By the time they arrived at the RV the sound of Warrior engines could be heard, it was small comfort to the young Captain that they had avoided the greater losses that would have resulted from being hit on the flank and possibly being rolled up. They had lost three men and delayed the enemy for less than half an hour, not an outstanding performance in anyone’s book, and that it would have worked against less experienced troops was no comfort. Since dawn he had lost half of his men, they had no targets for the anti-tank weapons because of the infantry on foot, and he couldn’t see the situation changing. Once it got dark the enemy would laager up, like the wagon train circling its wagons, except the cowboys wouldn’t be hiding behind them, they would be outside and dug in where they could protect the armour, and patrolling aggressively trying to find the Indians.
“Perhaps we should get the cars and join the rest of the brigade?” the sergeant suggested. They had the commandeered vans and family cars from the village for transportation, and as he thought about it Nikoli had to agree that it was an option, but he wasn’t ready to give up quite yet. Removing his map he gestured for the sergeant to sit beside him. He pointed out their present location and then tapped his finger to the northwest.
“There is the forest, it is to one side of the NATO line of advance. Behind their infantry are their APCs and tanks, behind them their artillery and behind those are the logistical support.” He said, becoming more decisive as he thought about it. “We’ve tried sitting in front to delay them, and we nearly got run over, so… we hide up until they are passing and then take out their supply train.”
“It’s certainly a better idea than what we’ve done so far, Captain.”
“Okay then, let us get to where we hid the cars and get going.”
The tarpaulin was pulled back to reveal the single item being carried on the civilian lorry's flatbed. RAF Policemen had the driver and his mate out of the cab and stood in the open as they searched the vehicle just outside the entrance to the RAF Station. The two civilian’s apprehension at the way a police dog handler’s German Shepherd was eyeing them hungrily, was entirely genuine. In addition to the canine threat, an RAF Regiment soldier was pointing an LSW very deliberately at them from a concrete sangar.
Eventually a corporal approached them having telephoned the Lufthansa Head Office to verify their credentials.
“That’s a big tyre you have there, Herr Koenig.” He said in passable German. He handed over their invoice and identity cards but retained the vehicle keys.
“Our maintenance troops will take it from here. If you will follow me into the Guardroom, its warmer and you can have a coffee whilst we unload.”
The driver looked as if he was going to object to a serviceman driving his rig, but a string of saliva was hanging from the corner of the German Shepherds mouth and its ears were erect in anticipation, so the objection died before it had even been uttered. Having checked that the invoice bore a signature of receipt he shrugged and the pair allowed themselves to be steered through the gate.
One hour later the vehicle pulled back up to the gate and an airman jumped down from the cab, leaving the engine running and waved. The snow had stopped and there were gaps in the clouds, a rarity of late, but it threatened a cold and icy night, so the Corporal advised them not to rush on their way home and brief goodbyes were exchanged.
As they had been carrying what were technically war stores, the driver had a pass permitting them to use the autobahn, but they didn’t use it on the way back, sticking to side roads instead. Ten miles outside of Bielefeld they pulled into a field and drove the truck out of sight of the road, stopping beside a civilian car. They weren’t to know that at the same time they were pulling out of the field in the car, a man walking his dog twenty miles away was peering down to see what the dog was trying to unearth from beneath a mound of shovelled snow. The real Albert Koenig and his drivers mate would take some time to identify, both bodies were naked and the exit wounds had removed most of their facial features.
Captain Pitt was giving very serious consideration to going to his bunk and closing his eyes, instead of sitting here in sonar pretending to just rest them. There was a red mark on his forehead, he had slipped into that state of half sleep and weird dreams, that end as the head drops forward suddenly, leaving one looking around quickly to see if anyone has noticed. On the last occasion his forehead had met the rim of the coffee mug and there was now a wet patch on his right thigh from the cold contents that had sloshed out with the impact.
He glanced at the sonarman beside him and realised that at some point the watch had changed, because there was a different man in that seat now.
It slowly dawned on him that the new occupant of the seat next to his was sitting as still as a statue, and it brought to his mind a gun dog pointing, which wasn’t far from the truth. The sophisticated towed array was picking up out of place noises and feeding it up the cable to the sonar suite where her computer sifted out the ordinary and highlighted the unusual.
“I’m getting faint pump sounds, far off. But I think there’s someone else out there too, a lot closer… coming on real slow like.”
The weariness dropped away from the Captain, and he re-seated the headphones that had become skewed at some point. Pump sounds meant nuclear power plants, and the soviets hadn’t cracked the problem of quietening high-pressure pumps yet to the point of near silence. It wouldn’t be a nuke that the man heard; it would be a diesel boat. “What am I listening for?”
“It’s like someone far off, panning for gold, sir.”
Eventually his untrained ears caught the sound, it actually did sound like wet sand on tin, but he frowned as he tried to make out what was causing it, he couldn’t but his sonarman could.
“I heard this before, last year in the Gulf. I was in the Boise and we followed an Iranian Kilo for a week. She’d been tied up for the previous six months and they hadn’t cleaned the barnacles off of the blades. You gotta have a clean boat or it don’t matter none how slow you go, or how good your systems are, you’ll get heard.”
“Is it the Victoria?”
He got an emphatic shake of the head from that.
“I’ve heard the Victoria, and that boat out there is a diesel, but it ain’t her sir.”
“Range, bearing and speed?”
“Just an estimation sir… 7000 yards, zero five zero, three knots, designate as Sierra Two Four. The only thing I’m certain of is the speed sir and that fact that she’s down here below the layer with us, or we wouldn’t have heard her… I’d allow some error in the rest.”
Pitt clapped him on the shoulder and left the sonar suite, he had a nagging doubt, a worry about the closer contact. What if it was Victoria, and she had sustained battle damage to her propeller, which was what they were hearing? But if that was the case then why hadn’t one of the other enemy vessels, which he knew were out there, attacked her!
He put himself in the shoes of the senior soviet captain; he knew that NATO would have submarines in blocking positions, and more than just one. His best chance of achieving his ultimate goal of stopping the convoys was his guided missile submarines, so he’d use his SSKs, his quiet diesels to feel the way ahead, keeping the missile boats safely at the back.
“Okay people let’s set this up, we’ll go up slowly above the layer and send two Mk-48s out at intervals, bearing zero six zero, a thousand yards between them and on low speed settings. Keep them above the layer and go back under ourselves. When number one is at seven thousand yards we turn them in and drop them under the layer, keep them on passive and see what happens.”