Edwards rattled off the names of his Marines. "We bugged out before the Russians got into the base."
"Where are you now?"
"Hill 152, four kilometers due east of Hafnarfjordur. We can see all the way into the harbor. There are Russian vehicles heading west towards Keflavik, and some trucks-we can't tell what kind-heading northeast towards Reykjavik on Highway 41. Look, guys, if you can whistle up a couple of Aardvarks, maybe we can kill that ship before she unloads," the lieutenant said urgently.
"I'm afraid the Varks are a little busy right now, fella. In case nobody told you, there's a shooting war in Germany. World War III kicked off ten hours ago. We're trying to get a recon bird up your way, but it might take awhile. Nobody's decided what to do about you either. For right now, you're on your own."
"No shit," Edwards replied, looking at his men.
"Okay, Edwards. Use your head, avoid contact with the enemy. If I read this right, you're the only friendly we have there right now. It figures they'll want you to keep the reports coming in. Observe and report. Conserve the battery power you have. Play it nice and cool, guy. Help will be coming, but it might take awhile. Just hang in there. You can listen for us on the hour, on even hours. You got a good watch?" In the meantime, the communications officer thought, we'll try to figure a way to find out if you're really who you say, and that you haven't got a Russian pistol at your head.
"Roger, it's set to Zulu time. We'll be listening. Out."
"More tanks," Smith said. "Jeez, that ship sure is a busy place!"
HAFNARFJORDUR, ICELAND
The General would not have believed how well things were going. When he had seen the Harpoon coming, he was sure that his mission would be a failure. Already a third of his vehicles had rolled off the ship and were en route to their destinations. Next, he wanted the rest of his division flown in. After that came more helicopters. For the present, all around him were a hundred thousand Icelanders whose friendship he did not expect. A few hardy souls were watching him from the opposite side of the harbor, and he'd already sent a squad of men to get rid of them. How many people were making telephone calls? Was the telephone-satellite relay base still intact? Might they be calling the United States to tell what was happening in Iceland? So many things to worry about.
"General, the airlift is under way. The first aircraft took off ten minutes ago with a fighter escort. They should begin to arrive in four hours," his communications officer reported.
"Four hours." The General looked up from the ship's bridge into a clear blue sky. How long before the Americans reacted and threw a squadron of fighter-bombers at him? He pointed to his operations officer.
"We have too many vehicles sitting on the quay. As soon as a platoon-sized grouping is together, move them off to their objectives. There is no time to wait for company groups. What about Reykjavik airport?"
"We have one company of infantrymen in place, with another twenty minutes away. No opposition. The civilian air controllers and the airport maintenance people are all under guard. A patrol going through Reykjavik reports little activity on the streets. Our embassy personnel report that a government radio broadcast told people to remain in their homes, and for the most part they seem to be doing this."
"Tell the patrol to seize the main telephone exchange. Leave the radio and television stations alone, but get the telephone exchange!" He turned as a squad of paratroopers arrived at the crowd on the far side of the harbor. He estimated perhaps thirty people there. The eight soldiers approached quickly after dismounting from their truck, rifles at the ready. One man walked up to the soldiers, waving his arms wildly. He was shot down. The rest of the crowd ran.
The General shouted a curse. "Find out who did that!"
USS CHICAGO
McCafferty returned to the attack center after a brief visit to his private head. Coffee would always keep you awake, he thought, either through the caffeine or the discomfort of an always-full bladder. Things were already not going well. Whatever genius had decided to order the American submarines out of the Barents Sea in the hope of avoiding an "incident" had neatly gotten them out of the way. Just in time for the war to start, the captain grumbled, forgetting that the idea hadn't seemed all that bad at the time.
Had they stuck to the plan, he might already have put a dent in the Soviet Navy. Instead, someone had panicked over the new Soviet missile sub dispositions, and so far as he could tell, the result was that no one had accomplished much of anything. The Soviet subs that had come storming out of the Kola Fjord had not come south into the Norwegian Sea as expected. His long-range sonar reported possible submarine noises far to his north, heading west before fading out. So, he thought, Ivan's sending his boats down the Denmark Strait? The SOSUS line between Iceland and Greenland could make that idea a costly one.
USS CHICAGO was steaming at five hundred feet just north of the 69' parallel, about a hundred miles west of Norway's rocky coastline. The Norwegians' collection of diesel boats was inside of him, guarding their own coast. McCafferty understood that, but didn't like it.
So far nothing had gone right, and McCafferty was worried. That was expected, and he could suppress it. He could fall back on his training. He knew what his submarine could do, and had a pretty good idea of what the Russian subs were capable of. He had the superior capabilities, but some Russian could always get lucky. This was war. A different sort of environment, not one judged by umpires and rule books. Mistakes now were not a matter of a written critique from his squadron commander. And so far luck seemed to be on the other side.
He looked around at his men. They had to be thinking the same thoughts, he was sure, but they all depended on him. The crewmen of his submarine were essentially the physical extensions of his own mind. He was the central control for the entire corporate entity known as USS CHICAGO, and for the first time the awesome responsibility struck him. If he messed up, all these men would die. And he, too, would die-with the knowledge that he had failed them.
You can't think like this, the captain told himself. It will eat you up. Better to have a combat situation where I can limit my thinking to the immediate. He checked the clock. Good.
"Take her up to periscope depth," he ordered. "It's time to check for orders, and we'll try an ESM sweep to see what's happening."
Not a simple procedure, that. The submarine came up slowly, cautiously, turning to allow her sonar to make certain that there was not a ship around.
"Raise the ESM."
An electronics technician pressed the button to raise the mast for his broad-band receiver. The board lit up instantly.
"Numerous electronic sources, sir. Three J-band search sets, lots of other stuff. Lots of VHF and UHF chatter. The recorders are going."
That figures, McCafferty thought. The odds against having anyone here after us are pretty low, though. "Up scope."
The captain angled the search-scope lens upward to scan the sky for a nearby aircraft and made a quick turn around the horizon. He noticed something odd, and had to angle down the lens to see what it was.
There was a green smoke marker not two hundred yards away. McCafferty cringed and spun the instrument back around. A multiengine aircraft was coming out of the haze-directly in at them.
The captain reached up and spun the periscope wheel, lowering the instrument. "Take her down! All ahead flank! Make your depth eight hundred feet!" Where the hell did he come from?