two reinforcing tank divisions were trying to cross now, but the ribbon bridges had been bombed overnight along with the advancing divisions. The NATO reinforcements were beginning to arrive-their road advances had also suffered from air attacks, though at ghastly cost to the Soviet fighter-bombers. The tactics... no, amateurs discuss tactics, Alekseyev thought wryly. Professional soldiers study logistics. The key to his success would pivot on his ability to maintain bridges on the river Leine and to run traffic efficiently down the roads to Alfeld. The traffic-control system had already broken down twice before Alekseyev had dispatched a team of colonels to handle things.
"We should have picked a better place," Alekseyev muttered.
"Excuse me, Comrade General?" Sergetov asked.
"There's only one good road into Alfeld." The General smiled ironically. "We should have made our breakthrough at a town with at least three."
They watched wooden counters march-creep-down the line on the map. Each counter was a battalion. Missile and antiaircraft-gun units lined the corridor north and south of this road, and the road itself constantly swept to rid it of the remotely deployed mines that NATO was using in large numbers for the first time.
"Twentieth Tanks has taken a serious mauling," the General breathed. His troops. It might have been a quick breakthrough-should have been but for NATO aircraft.
"The two reinforcing divisions will complete the maneuver," Sergetov predicted confidently.
Alekseyev thought him right. Unless something else went wrong.
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
Morris sat across the deck from COMNAVSURFLANT: Commander, Naval Surface Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. A three-star admiral, held spent his whole career in what he liked to call "the real Navy," frigates, destroyers, and cruisers. The small gray ships lacked the glamour of aviation and the mystery of the submarines, but right now they were the key to getting the convoys across the Atlantic.
"Ivan's changed tactics on us-a hell of a lot faster than we thought he was able to. They're going for the escorts. The attack on your frigate was deliberate, you didn't just stumble across him. He was probably laying for you."
"They're trying to roll back the escorts?"