After what seemed much longer, but was in reality just over four minutes, there was a hollow boom in his headset and his eyes flew open, someone had died. It was followed two seconds later by another almost identical sound, and he looked at the sonar operator.
“Different bearings sir… I got breaking up sounds, same bearings as the impacts… two guys jus’ died, I guess.” It was just a figure of speech, but the breaking up sounds represented far more than just two men whose lives had been lost. Two ships companies had died, one undoubtedly soviet, because the remaining NATO vessels were either up north covering the Denmark Strait, or southeast between the Faeroes and Scotland. The big question was, Pitt asked himself, was HMCS Victoria the other?
General Shaw walked down the airstair and held up five fingers to the waiting Royal Air Force staff cars as he joined a pair of ground technicians examining the starboard landing gear. Rickham was already inside the car and shouted angrily at the general to ‘move his ass’, and when he was ignored he snapped at the young woman in uniform behind the wheel to pick the general up later. He had himself ignored the Group Captain who commanded the RAF Station, walking quickly past him at the bottom of the airstair without a glance or a nod to acknowledge the salute he had been given, heading straight for the car.
The driver did not like her boss being treated like a lackey, or a general officer being sworn at by a bloody overweight civilian, and she certainly wasn’t taking orders from the arrogant sod, so she ignored him.
There was nothing left of the front outer tyre on the gear, it had shredded and now lay in fragments along the length of the runway where airmen were already collecting them, lest they get sucked into an engine intake.
“That looks nasty?”
Henry had changed into attire more fitting to a war zone before they had landed and both airmen looked up at the speaker and saw the black woven stars on his collar. The camouflage material of the generals’ jacket and trousers wasn’t what they expected from someone with five stars, the boots too showed signs of wear, this wasn’t a man expecting to take any salutes from troops passing in revue. The faded webbing holster had sat on the same hip in Vietnam when Shaw had been a young lieutenant and other clothing and equipment had seen Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia and Afghanistan when muck and bullets had been in the air. There had been a few other places in between, unpublicised and ‘deniable’ actions where politics by other means, had been extended.
They started to rise but he gestured them to stay where they were.
“Sir, it happens now and again, but then again the Reds paid us a visit yesterday and it could have been caused by a piece of sharp shrapnel lying on the runway that we missed.”
There was nothing there to indicate in any way that a sniper a quarter mile from the end of the runway had shot out the tyre.
Henry looked around the field, the snow had left a white blanket across everything, including bomb craters and as he squinted, he could now make out indentations in the otherwise flat surface of the aerodrome. The station’s control tower was a pile of fire charred rubble, and a hangar was in ruins, no doubt there was other damage he could not see but the place was open for business anyway. The loss of AWAC cover had given the enemy a number of opportunities to sortie raids behind the lines, but now that the AWACs that had covered North Cape were overhead, albeit with exhausted crews, the hole was plugged.
“Have you got any tyres like these on the base?”
“No sir, my flight sergeant is givin’ Lufthansa a bell, they probably won’t fly one in but it’ll only take a couple of hours by road. We’ll get the jacks under your bus straightaway so we can stick it straight on.”
Henry was about to tell them he wouldn’t be going back on that aircraft, but a flight of RAF Jaguars taking off would have meant him shouting, so he didn’t bother. Giving the men a nod and a smile he headed toward the waiting staff cars that drove them into the camp to the station command centre.
To Rickham’s annoyance the female RAF corporal walked around the car to open the generals’ door first, it was left to one of the senators aides to scurry across from the second car to open it for his boss, not that he received any thanks.
Henry’s aide put away his cell phone.
“Transports just being cleared through at the guardroom sir.”
“Thanks Manuel… there’s an old friend I have to see first, it’ll only take a minute.”
Inside the hardened shelter Senator Rickham’s public face asserted itself upon his face as he entered the room where the British Prime Minister, German Chancellor and the foreign ministers of the Spanish, French, Dutch, Belgian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Portuguese governments were gathered. The British PM looked towards the doorway and beamed, striding across the room; Rickham’s smile almost mirrored it as he stepped forward and reached out his hand.
“Henry Shaw!” The Prime Minister of Great Britain walked past the politician and pumped the generals’ hand. “Are you still hung over from that party in Madam Woo’s whorehouse?”
“How kind of you to remember Mr Prime Minister… and to announce it so publicly too.” Henry replied in an ironic tone but with a big grin, and then replied just as loudly. “The last time I saw you, you were in a swamp with your trousers around your ankles, and someone was using a cigarette butt to get the leeches off your ass.”
“You always had a steady hand General.”
Rickham’s smile was looking distinctly plastic when Henry made the introductions, and then made his apologies, as he had to hit the road and would arrange his own transport back stateside.
It had begun to snow again outside as he climbed into the Canadian army M113 for the journey to SACEURs new sanctum, General Allain was but one of a number of people he had to see over the next few days.
The point section had been moving steadily on for the first hour, crossing fields, scrubland and moving through copses of trees. Had it not been snowing then they would have changed their camouflage as they moved, stuffing handfuls of whatever was growing in the field they were entering, into elastic sown to their clothing and equipment, and changing it for whatever was prolific in the next. The snow and the Arctic Whites they were clad in made that unnecessary, so they concentrated on watching their arcs and waiting to be shot at.
The section commanders were busy all the time, trying to read the ground ahead as an enemy might see it. The sections moved with ‘One foot on the ground’ at all times, either a pair of riflemen or the gun group would be lying in cover and up in the aim, covering the rest as they advanced, whether anyone was shooting or not. As soon as someone else ducked into cover to take over the duty, they’d get up and double away to take up their positions until the next time it was their turn. The section commanders were also busy. L/Cpl Orden, the section commander of the lead section, was pointing out landmarks, and potential cover if they came under fire, it came across commentary like.