He had the parachute gathered up by the time Cpl Alladay collected it from him, for burial with the rest of the team’s parachutes. Each man would be carrying a little over his own weight in kit over mountains uncharted except by satellite photograph, so no one would be taking excess baggage on this yomp.
Garfield Woods and Shippey-Romhead gathered up the men and carried out a check on both men and equipment, any damage to the radios or laser designators could jeopardise the mission, and an injured man could equally harm their chances of success.
Lady Luck was, by and large, with them.
One man had a suspected broken rib, plus a variety of bumps and scrapes amongst the remainder, but nothing that would hold them up.
Forty minutes later, the M&AWC contingent led off with the Green Berets and Mountain Troop in trail, heading roughly WSW and into the night with 36.2 miles to go, as the crow flies, to their objective.
The Alfa, pennant number 512 had become, by right of succession, the flagship of the soviet submarine force in the Atlantic. Its commander had left port somewhat junior to the then commander. He was eighth in the seniority stakes at that time, but attrition by NATO had thrust him into a command position he would have taken ten years to reach in peacetime.
He had a problem; inasmuch as Admiral Conrad’s convoy was approaching the point where land based maritime patrol aircraft would add considerably to its defence. Latest humint reports told of a massing of these aircraft on the closest airfields, coming in from all points to arm up and await the convoy.
Since his attack on the Royal Navy anti-submarine vessels, the convoy had altered course, choosing a more direct line to the ports of destination, rather than going further south. The Russian submariner was aware of the only three realistic choices he had presented the convoy’s commander. Maintain course and speed in the knowledge that the enemy were too strung out to mount a concentrated attack, and suffer instead a lighter, but prolonged series of strikes, as the submarines came into range. Take a longer, more southerly course, and hope that would avoid the wolf pack, or, take a more direct line to safety, and hope that its defensive screen was sufficient to resist a mass onslaught. Admiral Conrad had chosen the third option, so perhaps NATOs armies were even closer to collapse than was thought.
What he lacked was a plan of the convoy, something to tell him where NATOs ships carrying the troops, equipment and supplies were. He had ordered his diesels to try to penetrate the warship screen and give exact coordinates for these vessels that were so vital to NATO in Europe.
He had just five diesels remaining, all Kilos but only two of these were the even quieter improved models, of these he needed at least one to infiltrate the screens and provide him with that fix.
Behind Potyemkin, the commanders Alfa, a half-mile in trail the Oscar II guided missile submarine Stalin held station, and in her vertical launch tubes sat twenty missiles topped with one-megaton warheads. He had the means to sink each and every merchant vessel in the convoy, but the last radar picture was two days old, and it showed his enemy spread over fifty square miles of ocean. Warships formed an inner and outer screen, and the merchantmen lay within, but there was a lot of room to manoeuvre inside that screen
Two days ago when they had then known that they were safe from nuclear attack, the convoy had covered fifty square miles. They would likely have now increased the spacing between ships, and so be covering a greater expanse. As powerful as his weapons were, they could easily be wasted vaporising empty sea.
The American’s had shot down the RORSAT over the Midwest, and its replacement was still on a launch pad somewhere. All he could do was blanket the area occupied by the ships with conventional, chemical and nuclear tipped weaponry, unless his diesels could provide him with hard data.
His Kilos were shadowing the convoy, and in just over thirty minutes his missile boats could accelerate into firing position. Every minute he delayed brought Conrad’s gamble closer to success, so he gave the order to his communications officer.
“Make to all vessels… Attack!”
With the loss of the Illustrious ASW group from the convoy’s defence, so too went 50 % of its rotary wing airframes. Conrad no longer had the comprehensive cover of before, but those that remained heard the enemy begin their approach.
In the CIC aboard the USS Gerald Ford, Conrad ordered the ships to carry out pre planned spacing, putting greater distance between themselves, without losing ASW screen and missile defence integrity.
The carrier’s principle bodyguards, the AEGIS cruisers USS Normandy and USS Anzio, along with the older USS Thomas S Gates, took station to port, the threat side, of the carrier. The ageing AEGIS cruiser lacked the VLS; vertical launch systems of the younger pair, but her Mk 26 launchers would hopefully find plenty to do. With that done the admiral turned the fight over to the ASWO and ordered the CAG to launch all the F/A-18 and F14s. Once their hard points were bare of air to air ordnance they were free to meet with the tankers, 200 miles to the west of the Gerald Ford, and then on to Europe. Should the carrier be lost, at least SACEUR would have some damn fine men and women bolstering his available air assets.
Launching of the Tomcats and F/A-18s was still underway when the soviets started the ball rolling; the shadowing diesels launched spreads of acoustic torpedoes at the mass of surface ships before using the distraction to try to breach the screen.
The Perry class frigate USS Paul Cooper, found two torpedoes heading for her and kicked on all the speed she could, making radical course changes as she did so. The soviet weapons did not waver, keeping with the target as she twisted and turned, closing the distance all the time. The ship was closed up for NBC warfare, and there was no one above decks to observe the outcome of the race, but everyone heard it and felt it. The closer torpedo homed onto the little ships streamed Nixie, its mate a split second behind. The double concussions rang through the hull as the ocean heaved behind her, knocking men and women off their feet, and causing unsecured crockery in the galley to jump a foot in the air, to shatter on the deck.
Of the twenty torpedoes fired, five malfunctioned, thirteen were decoyed by Nixies, and two found the fleet ammunition ship, USNS Dutchman’s Ferry.
Six hundred feet up at the controls of the Paul Cooper’s UH-60B Sea Hawk, its pilots watched the exploding torpedoes white water column drench the stern and upper works of their own ship, and they were then buffeted by the titanic explosion that had obliterated the ammunition ship a full mile away.
In the back, the Sea Hawks operator gripped the edge of his workstation to steady himself, but his attention was on his instruments.
“Sir, we have a solid contact on our last line of sonar buoys!”
“Gimme a steer!”
“It’s just south of number four… take a heading of 009’ and hustle, he’s heading down!”
Turning onto that heading, the Sea Hawk dropped down toward the waves and the co-pilot reported their sonar buoy contact to Paul Cooper’s ASWO, who in turn passed it along to the ASW department on the carrier where it was added to the big picture.