In the days since the thermobaric bombs had dropped on Little Diomede, the Rock had been left to fend for itself. US CNAF had not wanted to draw any attention to its top-secret facility, so Little Diomede had been included in general US protests about Russian aggression, without specifically calling out the attack there.
With the death of the CO, Lieutenant Commander Rodriguez had found herself suddenly in command of the Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station, Alaska — both her own people, and the personnel from the radar station. The chief petty officer and search party she had sent topside had found no survivors. In fact, they hadn’t even found any bodies. It was as though the officers and personnel manning the radar station had been scraped from the rock like barnacles from the hull of a ship. The radar station itself was nothing but melted metal and plastic, twisted rebar and foundation concrete. One of Rodriguez’s fears had been that the large elevator shaft down to the cave below, which had been hidden by the radar dome, would lie gaping and open for any prying Russian eye to see.
She needn’t have been concerned. The walls around the elevator shaft had collapsed over it, leaving only a small rubble-filled depression.
Dealing with the wounded had been her first priority. She had a Marine medical officer and two corpsmen still alive, and they quickly and efficiently triaged the injured personnel and treated the most severely wounded. Several urgently needed to be evacuated.
So communication had been her next priority. She needed to organize transport for the wounded, and let CNAF know that they had been hit hard, but were in the fight. By patching into the undersea drone command array they’d re-established voice and data contact. Their launch infrastructure had come through the attack largely undamaged. They could still hit any target within 300 miles, they just needed to be told what, and where. Without the heavy lift crane on the dock though, they couldn’t recover and recycle their drones from the Pond. Any drone they sent out the chute would be on a one way trip to the target and if it survived, onward to an airfield in Alaska. She still had a loaded magazine and a burning desire for payback. NCTAMS-A4 was still mission capable.
That was what she pitched to Pacific Command anyway. They didn’t see it the way she did.
Rodriguez had called a meeting of her ‘command staff’: a grand word to describe Bunny O’Hare, her arresting gear and catapult officers Stretch Alberti and Lucky Severin, and Chief Petty Officer ‘Inky’ Barrows, the senior ranking seaman from the radar station, so named because he got a new tattoo every time he hit a new port, and at 32 years of age, was fast running out of real estate to place it on.
“We’re being decommissioned,” Rodriguez announced. “Navy is sending a sub with medical facilities. We can’t get it into the dock here, so it will have to moor outside the harbor debris field. We are to rack all aircraft, power down all equipment and rig charges to bring the roof down by remote detonation just in case Ivan discovers it and tries to breach. The sub will take off all remaining personnel, not just the wounded.”
Their faces said it all, but Alberti was the first to speak. “They can’t decommission us, we hadn’t even been commissioned yet,” he commented dryly.
“Speak for yourselves,” CPO Barrows, the radar station electrician, said.
“I don’t think they’re too worried about protocol, Stretch,” Rodriguez said. “Informally, I was told they need to do an assessment of how it was we got hurt so badly by a few lucky bombs that weren’t even aimed at us.”
“Those MOABs are like mini-nukes,” Barrows protested. “And the whole point is they did get lucky, the Russians still don’t know we’re here.”
Severin was chewing on a thought, “A few weeks later, give us blast doors behind the Slot, we would have been fine. The seawall was rated for a category 4 hurricane and storm surge, not for a bloody thermobaric blast. We just need to re-engineer the cave entrance, create some baffles, fit that pressure door…”
“They’re not in the mood for re-engineering right now,” Rodriguez told them. “If we aren’t part of the solution to this standoff, we are apparently just part of the problem. They’re pulling us out.”
Rodriguez looked over at O’Hare; she looked angry but was suspiciously quiet. Rodriguez had expected her to explode. They discussed what needed to be done to decommission or destroy their equipment, how long it would take to rig explosives enough to bring the reinforced roof of the cave down if needed and whether there were any personnel too badly wounded to move. When they were done planning, Rodriguez dismissed them to start work.
“Lieutenant O’Hare, can I have a word?” Rodriguez said as they all rose to leave the trailer. When the others closed the door behind them, she looked at the woman who in the last few days had become just as much a friend as a junior officer. “OK Bunny, what’s up?”
“Sorry Boss?” O’Hare raised an eyebrow. “Don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes you do. I know you want payback. You’re choking for it. But I tell you we’re packing our bags and pulling out and you don’t say a word. Alberti and Barrows both erupt, even Severin is coming up with ideas, but you’re an Easter Island statue.”
Bunny sat down again, “I won’t lie Boss. I do want payback. But I’m not Navy, I’m DARPA. They pull us out of here, before I can even blink, I’ll be on a plane back to DARPA in California watching this war on CNN. It isn’t even my war. Hell, after this debacle they will probably cancel my green card and ship me back to Aussie.”
“Yeah,” Rodriguez said. “About that…”
Perri and Dave had grown bolder. Over the last three days they had set up a lookout ‘nest’ under an upturned satellite dish on the gas station roof that gave them a clear view down onto the town, and as long as there was no fog, they could see all the way across to the airfield. And they’d been out nearly every night, watching and listening to the town below.
They had been relieved to see the school buildings in Gambell had somehow escaped the destruction that had rained down on the town in those few short and terrifying minutes. They were worried about reprisals, but it seemed that those Russians left alive had other concerns than revenge on the local civilians.
They saw them bring their wounded to the school on stretchers and the hoods of jeeps. Then they saw them bring out their dead and line them up in bags on the road outside.
Some of the bags clearly didn’t hold a whole body. Perri counted fifty-nine body bags.
On the third day, Perri got a good count of the number of Russian troops left in Gambell when they held a funeral service for their dead comrades.
There were twenty-seven Russian soldiers still combat ready — physically at least — and maybe ten badly wounded inside the school somewhere.
What Perri couldn’t understand, was why no help arrived for the Russian troops. The air had been swarming with fat-bellied helicopters that first day, and a few came and went in the days following, but the skies were completely empty now. There were no warships moored off the breakwater anymore, just the wreck of a transport ship that had been hit by a missile three days ago and exploded in a liquid hydrogen-fuelled fireball that had flattened all the harborside shacks and broken windows hundreds of yards back. With at least three missiles hitting the town and more out at the airstrip, Perri doubted there was a window left intact in the entire town. But the Russians should have been able to get new men and supplies in. There had been plenty of days with clear skies but it had been foggy the first two days after the attack, if they had wanted to sneak people in or out. And he had clearly seen Russian aircraft overhead, flying back and forth across Saint Lawrence, apparently unmolested. So why no choppers?