Hunter Killer (15 page)

‘What about the
Ivan Rogov?
That damned tub is sitting in our laps.’ York had turned to an illustration of a sister ship. ‘That baby packs a hell of a punch. Says here she’s got guns and missiles of her own. If her captain decided to join the fight, we’re a sitting target.’

‘So is he.’ The cold must be more than numbing his body. That was something Revell should have thought of for himself. What else had he missed, what else was there that he was overlooking? For many hours now the
Rogov
had been a part of the local scene, he’d grown used to its presence until it had merged into the background and he’d come close to forgetting, damn it, he
had
forgotten it. ‘If it’ll put your mind at ease, York, then we’ll give the tub the undivided attention of half a dozen rounds, how does that suit you?’

‘Just fine, Major. Want me to let you know of anything else I think of?’

‘I believe you may be, as you Americans say, pushing your luck.’ Boris rapped the radio-man’s ankle with the steel-shod side of his boot., He said the words quietly enough not to carry to the officer, but still managed to inject the urgent note of warning he intended.

‘Vanguard is coming into camera range now.’

Under Cline’s practised guidance a TV camera panned over an expanse of slab- dotted sea. He switched to a second, and instantly the screen was filled with a bow- on shot of an ice-coated destroyer. An arcing bow wave carried a crescent of ice and foam up and away from the knife-edged hull.

‘Pennant number is five-six-four.’ Having retrieved his book, Cline sought the vessel’s identity. ‘Here it is,
Strogiy,
modified Kashin class destroyer. Last reported in Leningrad yards for extensive refit.’

‘Find and identify the others, especially the two cruisers.’

Revell stood away from the bombardier’s chair. The operator would be under sufficient pressure without his appearing to hover over him. One after another the vanguard escorts jumped into focus, were identified and logged. In several cases the ships could only be identified by class or type, their pennant numbers were as new as the hulls, and unlisted. A guided missile frigate was of a class never seen before, and defied Cline’s efforts to positively identify it.

‘There’s one of them.’ A Kresta class cruiser jumped ‘into vision. Going for a close-up, Cline panned along its impressive length. The ship bristled with a staggering array of antenna complexes and weaponry. A moment later he found a second, and this one he was able to identify. ‘It’s the
Marshal Voroshilov,
another that was last seen in the yards.’

‘That’s an anti-submarine force. Our subs are going to have a tough time with that crowd.’ Revell scanned the list.

‘If we used all the tubes, we could do them a fair bit of damage, give our blokes a chance.’ Only two buttons had to be depressed and Cline could immediately transmit the ships’ positions to the launcher crews. He’d been with the battery long enough to know that it would take the gunners mere seconds to align the tubes and get clear. In a matter of minutes the Russian ships would be on the receiving end of a storm of fragmentation warheads that would rip through their complex radar equipment and mow down any crew on deck or behind light protection.

‘No, they’ll have to take care of themselves. Our orders say we go for the big tubs.’ On the screen the view of the ships was changing from side-on to a three- quarter rear shot. ‘Have number one site prepare to engage the cruisers. Seven rounds each. Site two can put a half dozen rounds into the
Rogov.’
Revell turned to York. ‘And this is where you start to do your work. The moment we open fire, start playing with your fireworks. I want any Commie tracker who so much as glances this way to get thoroughly confused. Use chaff, ECM, whatever you need to decoy any radar homing warheads they throw, but go easy on the pyrotechnics. Libby salvaged what he could, but we’re still short, so make it last, be sparing. I want maximum value from what we’ve got.’

With his headphones on, Boris could only half-hear what was going on, he would have preferred not to have been able to hear at all. When he had been drafted into the Russian forces, especially when he took the military oath, the penalties for desertion had been drummed into him. They were harsh, and usually demanded the ultimate sanction, but he was discovering that there were other penalties that no one had warned him about.

To fight Communism was one thing, but when he had actually made the decision to join the NATO army he had not given much thought to just what that might, that would, that was about to, involve. He had friends, some of whom had been drafted at the same time, others he had made during training or in his unit, and now he was about to help in the destruction of fellow Russians, men he might have got to know and like in other circumstances. The Soviet navy got the pick of the best electronics experts; perhaps some of his friends were aboard those ships, it was possible, likely even. The only difference between him and them was that he’d had his chance to escape, and had taken it. But then he’d been free to, with no close family ties ...free; free to turn round and kill his own people. Some of whom he could hear talking at that very moment.

It sounded like ship-to-shore transmissions again, nothing important, just a junior sergeant complaining about a mistake over rations that had come ashore; he was telling the ship that they had no tea or vodka and that his officers expected him to remedy the situation. From the other end, and a bored supply clerk on the
Rogov
was verbally shrugging aside the complaint; he was safe and had no wish to bring the mistake to the notice of his own superiors.

Perhaps the clerk had done it deliberately, to pocket the profit he would make from selling the precious supplies elsewhere. Everyone did it, or tried to. It was necessary if a man were to survive in the Russian forces. A case of vodka supplied to an officer at a special low price would build up a fund of, if not goodwill, at least understanding, that might come in very useful later on. Boris caught the start of another exchange between Cline and the officer, and closed his ears to it. There was no way he could entirely disassociate himself from what was about to happen, but he was determined to have as little to do with it as possible. That would not salve his conscience, but if he did not know everything that happened, at least he would carry a smaller burden.

‘You still want to hit those cruisers, Major?’ As the radar screen showed the vanguard moving away from the island still heading due north, the second and much larger group was moving into range of their TV cameras. Abandoning close-ups, Cline had gone for a panoramic view. To the limit of the depth of the field, the floe-sprinkled sea was filled with wave throwing, rime-coated warships from dashing frigates of three thousand tons, to a towering Archangel class cruiser of sixteen thousand tons. Missiles and high-angle guns pointed skyward on every one, while their assorted radars rotated in endless search of the sky and sea.

‘I can’t get them all on to the screen at once, I’ve got a swarm of traces on the radar, how do I choose targets?’

‘Pick the biggest. Leningrad can churn out frigates and destroyers like mincemeat, cruisers take longer, cost a lot more. Don’t try skimping, better to send ten rockets at one target so that a couple get through, than send two at each of five targets and have them all hacked down before they get within lethal range.’

‘You hear that?’ Libby snorted. ‘Lethal my fucking foot. It’ll be like trying to total a wasp’s nest by punching it.’

‘I found you need a good sense of the fucking ridiculous in this outfit. Look at us.’ Despite his words, Dooley did not stand up and offer himself for inspection. ‘There’s Cline and the major getting ready to have a go at better than a hundred thousand tons of armoured shipping with maybe a ton or two of fragmentation warheads, and us, sitting here with shitty rifles and machine guns, waiting to take on a battalion of Soviet marines. Now if that ain’t fucking silly, what is? After I got in a couple of fights with guys who called me a liar when I tried telling them about some of the missions we’ve been on, I gave up. It gets you down, don’t it?’

‘It do, it sure do.’ Ripper nodded sagely, until Dooley rapped him hard on the head and rammed his helmet down over his eyes.

Revell tapped Cline on the shoulder when the last of the target co-ordinates were punched in. The ringing clang made by Dooley’s fist on the shaped steel dome died away as Revell leant forward and spoke quietly to the bombardier. ‘Open fire.’

TWELVE
Both launchers were fired at the same instant, but it was the rockets sent against the anchored amphibious warfare ship that found their mark first.

Caught off-guard by an attack from a totally unexpected direction, the ship’s radar-directed gatlings didn’t even open fire, and every warhead got through.

Two exploded over the bridge, sending a storm of white-hot fragments into the unarmoured upper-works and totally destroying the vessel’s fit of radar masts and dishes. As the remains of the tall lattice structure toppled on to the rear landing pad, the third warhead blasted the forward hanger and smashed a helicopter standing in front of it. Fire broke out immediately as aviation fuel spread in a blazing tide through the open doors and down into the bowels of the ship. The points of detonation of the last three rockets were lost amid the smoke and flying debris from the first, but the fact that they too had found their target could not be doubted when a huge bubble of flame rose from the ship’s bow, as ready-use ammunition for the forward twin 76mm gun was ignited.

The rockets chasing the cruisers had further to travel, and two of those aimed at the lead ship did not reach it. Intercepted by streams of fire from the ship’s gatlings, they were broken apart by the torrent of 23mm shells.

Against the warship’s armour, the rockets’ effects were not so spectacular, but as the smoke drifted clear one of the cruisers could be seen making a hard turn away to port, its antenna badly mauled and its helicopter pad, hanger and rear superstructure heavily scarred, with the barely recognisable wreckage of the chopper hanging over the ship’s stern.

As the launchers rippled their heavy projectiles towards the ships, York activated the decoys. Small mortars hurled chaff high into the air over the island and a silver rain began to fall that would hopefully confuse enemy radars attempting to track the rockets’ path back to their launch sites. Other shells landed well away from the house and began to transmit powerful signals that, for a short while, would dwarf the real emissions, and draw-off enemy warheads homing in on such sources.

While others might be able to watch the effects of the strike on metal, Boris could hear its effects on men. The weary supply clerk aboard the
Rogov
was drowned out for a moment as the salvo struck, then he could be heard shouting, then screaming. Boris could make out the words ‘fire’ and ‘door’, and finally after more frantic screaming, over and over again the one word ‘mother’. It cut altogether as he reached for the tuner to shut off the sounds.

They’d done it, they’d got in the first blow. Plugging in a spare headset, Revell waited impatiently for the message that the launchers had been realigned on their fresh targets. Come on, come on. On his watch the seconds flickered by insanely fast. Site one was first, and two signalled ready an instant later. A glance at the screen told him there was no need for him to alter the targets chosen. As he gave the order, he imagined the launchers out there in the snow — only much of it would have melted around them by now. What was left would be blasted away by the back-wash as the remaining twenty-six rockets at one site, and thirty-four at the other, took off and rode their flame- tails towards the second group of ships.

This time the Russian vessels were ready. Cones of concentrated small-calibre fire reached out to the warheads aiming mindlessly for them, but some were getting through. The big anti-aircraft cruiser was surrounded by metal-lashed water as slivers of steel swept it and the sea about it.

The proximity fuse failed on one rocket and it impacted just forward of the bridge on another large warship. Tearing apart a pair of ready-to-fire surface-to-air missiles, it added the fuel of their spilled propellant and broken explosive content to the blaze that engulfed that section of the deck.

And of the many rockets that failed to get through, not every one was wasted. Two that failed to reach their target erupted in balls of flame above a dashing Grisha class corvette. It came out of the far side of the man-made storm with every plate pierced, heeling hard over in a tight uncontrolled turn that took it right under the bows of a destroyer, missing a collision by inches.

‘All bloody hell has let loose.’ As York sent the second set of decoys soaring high over the house, he turned to help Boris find the Russian wavelengths. ‘Every damned position on the dial is in use, they don’t know what the heck is going on.’

‘The commander of the marines on the island is broadcasting to anyone who will listen that he is not leading a mutiny, he is telling the ships he has not opened fire. I think he is crying.’

‘Let’s hope the ships hit him instead of us. How’s that re-loading going?’

‘Give them time, Major. Forty tubes is a lot of metal to lift. Best possible is ten minutes, and that’s pushing it.’ Despite the spectacular things to be seen on the TV, it was the surface radar that presented Cline with the most interesting picture at the moment.

The first group of ships were still moving north, but at reduced speed. Now it was down from their previous thirty knots to less than twenty. But it was the traces showing the positions of the ships in the second group that were the most fascinating.

‘They’re all over the place. Look at them.’ Revell put his finger on the screen to underline the two blips that were fast converging on a collision course. Disappoint- ingly, they noticed their danger, but must still have suffered damage in the heavy side-swipe that seemed inevitable, judging by the temporary joining of the blobs of telltale light.