Hunter Killer (2 page)

A crudely secured extension vent, from the main air-conditioning trunk in the passageway, gave a sudden shudder and a tinny clatter of vibration at a distant impact and vomited a spoonful of fine dust that floated down to settle on the desk top. It had hardly touched before Lippincott was deftly brushing it to the floor with a soft yellow cloth he took, neatly folded, from a top drawer. Only when the oak surface was once again without blemish did he flap the residue from his shoulders and his stump-encasing sleeve.

‘You any idea how many brigade, divisional, even army commanders are trying to grab the headlines by forming special units? It’s a hell of a lot. Word has come down that it’s got to stop. Too much dilution of effort is the reason given. Me, I reckon it’s pressure from the guys running the Rangers and Commandos and the SAS. They don’t want their thunder stolen.’

‘So my new outfit gets its wings clipped even before it takes off.’ The news wasn’t a complete surprise to Revell. He’d been half expecting something like it.

‘Yeah, but only clipped. A lot of others have been plucked, stuffed and cooked.’ Closing the file, Lippincott replaced it, and took a second from a locked centre drawer. ‘I got something else for you here, just to keep you ticking over. It’s a toughie, but tailor-made for the size of your squad.’ He paused a moment before going on. ‘How you feel about starting a war?’

For a second Revell thought he must have misheard him. ‘Damn it, Colonel, what have we got now? A two-hundred-mile wide no-man’s-land running the length of Europe; ten million dead civvies, four times that number of refugees… what more do you want?’

‘We want Sweden in the war, on our side. Finland could be forced into the Russian camp at any time, it’s practically in it now. Like bloody Frog-land it’s more fucking neutral to the Commies than it is to us.. Shoots at us if we only look that way, and meantime supplies the Ruskies with everything from ice-breakers to bootlaces and pyjama cords. If Sweden comes in on our side it would give us a good base from which to try and get back into the Baltic. Command aren’t too happy about it having become a Russian lake, and with the Finns having to worry about the Swedish army they wouldn’t be able to spare men to help the Russians in Norway.’

‘The country’s armament industry would be useful, too.’ The attractions of the possibility were obvious to Revell.
‘That’d be a bonus.’

‘How is the miracle going to be worked? The Swedes are firmly neutral, they’ve been treading very careful with the Russians.’ Lippincott smiled. ‘The Ruskies are going to help us, but they don’t know it yet. Come to that, they won’t know until after they have. What’s the weather like outside? I haven’t been above ground for a week.’

To Revell the question seemed an irrelevance. ‘Very cold, threatening snow. Why?’

‘The weather boffins reckon all the little old ladies are being proved right at last. All those tactical nukes both sides have been so cheerfully chucking about inside the Zone have screwed the climate. Winter will be early this year, stay longer and bite a lot harder. Satellites tell us that the Russians are already having to do round- the-clock ice-breaking to keep Leningrad and the other northern Baltic ports and yards open. There’s seven-tenths pack as far south as Gdansk and if they’re going to get all the hardware their yards have been building or updating out into the Atlantic, then they’ll have to be moving it real soon…’

‘Where does my squad fit in, and how’s Sweden going to be dragged in?’

‘The Swedes have given the Commies the OK to make the passage to open sea through their territorial waters, so we lose our chance to hit them in the narrows of the Baltic approaches. Once they reach the Skaggerak and the North Sea they’ll spread out, have more room to manoeuvre, and altogether be a fucking tough target. Any we miss will be able to play havoc with either the Brits’ oil-rigs or our convoy routes. Just when it begins to look like we got the measure of their subs, they’re going to chuck surface units our way.’ Spitting with machine-gun rapidity and accuracy, Lippincott sent fragments of soggy pencil wood into an ashtray…

‘We’re going to dump you and your men on a small island inside Swedish territorial waters, where the Russians will have to pass close. You’ll be given enough firecrackers to scare the shit out of the Commies as they come racing out of the narrows between Sweden and the occupied Danish islands. If our Russian friends perform as per usual, they’ll plaster the nearest Swedish territory with everything they’ve got. You should have a nice ringside seat for the first battle between the Commies and our newest ally.’

‘And what if they’re not so obliging?’ The many problems the thumbnail sketch of the mission presented crowded in upon Revell. ‘If the Ruskies don’t lash out, then you’ll have a multiple warhead Lance missile to stir them into action yourself. Nothing that’ll do them any real harm, but it should get the party going.’ Swivelling back and forth in his chair, and chewing furiously, Lippincott waited for the major’s reaction.

‘My men will be on the nearest chunk of Sweden when the Russians open fire. I’d like to know just how much ordnance is likely to come our way. What’s the size of the force that’ll be making the breakout?’

‘Can’t be sure at this stage. You’ll get provisional figures before you go, and we’ll feed you updates once you’re established.’ ‘What’s the estimate? There must be a number flying around somewhere.’

‘It’s only a guess, but Staff are working on the assumption there’ll be ten major units and thirty-plus destroyers, frigates and mine hunters as escorts. You’ll only be going for the big stuff, cruisers and the like.’

‘And what do we hit them with? The Swedes have a good radar net. If we’re going to land undetected we have to be travelling light. Since when has NATO had a weapon with a decent range, the ability to resist jamming and get through a ship’s close-in defences, with a warhead. hefty enough to upset the captain of a fifteen thousand ton cruiser, that’ll fit into a shoe box?’

‘Shit, range won’t matter much. The Ruskies will have to pass within four miles of the island, probably less. They ain’t the best seamen in the war, they’ll allow a healthy margin for navigation error. Those shits know that if they stick so much as a double thickness of battleship grey outside the limits, we’ll hit it with everything we’ve got. We can get around jamming by using a weapon that’s just point and fire. If it doesn’t employ guidance then it can’t be buggered by electronic countermeasures. As for getting past the ships’ SAMs and radar directed gatlings, they’ll be beaten by saturation tactics. Send twenty rockets at a target, don’t matter if it’s bristling with every type of flak, some of them are going to get through, especially in the minimal flight time we’re envisaging.’

‘That’s not a description of any anti-shipping missile that I know of.’ ‘That’s cause it’s not. The British gunners who are going with you will have simple, lightweight, trailer-mounted versions of our standard 125mm multiple rocket launchers. The sort our artillery boys use all the time. Fucking clever, ain’t it? The Ruskies will have planned for everything; mines, torpedoes, air-attacks, the lot, you name it they’ll be ready for it. The one thing they won’t be prepared for is for you to have a go at them from a direction they’ll not be expecting with a weapon that’s never been used that way before.’

A major drawback occurred to Revell. ‘OK, it sounds smart, but even if they all get through to the target, 125mm rounds are going to do little more than skin damage to those big battlewagons. They’ll shrug it off like so many flea bites and plough on.’

‘We’re one ahead of you. Going back a bit, one of our destroyers off ‘Nam was on the receiving end of an accidental near miss from an air-launched missile one of our pilots let go by mistake. It was a Shrike I think, anyway, it had a fragmentation head and when it banged off right over our ship it took out all her radar, diced better than twenty of her crew and stopped the tub dead in the water. It was kept kinda quiet at the time. The babies you’ll be taking have been fitted with similar heads. If just one of them bangs off over a Ruskie ship it’ll be as good as poking the fucker’s eyes out. Any Commie admiral should take that serious enough.’ ‘Maybe if we did enough damage we could force them to turn around, go back for repairs. That’d lock them up for the rest of the winter.’

‘Don’t start getting over-ambitious, Major. That’s what the city fathers of Frankfurt were beefing about. Just do the job as it’s given you. If you manage to knock them about, sufficient to soften them up for a reception by the Brit Navy when they reach open sea, good. But just remember, Copenhagen is not so far from there. At the moment the Ruskies are accepting the Danes’ declaration of it being an open city: they’ve occupied it, but they ain’t harmed it yet. You overdo things and that might change. We need the Free Danish Forces. No point in roping Sweden into the fight if we upset and maybe lose an established member of NATO in the process.’

‘Alright, so let’s assume it all goes according to plan, and the Commies and the Swedes start chucking ordnance at each other. What about my men? We’ll be in the middle of the cauldron, and back-loading our equipment is not going to be easy. If we leave a load of NATO gear on the island it won’t take the Swedes long to figure out that someone has been doing some stirring. Could rather spoil things.’

‘Ain’t that the truth. When you’ve done, you’ll destroy what you can’t carry. It’ll have to be done thorough, but it’s a small price to pay for fucking up a Soviet fleet.’
‘What about the men? Are you fitting them with self-destruct mechanisms?’

Coming from another man Lippincott might have seen humour in the question but not from Revell, strait-laced crud! ‘The planning ain’t got that far yet, but you’ll be picked up as soon as the excitement dies down, or moves elsewhere. Sub, or chopper, or surface craft; we ain’t sure yet.’ He tidied the sheets of paper together. ‘The rest you’ll get at briefing before the ‘off’. We’ve got to move real fast on this one. Met reckon the Commies will have to make a move inside the next eight days. I want you and your crowd kitted and on your way within twenty-four hours. Oh yeah, a last piece of good news. You won’t be exactly making a landing on the island, leastways, not the way you mean, from the sea. I’ve arranged a little treat for you, you’re going in by parachute.’

‘The hell we are! Better find yourself another suicide squad. None of my men are trained, give it to the SAS or the Screaming Eagles. I’m beginning to think you snatched the mission from them in the first place.’ ‘Scared the shit out of you, have I?’
‘No,’ Revell kept the irritation out of his voice, but it took an effort. ‘No, you just wasted my time.’ He made to leave.

‘OK, so I was only kidding, you’re not actually making a drop. Well, not a real one.’
‘You want to try explaining that piece of gobbledygook, or shall I keep heading for the door?’

‘Ever seen parachute extraction?’

‘Where a transport comes in low and slow with its rear doors open and chutes deploy to drag out a sled-mounted cargo? Sure, I’ve seen it… you want my men to go to war that way? Are you crazy, that’s strictly hardware only.’ ‘They’ve refined it a bit…’
‘What did they do, fit the sledge with springs so it can pogo back inside if it goes down in the wrong place?’

Again Lippincott sensed no light intent behind the remark. ‘I’m telling you, it’s OK. There’ll be three pallets. One will carry the launchers, their ammunition and the demolition charges, along with most of the electronics gadgets you’ll be taking. Another will have a generator, a small tractor for dispersing the launchers and moving your stores, and your support arms and ammunition. Number three will have a cabin that you’ll all ride down in.’ ‘And you think the Swedish Airforce is just going to stooge around and watch us while we land and set up camp…’

‘You won’t even see them. Your flight will replace a scheduled civvy run. When you approach your DZ your pilot will report engine trouble to Swedish air traffic control and act like he’s got problems. He’ll lose altitude and drop you off just before the difficulty miraculously rights itself and he turns away for home. Far as the Swedes are concerned, it’ll be a routine flight that just got hairy for a moment or two.’

O’l Foul Mouth had a way of presenting a mission that Revell didn’t like. What had doubtless been long thought over and meticulously worked on by experienced planning Staffs, he made sound hasty and improvised. While riding shotgun for a bunch of gunners wasn’t the best job Revell had been offered, it would do as a stopgap, serve to keep the nucleus of his new command together, if it ever materialised. His life seemed a succession of stopgaps; his battles, his women, each briefly enjoyed then discarded as he hurried to the next, and hopefully better experience.

‘You’ll pick up your equipment and the group you’re to escort at Bremen. You’ll fly out from there.’ Lippincott rose to conclude the meeting. ‘Best round up that cutthroat mob of yours, fast as you can. Where are they now, what they doing?’
‘Manning a Zone perimeter checkpoint. They’ll have their hands too full of refugees to get into any trouble there.’

‘You’re forgetting I know that crowd, and so do you. Neither of us believe that, not for a fucking second.’

TWO
‘I hope the lieutenant knows what he’s doing. We’re supposed to be making sure the refugees stay in the Zone, not helping them get out.’ Burke looked out from the uncurtained window, along the road to the checkpoint.

A bedraggled group of elderly civilians was shuffling through the gap that had been opened in the barricade. The moment the last one was clear Lieutenant Hogg hauled the wire-festooned pole back into place, laying it across the top of the concrete-filled oil drums. He was hampered by several of the party attempting to crowd about him and offer their thanks. An old lady in a mud-spattered suede coat kept grabbing at his hand, trying to kiss it.

‘Now how far are they going to get, dressed like a load of scarecrows?’ Ripper’s southern drawl was accentuated by a succession of yawns, and he tucked a blanket more snugly about his legs as he lay slumped on the couch. ‘Folks in these parts are shit scared of the Zone, reckon anyone who gets out carries every disease from anthrax to the black death, and glows in the dark to boot. They’ll be lucky to travel another mile, and luckier still if all that happens is that they’re picked up and shoved back in.’